Oak barrels 'seasoned' with fire add character as wine ages

LAST AUGUST, sweet, toasty aromas reminiscent of burning leaves wafted through the air at the Northwest Wine Academy in South Seattle. While members of the Fidelitas Red Mountain wine club looked on, master cooper Andy Byars manipulated oak staves, water-soaked rags and the heat from a small fire to craft two 59-gallon, American-oak Bordeaux barrels.

Next, he wrestled the bulky barrels over the fire pot, streams of smoke rising all around. Throughout the afternoon, the wiry cooper moved the barrels on and off the flickering flames, allowing the barrel interiors to slowly and evenly caramelize without burning.

His goal? To impart the perfect char, or "toast," inside the 120-pound wooden vessels. Fidelitas owner-winemaker Charlie Hoppes of Benton City had commissioned the barrels, which eventually would be filled with his signature cabernet sauvignon and his latest favorite varietal — malbec — for aging.

Handcrafted oak barrels such as these allow the wine within to breathe, thanks to the slight exchange of oxygen between the outside and inside of the barrel. Barrel aging also softens or intensifies the wine's tannins and increases its complexity. The type of wood used to make the barrel is important. According to Hoppes, French- and American-oak barrels are made from different genera and species of white oak, so each has a unique flavor, "like the way a Red Delicious apple is different from a Gala."

Barrels can also be crafted from oak grown in Eastern European countries and Russia. Oak-derived aromas and flavors you might recognize in a glass of wine include cedar or pencil shavings, mowed hay or dill, clove or cinnamon, and coconut and vanilla.

In many ways, barrels are to a winemaker what spices are to a cook; "each adds a unique attribute to the wine," says Hoppes. "At Fidelitas, we focus on cabernet sauvignon, a grape that generally offers concentrated black- and dark-fruit flavors. Take Red Mountain Cabernet, for example. It is aggressive, concentrated and spicy. I use American-oak barrels because they stand up well to this wine. If I were to use the same barrel to age delicate Yakima Valley merlot, the oak would overwhelm it."

In addition to the type of wood, other factors that winemakers consider when ordering oak barrels include the grain of the wood, the amount of water in its fibers, the way it's weathered, the way it's bent and toast levels.

The toast level, or char, of the barrel imparts unique flavors to the finished wine, such as creamy (vanilla), yeasty (baked bread), smoky (bacon) or spicy (nutmeg). A winemaker chooses the proper level of toast from light to heavy, depending on the grape variety to be used and the style of wine being produced.

"Experienced winemakers know what a particular toast level means to a particular cooper," Hoppes explains. "Barrels with more toast impart oak into the wine more quickly. Tighter-grain barrels will impart flavor more slowly. I tend to prefer a 'low-and-slow' approach and use barrels that will slowly impart character into the wine over the course of its 20 to 22 months in barrel."

The barrels don't come cheap. Premium wineries such as Fidelitas pay as much as $1,400 for a French-oak barrel. An American-oak barrel costs about half as much. At Fidelitas, a barrel is considered "used" (with its flavor compounds leached out) after just one use.

Other wineries recycle their barrels from three to five times, after which they become "neutral" barrels. Neutral barrels still can be handy — good for when a winemaker simply wants to aerate a wine so it ages properly. Most winemakers combine new and old oak barrels to create their wines.

Seguin-Moreau Napa Cooperage, Byars' employer, is one of six large coopers that supply 70 percent of the barrels to the North American market.

Byars went into the trade in the ninth grade and swept the floor for five years. The 48-year-old, motorcycle-loving native of Scotland has practiced his craft ever since.

His hands are stained and weathered from manhandling the big barrels, which are constructed from specially made wooden staves — 25 to 30 per barrel. Miraculously, the barrels are held together by galvanized hoops — no dowels or glue.

"It's all smell and touch," Byars rumbles in a deep Scottish burr. "Sourcing the wood is the most challenging problem. We're competing with the whiskey-barrel and furniture-making guys.

"Buying a barrel is like buying a new car," he continues. "People get just what they want, when they want it."

Today, in many lower-priced and bulk wines, winemakers employ new techniques to mimic oak aging. Some shave their barrels and insert thin oak staves to flavor their wine. Oak planks are often inserted in larger stainless-steel tanks. Oak chips or blocks or giant "tea bags" filled with oak shavings offer other alternatives.

Micro-oxygenation, or pumping mini bubbles of air through a barrel of wine to both soften its tannins and enhance its flavors, can also produce some of the same effects as oak aging, but in far less time.

Experienced, sensitive palates can usually detect these poseurs, and aging in real oak barrels still surpasses the recent "innovations."

"Sticking your nose in a freshly toasted American-oak barrel is like the best campfire ever," said one of the Fidelitas wine-club members.

And those of us lucky enough to watch Byars build and toast his barrels, then sample through Hoppes' wines, were quick to agree.