Drink This Now: Lesson 4: Got Wood? The Influence of oak on wine

Today I participated in a wine tasting at the Wine Lab in Blacksburg, VA. This tasting went along with Drink This Now: Lesson 4. The objective of this lesson is to see if you can identify the influence of oak barrel aging on a wine and also see if you can identify different oaks used. For this, three Chardonnays were tasted:

1. Alondra Chardonnay '18 Mendocino, California $12/52
2. Thelema Chardonnay '19 Stellenbosch, South Africa $14/56
3. Harken Chardonnay '20 California $10/40

Step 1:

First, try each glass of the chilled wine. Describe the color, smell, flavors, etc.

Alondra:

    Light yellowish gold color with a fruity nose most resembling apple. Potentially a slight woody flavor but not sure if that is due to my expectations that 2/3 of the wines were barrel aged. The flavor of this wine was mainly apple.

Thelema:

    Similar to the Alondra, this wine is a light-yellow color with much more pronounced oaky and buttery aromas. This one was not nearly as fruity as the wood was the main note. On the tongue the toasted wood also pushed through.

Harken:

    Much darker more golden yellow color in this wine. Aromas of fruit and fruit cocktail as well as a light almost balsa wood. Tasted buttery with light apple and a slight woody flavor.

Step 2:

As you go back and forth from one wine to the next one a few times, be sure to cleanse your palate with a bit of bread or plain crackers, sip some water as well if you need to.

Between each wine I took a bite of a pretzel cracker and rinsed my glass out with a bit of water.

Step 3:

Let the wine sit for a few minutes, until it gets to room temperature.

Alondra:

    The fruit flavor became a little more subtle but otherwise not too much change.

Thelema:

    The woody flavor pushed through the light fruit and made the wine taste more of toasted oak.

Harken:

    Even more buttery and smooth with the wood finish.

Step 4:

Try to guess which Chardonnay is unoaked, French oak and American Oak.

To me, it was obvious that the Alondra was unoaked as the fruit flavors were way more prominent. The Thelema had a more toasted/spicy wood flavor which I guessed to be the French oak after doing some research. Similarly, the Harken seemed to be the American oak with its buttery wood finish.

It turned out that my guesses were correct.

This lesson was very interesting to me because I am a big fan of Whiskey which is aged on roasted barrels. I was assuming the toastier oak wine (Thelema) would be my favorite and I do think this may have been the case.