But it's important to avoid confusing jargon with knowledge. If you want to drink great wine and avoid spending ridiculous sums of money, you need to brush up a bit. The more you can identify and remember certain common characteristics of wines you like, the more you'll be able to stride into the wine shop, dig your hand into the bargain bin, and pick out a gem. Getting smart on wine-speak does not turn you into a snob, it just makes you a money-saver.
Let's look at one commonly misunderstood piece of wine-speak: oak. One of the principal sources of confusion, and the occasional s ----- , is the bevy of terminology wine geeks use to describe the liquid in their glass: oaky, woody, cigar box, old books, leather, coffee, tobacco. Are we talking about a wine or Bill Cosby's living room?
In this instance, the anoraks are onto something. The smells and flavors of comic geniuses are indeed present in many fine wines. But what's the source of the baffling array of adjectives? A great number of the tasting notes you’ll hear people prattling on about originate from the magical influence of oak barrels. They're very expensive, and they’re difficult to store, but they can play a major role in producing heavenly wines. So why do winemakers use them?
According to Mike Vihuela, winemaker and owner at Vihuela Winery in Paso Robles, California, oak is used in the winery for three primary reasons: to age the wine; to mitigate flaws in the wine; and to increase the wine’s complexity.
For the aging part, oak barrels are useful firstly from a storage point of view, and as a vessel to allow the wine to settle down. Winemakers will age a wine in oak barrels for anything from a few months to more than two years. This aging process also has a handy way of improving the aroma and taste of the wine. As Vihuela says, "Wines have all sorts of flavors and nuances that can be elevated and integrated by the use of oak."
