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The Oak Scoop: May 2026
Dive into the May 2026 edition of The Oak Scoop, where we review common summertime winemaking practices, preview our Memorial Day sale, and more!
by Brandon Haas
Published on 05/08/2026
ON THIS PAGE
Age your wine with oak chips.
- Shop Now
Welcome to The Oak Scoop, our monthly newsletter dedicated to keeping our customers informed on company updates, industry developments, product education, and the science behind oak in winemaking.
May is officially here—and if you've been waiting for permission to slow down, consider this your sign to do the opposite. The vines are already awake (and in some cases running ahead of schedule), summer is knocking on the door, and the best winemakers we know are already thinking about what comes next. This month we're covering summer winemaking, including the home fermenters throwing batches on the back porch before the BBQ, a heads-up on a Memorial Day deal worth watching for, a look at a genuinely surprising health insight around wine and your gut, tips and tricks for the summer cellar, and a deep dive into toast levels that's worth bookmarking. Let's get into it!
Looking Ahead to Summer Winemaking
There's a whole category of winemakers that doesn't get talked about enough in industry circles—the ones making five gallons in a garage, tweaking a fruit wine for the Fourth of July, or aging a kit wine in the basement because the smoke from the grill inspired a curiosity about what a little oak would do.
If that sounds like you, welcome. You belong here too.
Summer is peak season for home winemakers and kitchen fermenters. The fruit is coming in—strawberries, blackberries, stone fruit, even local Concord grapes from the backyard—and the motivation is at an all-time high because everything tastes better at a picnic. Here's the thing: oak can make those summer batches significantly better, and the barrier to entry is lower than most people think.
A few oak chips or cubes go a long way. A small bag of medium toast American oak chips added to a five-gallon carboy for two to four weeks can round out harsh edges, add a touch of vanilla and warmth, and make a fruit wine feel far more complete than it would on its own. It's the same science that commercial winemakers use—just at a friendlier scale.
Format matters even at home. Chips give faster extraction—great for a wine you want to drink this summer. Spirals and cubes are slower and more controlled—better if you're aging something through fall. And if you want to experiment without committing a whole batch, split a carboy in two and try different toast levels side by side. That's a bench trial. That's what the pros do.
Summer winemaking doesn't need to be complicated. It just needs to be intentional.
Summer is coming quick! Get your oak alternatives today!
As you can see, summer is one of the best times to get your summer winemaking started. OCI has a wide selection of oak alternatives to get your wine on the right oakin' path!
Memorial Day Sale—Stay Tuned
We've got something special coming for Memorial Day weekend, and we don't want you to miss it. Whether you're stocking up for summer production, running your first trial, or finally pulling the trigger on that product you've been eyeing—this is the deal to watch for.
Keep an eye on your inbox and our website. More details dropping soon.
Not Sure Where to Start? That's What Matt Is Here For!
We mention Matt Rogers a lot in this newsletter—and there's a reason for that. He's not a sales rep. He was a winemaker first. He's spent time in the cellar, run bench trials, tasted through hundreds of oak programs, and understands firsthand what it feels like to have too much oak in a wine you spent a whole season building.
When winemakers come to us—commercial producers, craft producers, and home winemakers alike—Matt is the person who can actually help you figure out what to do. Not just "buy this product," but: what format, what toast level, at what dosage, for how long, for this specific wine you're making?
Here's what a consultation with Matt looks like:
-
- You tell him about your wine—the variety, the style you're going for, where it's at in its development, and what you feel like it's missing.
- He maps the right product—format, origin, toast level, and contact time—to your actual goals.
- You get samples—so you can run a real trial in your own cellar with your own wine before committing.
There's no pressure, no pitch, no weird follow-up. Just a winemaker talking to another winemaker (or aspiring winemaker). If you've been on the fence about trying OCI products or you're mid-process and not sure where to go, reach out.
Ready to begin your oak trials?
Schedule a consultation with Matt to see where your program can improve with the help of American and French oak alternatives.
Industry Insight: The 2026 Vintage Is Already Making Winemakers Nervous
Here's what's happening in the vineyard right now that every winery should be aware of: unseasonably warm temperatures across California and Southern France have triggered some of the earliest budbreak in recent memory heading into the 2026 growing season. On the surface, early budbreak sounds promising. The reality is more complicated.
Early budbreak means the vines are ahead of schedule—which also means they're more vulnerable to late-season frost events that, statistically, haven't finished yet in May. A late frost after budbreak can wipe out a significant portion of a vineyard's crop before the growing season really begins. That's exactly the kind of event that shrinks fruit supply, drives up grape prices, and forces winemakers to work harder to achieve the structure and complexity they'd normally get from the fruit itself.
