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From The Press To The Barrel
6. And there's some of that wonderful stuff we call wine. Of course, it's at a very tender young age. This is, as you can plainly see, some very intensely colored RED wine. This is actually some free run wine (wine that drains freely from the fermentation vessel) which is not to be confused with the press wine (wine that is trapped in the skins until physical force is applied). The majority of wine is free run and most often the press wine is added back to give more complexity to the blend. The more pressure that is applied, the more seed flavors can get into the press wine. So the key is to treat things gently and not squeeze it for every last drop.
Here we have some some new oak barrels which we will use to age the wine. White Oak is the traditional wood used for wine barrels. These are American White Oak barrels. We use a mixture of new and used French and American Oak barrels to age our wine in. The difference between the two is where the source wood comes from (French Oak is grown in France and American Oak is grown in the U.S.). The two are also different species of white oak (Quercus alba here and Quercus robur and Quercus petrea over there). A new oak barrel gives a mellow spiciness, in both flavor and aroma, to wine. The two different species give slightly different characters to wine. Some winemakers like one wood type for some grape varieties and another for some others. It really becomes a matter of taste for the winemaker. These barrels are 225 Liter capacity which is almost 60 gallons and is the traditional small barrel size.
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