This Week TheChampagneSommelier reflects over the roll of oak in Champagne. [read the full champagne story]
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
We have definately seen a trend towards less oak influence in the wines during the last decades, still oak is of great importance in many wine types.
In the wine hipster and natural wine world, oak is too often mentioned as a bad thing, a tool to make wines less pure and less natural and terroir driven.
Oak in general
Winemakers around the world put a lot of efforts in matching the finest wines with the best and most suitable oak barrels. And not only for flavor (vanilla, spicy notes, sweetness, levels of toastiness, etc), but also to give the wine the right amount of oxygen to soften the tannins and let the wine evolve into a finer balance after six months, a year, two years or even longer.