Add to this that California's harvest volume was already trending down coming out of 2025, and you've got a market where sourcing reliability, program flexibility, and cost-efficient tools for flavor development are more valuable than ever.
The takeaway: 2026 may be a vintage where your oak program does more work than usual. Winemakers who build flexibility into their process now—using oak alternatives that let them adjust contact time, dosage, and format without locked-in barrel commitments—will have more options when the vintage delivers what it delivers.
Health & Oak: Wine, Polyphenols, and Your Brain
We cover a different health angle every month—and this one might be the most intriguing yet.
A peer-reviewed MDPI study examined the neuroprotective potential of wine polyphenols—specifically in the context of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease research. The findings were nuanced (as good science usually is), but the directional signal was clear: compounds naturally present in wine, including resveratrol, quercetin, and catechins, have demonstrated the ability to cross the blood-brain barrier and interact with neurological pathways in ways that may help protect against oxidative stress and neuroinflammation—two of the key drivers of cognitive decline.
The caveat, as always: these effects are observed at the compound level, not as a blanket endorsement of drinking more wine. Dose, frequency, and overall lifestyle context matter enormously.
But here's what makes this relevant to winemakers specifically: the polyphenolic richness of a wine—the depth and diversity of its phenolic compounds—is largely a function of how that wine was made. Whole-cluster fermentation, skin contact time, and oak integration all influence the final polyphenolic profile. Oak-derived compounds like ellagitannins and vanillin-bound phenolics contribute to this profile in ways that a wine without oak contact simply doesn't have.
In other words, the winemaking decisions you make in the cellar don't just affect how a wine tastes in the glass; they shape the biological complexity of what ends up in the bottle. That's a compelling story and one that fits squarely with the broader shift toward wines that feel more complete, more intentional, and more worth drinking.
Tips & Tricks: Keeping Your Summer Cellar Under Control
Summer is the season that punishes careless cellars. Heat, humidity swings, and distraction (because BBQ season is real) create conditions where a wine that was tracking perfectly in March can go sideways by August. Here are a few things to stay on top of:
1. Watch your storage temperature. Wine aging in warm conditions oxidizes faster. Ideal is 55–65°F with stable humidity around 70%. If you don't have a climate-controlled space, at minimum avoid direct sunlight, concrete floors that heat up, and areas near HVAC equipment.
2. Don't set it and forget it with oak. If you have oak alternatives in a vessel right now, taste it. Don't just wait out the contact time on the calendar. Oak extraction accelerates at higher temperatures—wine aging in a 72°F space in July is extracting faster than the same wine in a 58°F cellar in February.
3. Use summer tastings to make fall decisions. June and July are actually great months for evaluating how your oak program is developing. What you taste now tells you a lot about what you'll need to adjust, add, or remove before your bottling window.
4. Don't open the barrel (or carboy) more than you need to. Every time you open a vessel to check on things, you introduce oxygen and risk contamination. Taste with intention, not out of curiosity.
5. For home winemakers—label everything. If you're running summer trials with different oak formats, write down what you added, when, and at what dosage. You will not remember in September.
Blog of the Month
If you've ever stood at the OCI website looking at the product options and wondered, "What's the actual difference between medium and medium-plus toast?" then this month's featured blog is exactly for you!
Toast levels are one of the most misunderstood variables in oak winemaking. Most people know that heavier toast means more smoke and darker flavors, and lighter toast means more subtle influence. But the science behind why is genuinely fascinating, and understanding it makes you a sharper winemaker.
Read the full blog!
Learn more about the differences between each of OCI's toast levels and how they interact with your wine by clicking below.
Until Next Month!
Summer is officially loading, and whether you're a commercial winemaker prepping for harvest, a craft producer dialing in a summer white, or a home brewer about to throw a blackberry batch on before the Memorial Day cookout, May is when the intentional ones pull ahead.
Keep an eye out for our Memorial Day sale. Talk to Matt if you have questions. And taste your wines—now, not in September.
Thanks for being part of the OCI community. If you missed last month's edition of The Oak Scoop, click here to read it now. We'll be back in June with a deep dive into mid-season oak adjustments and what to watch for as harvest timing comes into focus.
by Brandon Haas
Published on 05/08/2026
Share Article
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by Brandon Haas
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POPULAR POSTS
OAK ALTERNATIVES
How Long Should You Age Wine With Oak Chips?
