Pinot Country

practiceNeutral oak

also: Old barrels · Used barriques

Wine cave containing aging oak barrels of wine in the French region of Burgundy
Wine cave containing aging oak barrels of wine in the French region of Burgundy — Philip Larson, CC BY-SA 2.0

A barrel that has already given up its flavour — third use, fourth, older. It still lets oxygen through the staves and still shapes texture; it just stops tasting of the forest.

How it is done Cited

New oak gives vanillin, toast and tannin, and pinot noir has little weight to hide any of it. Cellars set a percentage of new wood per wine and often drop it for the lighter vineyards.

Facts

kindageing
regionBurgundy, The world
confidencemedium · updated 2026-09-16

Its kin

practiceMalolactic fermentationWhat happens inside these barrels, over winter.and of this page it says: Where it usually happens: in barrel, over a cold winter.cellarHanzell VineyardsWhich imported French barrels to California and started the argument there.and of this page it says: The barrel question he answered by importing the barrels.

Who points back

word · says of this pageBrettWhere it lives, if it lives anywhere.

Sources

Where it came from: Cited a source we name · Harvested pulled from an open dataset · Tradition what the tradition says, hedged · Inference this project's reasoning · Field somebody stood there. This record as JSON.

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