Oak Chips

There’s no question that oak treatment adds complexity to wine as long as it’s not over done. Oak barrels are usually the norm, but they’re expensive. An alternative and less costly approach that many wineries use are oak chips. Providing oak flavour, small fragments of oak in netted bags are immersed or floated in wine, similar to a tea bag in water. Certainly not as elegant or romantic as barrels, most producers would never admit to using these as it is considered inferior. However, it’s not too difficult to tell if they’ve been used. If the back label of a bottle describes a wine as having been oak treated, but mentions nothing about barrels, type or length of time in them, chances are, oak chips are the culprits.