OIL WOOD

Wine has a few loves and the ancient oak is, you could say, its greatest love. Without the close contact between wine and oak, many of the world's best-known wines would not be a shadow of how we know them today.

Everyone has heard of it. Wine can age in oak barrels and this produces flavours that wine lovers hold in high regard. With red wines in particular, this practice is very common, but many great white wines also benefit from ageing in oak barrels. Aromas like vanilla, toast, coffee and dried herbs rarely come from the grape or fermentation. They come directly from wooden barrels. In practice, this wood almost always comes from oak. But you have oak and oak wood. Different types of oak produce distinct differences in wines. By far the most famous example is the difference between American oak and French oak - with the former being very recognisable in classic Riojas and the latter in the great wines of Bordeaux.

Discovery of format
That wood use is so common in wine country today has everything to do with the fact that, for a long time, wood was the best way to transport wine. The ancient Greeks and Romans shipped their wine by amphora, but that was far from ideal. To protect the wine from oxidation, amphorae were smeared on the inside with waxy substances and sealed with cloths soaked in wax or coated with olive oil. This, of course, gave off flavours and remained fiddly. Also, the earthenware amphorae were rather fragile and difficult to transport standing up. Far from ideal, then. It was probably Celtic tribes who first started using wooden barrels on a large scale at the time of the Romans. Romans quickly adopted this innovation and soon the barrel proved to be a discovery of note. Not only could you transport liquor in it, but also other perishable foods, gunpowder and gold. You name it, it was transported in wooden barrels. So for the next two thousand years, the craft of cooper (the barrel maker) would be an important profession.

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