http://www.winesensetv.com/sign-up/ Tom Doughty, host of Wine Sense Canada, discusses the use of French and American barrels in making the perfect meritage.
Continuing with our pursuit of exploring bold bc reds we’re going to talk about different types of oak and their impact on the final product and how blending up to five different grape varietals can create a wine that’s better than the sum of its parts if you’re still wondering why bc wine
Reaches new heights welcome to mission hill so john this is quite an impressive room how many different types of barrels would you say you have in here probably about 10 different types we use barrels from france and from the united states so we get different flavor results in the wine
Which gives us increased complexity and more interest in the wine and it gets quite actually gets quite complicated when you’re starting to do the blends you’re not just dealing with the wine you’re also dealing with the different barrels and the flavor impact they have so it becomes quite
Interesting when you’re doing the final blends i understand it is a complicated process but is there an easy answer to the difference between american and french oak yes there is is a simple answer american oak tends to give the wine more of a stronger oak flavour faster it can be a
Little bit dominating on occasions and some wines it’s fantastic and we use quite a lot of american oak in in other wines it can be a little bit too dominating in a soak and doesn’t give the to give finesse and balance to the wine as much as french can
French takes longer the wines need to stay in the barrels typically longer these the wines that’s in these barrels will stay in here for 14 or 15 months so it takes longer for the wine to mature but at least in the okanagan we we get a better result overall particularly with
Our premium reds um in the in the french barrel and this is a french bell right here this is the french brown yeah can we try what’s in there we can certainly do that what have we got in here this is 2008 harvest merlot it’s uh from one of our
Premium merlot vineyards down in the soyuz right that’s right the vendor is actually right down on the border of the united states so it’s as far south as we can get here in bc and i know you make a a premium blend known as the oculus
How much of this merlot do you think would end up in the final percentage probably merlot is typically somewhere between about 50 and 55 percent of oculus in the last last couple of years it’s been around that so it’s been the major variety of oculus has been a merlin
As a winemaker would you say that blended wines will produce a better product than a single varietal typically with a red wine blends are better moolo cabernet sauvignon cabernet franc they have different characteristics different slightly different flavor different tannin structure you put them together and the sum of the parts is
Almost always more interesting a better balanced wine with more nuances and complexity and yeah i mean blends blends to me are almost always better than a single varietal well that’s a great answer and let me see what this tastes like as a single varietal i don’t know john i think you’ve done a
Pretty good job on this one alone it’s not too bad i bet i could drink this as it is but i truly look forward to seeing when it’s all put together good luck with the harvest and give me a call when that wine is blended thank you cheers cheers