What dose replaces a new barrel

It is the question we are asked most often, and it deserves a number, not a sales answer. Here it is: 350 g/hL of fine chips on a white, 500 g/hL on a red.

These two values are the "new barrel equivalent" row of our oak conversion table. They come from our own technical sheets, established on our own oak and tasted by our winemakers on whites and on reds. They are campaign averages, not the result of a single trial.

The same target in every format

These durations are thresholds, not averages: below them, extraction is not just incomplete, it is unbalanced. To go from a dose per hectoliter to the quantity for your tank, in liters, kilos or gallons, see our article dosing unit conversion table.

Start from your wine, not from our averages

A campaign average tells you where to start, not where to stop. The three AMEDEE Lab tools, free and with no account needed, put your own wine back at the center of the calculation.

• Drop test: one drop of liquid tannin in a 75 cl bottle corresponds to 100 g/hL of chips. The new barrel equivalent level is therefore tested with 5 drops on a red, 3 to 4 on a white, and you taste two weeks later. The tool converts the result into all five formats.
• Oak simulator: your volume, your wine, your target. It sets the dose and the duration of each format side by side for your tank.
• Barrel diagnostic: if your reference is not a new barrel but a set of used barrels, this is the tool that gives you the real point of comparison.

Why two numbers and not one

At the same dose, a white seems oakier than a red. This is not a taster's impression, it is a matrix effect: red wine contains anthocyanins and tannins that bind part of the compounds extracted from the oak and make them less perceptible. A white has no such competing structure, and everything that comes out of the wood reaches the nose.

Hence the gap: a red needs about 40% more dose to reach the same perceived level, 500 g/hL against 350. This is also why the two columns of the table are never read on the same row.

What "new barrel equivalent" means exactly

A new barrel does not give the same thing in its first year and in its fourth. It releases about 60% of its oenological capital with the first wine. Our equivalence is calibrated on that first fill, the one that marks the wine. It does not claim to replace a barrel over its whole life, it reproduces the oak contribution of its first year.

In other words: if your reference is a new barrel over a twelve-month aging, the comparison holds. If your reference is a set of barrels on their second or third wine, the dose to aim for is much lower. To bring a used barrel back up, our benchmarks in wine are 4 sticks of 22 mm for the equivalent of a one-wine barrel, and 8 sticks for the equivalent of a new barrel.

The same level, not the same speed

The format does not change the target intensity, it changes the time needed to reach it. The reason lies in the structure of oak: a bundle of hollow fibers running along the trunk. Wine enters through the fiber ends far more easily than through their sides, and this is the path that governs the speed.

A chip is a piece that is short along the grain: it exposes fiber ends on its cut faces, and the wine goes through it quickly. A stave has its fibers along its length: the ends are only exposed at its two ends, and everywhere else the wine has to cross the fibers through their sides. Half the thickness then sets the path, 3.5 mm for a 7 mm stave, 9 mm for an 18 mm stave. A barrel works like a stave: the wine only touches the inner face, along the side of the fibers, and seldom penetrates more than 6 to 8 mm. This is why the 18 mm stave is the format that comes closest to a barrel.

Slowness makes complexity

Once in the wine, the wood tannins bind to each other and to the anthocyanins, notably in the presence of oxygen, and these reactions take weeks to months. Wood that releases its compounds slowly releases them at the pace at which the wine can polymerize them: they integrate instead of piling up. Slow polymerization is quality polymerization.

To replace a new barrel, the question is therefore not only how much, but over how long. If the calendar allows it, the 18 mm stave best reproduces the oak of a barrel. If the bottling date is close, chips reach the same intensity faster, with a more direct oak character.

What the equivalence does not contain

A barrel brings two things at once: wood and oxygen. Chips and staves bring only the wood. This is both an advantage and a trap.

The advantage is that you set the two separately: the oak dose on one side, micro-oxygenation or the rhythm of rackings on the other. In a barrel, both arrive together and you put up with the second. The trap is that by replacing a barrel with oak in a tank without deciding anything about oxygen, you get an oaked but reduced wine, and you will wrongly conclude that the oaking failed.

And the economics

The IFV (French Vine and Wine Institute) puts a new barrel at 560 to 860 €, or 83 to 127 € per hectoliter amortized over three years. The alternatives are counted in a few euros per hectoliter. We do not conclude that barrels should be abandoned: they remain a remarkable object, and some wines deserve them. The real question is which wines truly need one, and not paying for it for the others.

Before you order

These values are a starting point. The vintage, the structure of the wine and the target profile move the cursor, and no table knows the temperature of your cellar. Run the trial on your own wine with the drop test, set the dose and the duration for your tank with the oak simulator, then confirm at the bench before treating the tank.

Read next: Oak conversion table: chips, staves, tannins · Dosing unit conversion table · Chips, staves or barrel inserts: how to choose