This is the question we get most often, and it deserves a number rather than a sales answer. Here it is: 350 g/hL on a white, 500 g/hL on a red.
Those two values are the last line of our conversion table, the one marked "equivalent to a new barrel". 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.
Why two numbers and not one
At an equal dose, a white tastes 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, so everything that leaves the wood reaches the nose.
Hence the gap: a red needs roughly half as much again to reach the same perceived level. It is also why the two columns of the table are never read on the same line.
What "equivalent to a new barrel" 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 across its whole life, it reproduces the wood input of its first year.
In other words: if your reference is a new barrel over a twelve month maturation, the comparison holds. If your reference is a park of two or three fill barrels, the dose to aim for is much lower, and the barrel diagnostic is what will give it to you.
What the equivalence does not contain
A barrel brings two things at once: wood and oxygen. Chips bring only the wood. That is both an advantage and a trap.
The advantage is that you set the two separately: the wood dose on one side, micro-oxygenation or the racking rhythm on the other. In a barrel they arrive together and you take the second one as it comes. The trap is that replacing a barrel with chips without deciding anything about oxygen gives you an oaked but reduced wine, and you will wrongly conclude that the oak treatment failed.
The other formats, at the same level
The "equivalent to a new barrel" line exists in every format. On whites: 350 g/hL of fine chips, or 1.8 staves of 7 mm per hectoliter, or 0.7 staves of 18 mm, or 4.7 g/hL of finishing tannin. On reds: 500 g/hL, 2.5 staves of 7 mm, 1.0 stave of 18 mm, 6.7 g/hL of tannin.
The format does not change the intensity you are aiming at, it changes how long it takes to get there and how the oak settles. Count 1 month minimum for fine chips and 2 to 3 months to reach the plateau, 4 months minimum for a 7 mm stave, 7 months minimum for an 18 mm stave. These are thresholds, not averages: below them extraction is not merely incomplete, it is unbalanced.
And the economics
The IFV puts a new French oak barrel between 560 and 860 euros, that is 83 to 127 euros per hectoliter amortised over three years. Alternatives are counted in a few euros per hectoliter. We do not conclude from this that barrels should be abandoned: a barrel remains a remarkable object, and some wines deserve one. The real question is which ones actually need it, and not paying for it on the others.
Before you order
These values are a starting point. Vintage, wine structure and target profile all move the cursor, and no table knows your cellar temperature. Set your own dose on your own figures with the dosage simulator, then confirm on the bench before treating the tank.
Read next: Oak conversion table: chips, staves, tannins · Chips, staves or barrel inserts: how to choose