There was a time when God was so angry with the people that he had created, and to bring in some order, he decided to somewhat wipe the slate clean and start all over again. Noah was informed of an impending flood whereupon he built an ark out of wood and managed to salvage two of every species. Once the flood was done eradicating the evil, Noah harboured the ark and thus the world got a new start. Ironically, he planted vines and went on to get drunk on his own stash, for which God reprimanded him, but that is not what this column is about today.
The concern for the day is that if God were to inform me (who else) of the next such “planet-wide cleansing”, I would be hard-pressed to find enough wood to build as much as a dinghy! The reason for this is that the winemakers of the world, sometime back in the 1980s, decided that wine made with lots of oak-ageing is the only wine that is worth ooh-aah-ing about, and since then, red wine drinkers have been contributing to deforestation as voraciously as robotic badgers with a vengeance and the wine industry is all set to acquire a carbon footprint that will make car manufacturers seem like tree-huggers.
OK, that last bit was hyperbole, but the too-much-oak bit is still largely euphemistic. On all my recent trips (France, Israel, Italy), the one trend that was hard to miss was the ridiculous amount of oak that winemakers were using to age their wines. What aggravates the problem is that all this oak is brand new, which means it imparts a lot of toasty flavours to the wine, which then subdue the fruity aspects of it.
But I'm jumping the gun here a bit, for not all oak is bad; allow me to first briefly explain its benefits . Oak is a great receptacle to store wine, and was the only one we had till cement tanks, and later, steel ones, replaced them. Oak, given its porous nature, not only stores wine but also softens it. Old oak provides this gradual mellowing effect without tainting the wine in any way, or imparting a pronounced taste. That is the best way to deploy oak: take the harsh edges off a young wine and allow its aromas to express themselves charmingly.
But then some winemakers start OD-ing on the oak and what you get are wines that smell of smoke, toast, cigar box, tobacco leaves, tar, dry spices, leather, polish, and more on those lines (the French term for all such notes is Torrefaction ; sadly it neither translates nor exists in English).
Nothing wrong with a wine like that — there are wine regions that have built an entire industry and a formidable international reputation based on just these “nuances”, and no, I won’t name any — except that it doesn't resemble a fruit-based product anymore; its origin stands obscured and there remains little linking it to the juicy berries that it flowed forth from. As a vineyard owner once lamented to me, more and more winemakers have stopped being winemakers and have instead become carpenters which makes their wine as solid as the the wood they are carved out of. More locally and pertinently, Indian wines are now at a stage where we have enough understanding to make sure we don't make an absolutely insipid wine. The wines may lack some character, but at least they aren't too technically flawed. It can be very tempting at this point to spike them with oak and make them sing, but this is where much prudence will be required, as also strength to not give in to this vile temptation. It may add taste instantly but will take away the notion of Terroir forever.
Oak must be seen as a tool, not an ingredient; it should be used to bring out the personality of a wine, not to give it one. A good wine doesn't need oak to be good or expensive; it just needs to be sincere.
Magandeep Singh is India's first sommelier, food, wine and travel writer and TV show host. His passions include studying languages and choking the saxophone. In his free time he works.
