Flaherty Wines

My recent post about barrel maintenance has me thinking about barrels more generally. Barrel purchases are our second largest annual cost, right after the grapes themselves. All of our wine ages in oak barrels. We do not, however, want oak characteristics to overpower the fruit, so we use a mix of new and used barrels. We aim for around 15 – 20% new oak, to provide a consistent level of oak characters from year to year. We also buy some used white wine barrels as needed, which are typically four years old at purchase. These used barrels don’t contribute oak flavors, but they do provide all the other benefits of barrel aging, in terms of a slow interaction with the environment through the barrel staves and better lees contact and decanting relative to wines aged in stainless steel tanks.

In 2009, we bought four new barrels: two American oak (one of which has French heads) and two Romanian oak. We are using a total of 24 barrels this vintage, so that puts us right in the middle of our target range, with 17% new oak. The different origins impart different characteristics to the wine. With American oak, the heads have to be toasted in addition to the staves, because untoasted American oak can have some very aggressive (and potentially negative) characters. Consequently, the toast tends to be more dominant than French oak barrels, which usually have toasted staves and untoasted heads. Our 2009 barrels include one American oak barrel with untoasted French heads to avoid excessive vanilla, caramel, and toast flavors in the finished wine.

Romanian oak is the same species as French oak. We have tried both Romanian and Hungarian and found that the Romanian produces a better structure in the final wines. We also like the fine aromatics.

Our wines spend 16 – 18 months in barrel. Since they go through two winters in barrel, the wines don’t need an additional cold stabilization to stabilize color and tartrates.