One of my students inquired about how wine came about being made in oak barrels. My immediate answer was, what else could be used, if you were in the Iron Age (800 to 900 B.C.)? By the first century B ...

Bourbon wouldn’t be bourbon without new, charred American oak barrels — that’s actually written into U.S. law, and that’s where bourbon gets its signature flavor and deep amber color. Oak barrels are ...

Say the word "winery" and many people may envision a cool, dimly lit space filled with wooden barrels - each holding 800 gallons or so - giving the liquid inside time to mellow, develop complexity and ...

Talk about oak in wine, and one might picture rows of barrels, each cask snuggled into the two below. Go on a winery tour, and you'll march past walls of barrel tops decorated with coopers' stylized ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Brian Freedman covers wine, spirits, food, and travel. This article is more than 9 years old. In May of 2015, Silver Oak, the ...

LAST AUGUST, sweet, toasty aromas reminiscent of burning leaves wafted through the air at the Northwest Wine Academy in South Seattle. While members of the Fidelitas Red Mountain wine club looked on, ...

Let’s face it: Wine language is confusing. Many of the world’s finest wines (and many more inferior ones) are aged in oak barrels, but if a wine tastes “oaky,” well, that means it tastes like a tree.

There’s something about a barrel room in a winery. On the surface, it’s just a giant room filled with a bunch of identical wooden barrels stacked in rows. That alone can be an impressive sight, but ...