ON THIS PAGE

Become an oak expert today!

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.

Harvest decisions move fast. Fruit comes in. Chemistry changes. Fermentation starts. And suddenly, decisions that looked weeks away need answers today.

Oak is one of them.

The question during harvest shouldn't simply be "Are we going to oak this wine?" It should be:

What are we trying to accomplish—and at what stage will oak give us the best opportunity to accomplish it?

Because the same oak added to must, fermenting wine, or finished wine does not necessarily produce the same result.

In September's edition, we're looking at how fermentation changes oak extraction, why not all oak chips should be treated the same, when to begin planning oak trials, and one harvest mistake that can limit your options before aging even begins.

Oak Lab: Same Oak. Different Wine. Different Result.

Imagine taking the exact same oak chip and placing one piece into must at the beginning of fermentation and another into the finished wine several weeks later. Same wood. Same toast. Same dosage. But somehow, a different chemical environment.

During alcoholic fermentation, the liquid surrounding the oak is continuously changing. Sugar declines, ethanol rises, pH and phenolic interactions evolve, yeast metabolites accumulate, and volatile compounds are being created and transformed.

That matters because oak compounds do not all extract under identical conditions. Water and ethanol have different solvent properties, meaning the changing composition of the wine influences which wood-derived compounds become available—and how quickly.

Research on oak use during fermentation has shown measurable differences in volatile composition and sensory expression compared with wines treated later in production. In other words, when you add the oak can be just as important as what oak you add [source].

That creates an important harvest takeaway:

Don't think about oak addition as one treatment. Think about it as a stage-specific tool.

Fermentation-stage oak may be selected to support early structural or aromatic objectives. Post-fermentation additions may instead provide greater control over a finished wine whose sensory profile is already easier to evaluate.
Neither approach is automatically better. The correct timing depends on the job you're asking the oak to perform.

Oak Spotlight: Not All Chips Are Created Equal

Oak chips are often treated as a single category, and they shouldn't be. Their biggest advantage is speed and flexibility, but changing particle size changes how that speed behaves.

OCI's small-grade chips expose more wood surface relative to their size, making them particularly useful when rapid interaction is desirable during fermentation. Large-grade chips provide a more gradual extraction profile and can be used when the objective shifts toward aromatic complexity, volume, and structure over a longer period.

Both begin with the same general OCI dosage range of 2–4 g/L (7.5–15 g/gal), but dosage alone does not determine the result.

You also need to think about:

Grade: Small vs. large
Screening: Uniform screened material vs. mixed unscreened particle sizes
Oak species: French vs. American
Toast: From untoasted through Charbon
Application stage: Fermentation, MLF, or maturation
Contact time: Fast impact vs. gradual integration

This is why chips shouldn't be viewed simply as the "quick" or "economical" alternative to a barrel. They're a configurable extraction tool. And during harvest, that flexibility can be extremely valuable.

Ask OCI: When Should I Start My Oak Trials?

The answer? Before you desperately need one.

A reactive oak trial usually begins like this: "The wine needs something. What can we add?" A better trial begins with: "Here is what the wine currently has. Here is what we want it to become."

Before selecting the oak, you must establish the objective you are trying to achieve. Are you trying to influence:

- Aromatic complexity?
- Tannin structure?
- Mid-palate volume?
- Color support?
- Perceived sweetness?
- Toast character?
- Overall integration?

Once you choose your objective, you then create a control and test one or more treatments against it.

For harvest-stage trials, we recommend recording at minimum:
Wine/Lot → Oak Format → Species → Toast → Dose → Addition Date → Fermentation Stage → Tasting Notes

And here's the kicker, don't evaluate only once. A treatment that looks promising on Day 3 may behave very differently by Day 10 as ethanol rises and the wine develops.

The end lesson is this: the most valuable outcome of a bench trial isn't just better wine. It's a repeatable protocol for the next vintage.

Explore OCI's Dosage & Technical Resources here →

September's Oak Myth

MYTH: Oak decisions can wait until fermentation is finished.

FACT: Waiting can eliminate options you had earlier.

Oak can be introduced at several points in production, and each stage provides a different winemaking opportunity. Our team's technical guidance includes applications during alcoholic fermentation, malolactic fermentation, maturation, clarification, and finishing depending on the selected format.

However, this does not mean every wine needs fermentation-stage oak.
It means that waiting until aging to begin thinking about oak turns a strategic decision into a finishing decision. A better approach is to establish the oak objective during harvest—even if the actual addition won't happen until months later.

Health-Aware Consumer Lens: What Oak Does—and Doesn't—Change

Today's health-conscious consumer is asking increasingly specific questions:

"How much alcohol is in it? How much sugar? How many calories? What's actually in the bottle?"

That makes accurate communication increasingly important for wineries.

Oak can dramatically change aroma, flavor, tannin structure, mouthfeel, perceived sweetness, and complexity. What it does not do is magically make wine lower in alcohol, sugar, carbohydrates, or calories. That distinction matters.

The opportunity for winemakers isn't to position oak as a health ingredient. It's to use oak to build sensory complexity and satisfaction while keeping analytical claims honest. For example, vanilla, caramel, spice, toast, and other oak-derived aromatics can make a wine feel richer or more expressive without requiring those descriptors to come from additional residual sugar.

For a consumer increasingly interested in both what is in the glass and why it tastes the way it does, that story is worth understanding—and explaining accurately.

Harvest Challenge: Don't Taste Without a Control

Here's one practice our experts recommend adopting this harvest:

Every meaningful oak trial should include an untreated control.

Without one, it becomes surprisingly difficult to determine what actually came from the oak. The reasoning behind is this: wine continues evolving during fermentation and aging whether oak is present or not. Fruit aromatics change. Tannin perception changes. Acidity integrates. Fermentation-derived compounds develop. If you taste only the treated wine three weeks later, you're comparing it to your memory of the original wine and that's not what we would call a 'controlled trial.'

Set aside an untreated sample from the same lot and evaluate them side by side. Ask: "What changed?" Then ask the harder question: "Did oak cause it?" That one habit can dramatically improve the quality of the information you carry into the next vintage.

Featured Resource: Wine Color Is More Complicated Than "Darker Is Better"

Red wine color doesn't depend on one compound or one cellar addition.

Anthocyanins originating in the grape, wine tannins, oak-derived ellagitannins, oxygen exposure, pH, fermentation conditions, and aging reactions all contribute to how color develops and persists.

Research on wines matured with oak chips has demonstrated measurable changes in color parameters, anthocyanins, polymeric pigments, and phenolic composition—another reason oak should be considered as part of the wine's broader chemistry rather than simply a flavoring material.

If color stability is one of your targets this harvest, start with the chemistry before choosing the product.

Explore more helpful winemaking resources here →

Until Next Month!

Harvest gives you the chemistry. Your decisions determine what you do with it. Oak species matters. Toast matters. Dosage matters. But timing matters too.

The strongest oak programs don't begin when someone decides the finished wine "needs more oak." They begin with a defined objective, a controlled trial, and enough time to let the data—and the wine—guide the next decision.

Thank you for reading September's edition of The Oak Scoop. In October, we'll move from planning to diagnosis and tackle a more difficult question: "When a wine isn't where you want it to be…can oak actually fix it?"

Until then—Happy Harvest and Happy Oaking!

Let our team choose the right oak for your winemaking or brewing project!