This month we asked Maree Hodge, our Cellar Door Supervisor, for the most  common question she gets at Cellar Door!
And that question was, “What type of oak barrels do Tahbilk use in the wine making process?”

Great question Maree!

Oak barrels are close to winemaker’s hearts.
They smell great when new and they are one of the few ways winemakers can add flavour to wine. Oak barrels are part of the wonderful tradition of winemaking, having been used since Roman times. 

We use four ‘types’ of oak barrels at Tahbilk, whereas many Australian wineries only have three. Broadly we’re using new French oak, new American oak, older French or American oak and large format old oak barrels. In general terms new French oak is elegant, demure and refined, think Juliette Binoche, whereas new American oak tends to be intense, upfront and more ‘obvious’, think Britney Spears

At Tahbilk we use mainly French oak with a little American to add some complexity.

The new oak character whether it be French or American doesn’t last forever though. In the first year of use around 75% of the new oak character is absorbed by the wine from the oak staves and the oak character is fully diminished by the third year.
That makes using oak barrels expensive, and in some highly oaked wines the oak might have cost more than the grapes.
Not at Tahbilk. We use oak sparingly. Tahbilk reds have always been fruit driven with just a little oak character.
Until Alister returned to Tahbilk as winemaker in the late 70’s no new oak was used, so Tahbilk reds were essentially un-oaked
until then.
Alister started buying some of these expensive new barrels for what were then the ‘Special Bin’ reds which later became the
‘Reserve’ and are now ‘Eric Stevens Purbrick’ (ESP).
After vintage has died down we taste all of the reds and classify the best as potential ESP wines. These wines are put into a variety of new and old French and American oak. 18 months later we evaluate all of these wines again and make our final selection for the ESP’s.
The wine which hasn’t made the cut (and this wine is still very good) is then blended with the other Tahbilk reds, sitting patiently in older and large format barrels, to make the ‘standard’ Tahbilk Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz.
Our Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz therefore end up with some new oak courtesy of the ESP process, but in comparison with most ‘modern’ Australian reds our wines have little oak influence.

Our aim is to grow great fruit and to show this in the bottle!

Cheers, 
Neil - Winemaker