NEWS/UPDATES
The Oak Scoop: April 2026
USING OAK IN WINEMAKING
What is Harvest and Why is it Important to Winemakers?
OAK SCIENCE
5 Ways To Make Your Alcohol Taste Better
ON THIS PAGE
Age your wine with oak chips.
- Shop Now
Welcome to The Oak Scoop, our monthly newsletter dedicated to keeping our customers informed on company updates, industry developments, product education, and the science behind oak in winemaking.
May is officially here—and if you've been waiting for permission to slow down, consider this your sign to do the opposite. The vines are already awake (and in some cases running ahead of schedule), summer is knocking on the door, and the best winemakers we know are already thinking about what comes next. This month we're covering summer winemaking, including the home fermenters throwing batches on the back porch before the BBQ, a heads-up on a Memorial Day deal worth watching for, a look at a genuinely surprising health insight around wine and your gut, tips and tricks for the summer cellar, and a deep dive into toast levels that's worth bookmarking. Let's get into it!
Looking Ahead to Summer Winemaking
There's a whole category of winemakers that doesn't get talked about enough in industry circles—the ones making five gallons in a garage, tweaking a fruit wine for the Fourth of July, or aging a kit wine in the basement because the smoke from the grill inspired a curiosity about what a little oak would do.
If that sounds like you, welcome. You belong here too.
Summer is peak season for home winemakers and kitchen fermenters. The fruit is coming in—strawberries, blackberries, stone fruit, even local Concord grapes from the backyard—and the motivation is at an all-time high because everything tastes better at a picnic. Here's the thing: oak can make those summer batches significantly better, and the barrier to entry is lower than most people think.
A few oak chips or cubes go a long way. A small bag of medium toast American oak chips added to a five-gallon carboy for two to four weeks can round out harsh edges, add a touch of vanilla and warmth, and make a fruit wine feel far more complete than it would on its own. It's the same science that commercial winemakers use—just at a friendlier scale.
Format matters even at home. Chips give faster extraction—great for a wine you want to drink this summer. Spirals and cubes are slower and more controlled—better if you're aging something through fall. And if you want to experiment without committing a whole batch, split a carboy in two and try different toast levels side by side. That's a bench trial. That's what the pros do.
Summer winemaking doesn't need to be complicated. It just needs to be intentional.
Summer is coming quick! Get your oak alternatives today!
As you can see, summer is one of the best times to get your summer winemaking started. OCI has a wide selection of oak alternatives to get your wine on the right oakin' path!
Memorial Day Sale—Stay Tuned
We've got something special coming for Memorial Day weekend, and we don't want you to miss it. Whether you're stocking up for summer production, running your first trial, or finally pulling the trigger on that product you've been eyeing—this is the deal to watch for.
Keep an eye on your inbox and our website. More details dropping soon.
Not Sure Where to Start? That's What Matt Is Here For!
We mention Matt Rogers a lot in this newsletter—and there's a reason for that. He's not a sales rep. He was a winemaker first. He's spent time in the cellar, run bench trials, tasted through hundreds of oak programs, and understands firsthand what it feels like to have too much oak in a wine you spent a whole season building.
When winemakers come to us—commercial producers, craft producers, and home winemakers alike—Matt is the person who can actually help you figure out what to do. Not just "buy this product," but: what format, what toast level, at what dosage, for how long, for this specific wine you're making?
Here's what a consultation with Matt looks like:
-
- You tell him about your wine—the variety, the style you're going for, where it's at in its development, and what you feel like it's missing.
- He maps the right product—format, origin, toast level, and contact time—to your actual goals.
- You get samples—so you can run a real trial in your own cellar with your own wine before committing.
There's no pressure, no pitch, no weird follow-up. Just a winemaker talking to another winemaker (or aspiring winemaker). If you've been on the fence about trying OCI products or you're mid-process and not sure where to go, reach out.
Ready to begin your oak trials?
Schedule a consultation with Matt to see where your program can improve with the help of American and French oak alternatives.
Industry Insight: The 2026 Vintage Is Already Making Winemakers Nervous
Here's what's happening in the vineyard right now that every winery should be aware of: unseasonably warm temperatures across California and Southern France have triggered some of the earliest budbreak in recent memory heading into the 2026 growing season. On the surface, early budbreak sounds promising. The reality is more complicated.
