It’s a scene that regularly repeats itself. Wine Buff A says the cool climate chardonnay reveals exemplary Limousin oak, while according to Wine Buff B the oak couldn’t be anything but Alliers. Then cagey Wine Buff C, who has read the back label, puts his money on Nevers. But it’s not so easy to pair oak’s influence on wine to a particular forest. There’s more variation in type of oak and grain on a single forest slope than there is likely to be between woods of similar grain type sourced from different forests. It’s far more relevant for winemakers to link oak quality and character with the actual management system deployed in the forest. Winemakers are more likely to be able to source oak able to impart a consistent character to their wine year after year by allowing the coopers to select staves in the cooperage yard than by ordering oak simply by nominating which forests are most desirable. Selecting oak by forest type was originally an American phenomenon which French winemakers still find hard to comprehend today. Tony Royal, who as general manager of Seguin Moreau Australia represents one of France’s major cooperages, believes winemakers are focusing more on grain type and texture than particular forest source. While earlier-drinking warmer climate wines are suited to the more rapid oak pick-up derived from more open-grained wood, Royal believes that Australia’s modern cool-climate wines which tend to be matured in barrels for longer, are better suited to finer-grained oak. Of the two major French forest management systems, the Taillis system of semi-continuous cropping every 25 years produces faster-growing trees and a more open grain than with Haute-Futaie management, which effectively works on a 200 year full cycle. Haute-Futaie oak is around twice the price of Taillis oak to the cooper, but although both management systems operate in all major oak forests, less than 8% of France’s 4.75 million hectares of oak forest are operated as Haute-Futaie. Like a coffee blending house whose standard blends are expected to remain consistent regardless of variations in season and possibly of origin, Seguin Moreau creates its Bordeaux and Burgundy oak ‘blends’ of a particular grain type especially to complement wines requiring specific types of oak grain and texture. While all Seguin Moreau’s casks are made entirely from Haute-Futaie grain, each sold in a ‘blend’ may involve a mixture of different forest sources. ‘Winemakers are more likely to achieve consistency with oak in a blend than from a single region, because by ordering oak exclusively from the Alliers forest for instance, they could end up with either type of oak in their casks, each giving very different results,’ says Royal. Contemporary winemaking requires a different type of oak than in the 1980s and before, he poses. ‘As cool-climate vineyards are becoming more mature and as winemakers are becoming more familiar with cool climate fruit, they’re more focused on the oak resource as well. It comes down to a greater customising of style between oak type and fruit. Back in the 1980s most chardonnay came for the warmer river areas, making bigger, fuller wines than we see these days from the cool regions. If we used the same barrels today that would have been used in 1980s, their fruit would simply be swamped by oak’, he says. Around half of Seguin Moreau’s Australian customers are now specifying the blends instead of single forest barrels, a proportion that is increasing all the time as winemakers look to take more control of every stage in the process. Are our winemakers leaving their reds in oak for too long? asks Ralph Fowler, one of the most experienced winemakers around. Fowler is currently mulling over using just a 10-12 month maturation period, a germ of an idea planted through his recent association with the Rhone Valley-based family of Chapoutier. Fowler, whose wines are sold under the popular Leconfield and Richard Hamilton labels, says that until recently he’s seen little reason to move from the traditional 12-15 months of oak maturation common in Australian wineries. Today he’s attracted by the freshness of fruit in earlier-bottled wine and by their apparently enhanced potential to develop more significantly with bottle-age. ‘I guess keeping wines for a long time in barrels does create a style able to age for many years, but one which doesn’t offer as much change in the bottle. Wines bottled younger go through more dramatic changes in the bottle. That could be good, could be bad. Some may not want that degree of change’, he says. ‘I’m not convinced we should go down the 2 year path with oak and I don’t think that’s what happens with best of the international wines we compete against. But if we’re shooting for the super-premiums, they need between 12-15 months in new barrels.’
