Vintners reserve cabernet

[bryanc]

Ive just finished making a vintners reserve cabernet which is all ready to bottle, but before I do, wanted to age it a little longer with some extra oak...

Ive bought a 100 gram bag of oak chips (medium toast), from hopandgrape (£2.50ish) and wondered how much I would need to add to a 5 gallon kit and for how long (weeks / months ?).

I think Ive read ppl doing this before somewhere, but cant seem to find the thread... damn my drunken searching skills !

[cpfan]

Bryan:

Everybody has different tatses in oak. I know that I like less oak than others. Thought you might be interested in the following comment from the Winexpert Tech Guy (Tim V) made earlier today at another site...

Winexpert protocols have you adding the oak pre-fermentation. This results in a smoother, softer oak profile that requires less ageing time to meld into the flavour of the wine. Adding the same amount of oak to the wine post-fermentation will give a much more aggressive profile, and require longer ageing, but some folks like the punchiness it gives.

Steve

[bryanc]

Bryan:

Everybody has different tatses in oak. I know that I like less oak than others. Thought you might be interested in the following comment from the Winexpert Tech Guy (Tim V) made earlier today at another site...



Steve

hmm, so I suppose he is actually saying if I aged for a decent lenght of time I possibly wouldnt need to add extra oak... makes sense really... shame nothing makes it past 6 months in this house !

cheers for the reply