Early budbreak means the vines are ahead of schedule—which also means they're more vulnerable to late-season frost events that, statistically, haven't finished yet in May. A late frost after budbreak can wipe out a significant portion of a vineyard's crop before the growing season really begins. That's exactly the kind of event that shrinks fruit supply, drives up grape prices, and forces winemakers to work harder to achieve the structure and complexity they'd normally get from the fruit itself.
Add to this that California's harvest volume was already trending down coming out of 2025, and you've got a market where sourcing reliability, program flexibility, and cost-efficient tools for flavor development are more valuable than ever.
The takeaway: 2026 may be a vintage where your oak program does more work than usual. Winemakers who build flexibility into their process now—using oak alternatives that let them adjust contact time, dosage, and format without locked-in barrel commitments—will have more options when the vintage delivers what it delivers.
Health & Oak: Wine, Polyphenols, and Your Brain
We cover a different health angle every month—and this one might be the most intriguing yet.
A peer-reviewed MDPI study examined the neuroprotective potential of wine polyphenols—specifically in the context of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease research. The findings were nuanced (as good science usually is), but the directional signal was clear: compounds naturally present in wine, including resveratrol, quercetin, and catechins, have demonstrated the ability to cross the blood-brain barrier and interact with neurological pathways in ways that may help protect against oxidative stress and neuroinflammation—two of the key drivers of cognitive decline.
The caveat, as always: these effects are observed at the compound level, not as a blanket endorsement of drinking more wine. Dose, frequency, and overall lifestyle context matter enormously.
But here's what makes this relevant to winemakers specifically: the polyphenolic richness of a wine—the depth and diversity of its phenolic compounds—is largely a function of how that wine was made. Whole-cluster fermentation, skin contact time, and oak integration all influence the final polyphenolic profile. Oak-derived compounds like ellagitannins and vanillin-bound phenolics contribute to this profile in ways that a wine without oak contact simply doesn't have.
In other words, the winemaking decisions you make in the cellar don't just affect how a wine tastes in the glass; they shape the biological complexity of what ends up in the bottle. That's a compelling story and one that fits squarely with the broader shift toward wines that feel more complete, more intentional, and more worth drinking.
Tips & Tricks: Keeping Your Summer Cellar Under Control
Summer is the season that punishes careless cellars. Heat, humidity swings, and distraction (because BBQ season is real) create conditions where a wine that was tracking perfectly in March can go sideways by August. Here are a few things to stay on top of:
1. Watch your storage temperature. Wine aging in warm conditions oxidizes faster. Ideal is 55–65°F with stable humidity around 70%. If you don't have a climate-controlled space, at minimum avoid direct sunlight, concrete floors that heat up, and areas near HVAC equipment.
2. Don't set it and forget it with oak. If you have oak alternatives in a vessel right now, taste it. Don't just wait out the contact time on the calendar. Oak extraction accelerates at higher temperatures—wine aging in a 72°F space in July is extracting faster than the same wine in a 58°F cellar in February.
3. Use summer tastings to make fall decisions. June and July are actually great months for evaluating how your oak program is developing. What you taste now tells you a lot about what you'll need to adjust, add, or remove before your bottling window.
4. Don't open the barrel (or carboy) more than you need to. Every time you open a vessel to check on things, you introduce oxygen and risk contamination. Taste with intention, not out of curiosity.
5. For home winemakers—label everything. If you're running summer trials with different oak formats, write down what you added, when, and at what dosage. You will not remember in September.
Blog of the Month
If you've ever stood at the OCI website looking at the product options and wondered, "What's the actual difference between medium and medium-plus toast?" then this month's featured blog is exactly for you!
Toast levels are one of the most misunderstood variables in oak winemaking. Most people know that heavier toast means more smoke and darker flavors, and lighter toast means more subtle influence. But the science behind why is genuinely fascinating, and understanding it makes you a sharper winemaker.
Read the full blog!
Learn more about the differences between each of OCI's toast levels and how they interact with your wine by clicking below.
Until Next Month!
Summer is officially loading, and whether you're a commercial winemaker prepping for harvest, a craft producer dialing in a summer white, or a home brewer about to throw a blackberry batch on before the Memorial Day cookout, May is when the intentional ones pull ahead.
Keep an eye out for our Memorial Day sale. Talk to Matt if you have questions. And taste your wines—now, not in September.
Thanks for being part of the OCI community. If you missed last month's edition of The Oak Scoop, click here to read it now. We'll be back in June with a deep dive into mid-season oak adjustments and what to watch for as harvest timing comes into focus.
by Brandon Haas
Published on 05/08/2026
Share Article