Chips, staves or barrel inserts: how to choose
Three formats of the same wood, three ways of working. Here is what we observe, and what we are still looking into.
We get the question almost every week, usually phrased as a ranking: which one is best? We have no answer to that, because there isn't one. Chips, staves and inserts are not three grades of the same product, they are three geometries. And geometry changes what the wood can do in your wine.
What thickness changes
A chip is a few millimetres thick. A lot of surface, very little matter: extraction is fast, often complete in two to six weeks. An 18 mm stave does the opposite. It releases slowly, and above all it behaves like the wood of a barrel, with very slow oxygen exchange through the material.
That is where the difference tasters notice actually happens. Fast extraction gives aromas that arrive one by one, clearly identifiable, sometimes a little side by side. Slow extraction gives the compounds time to blend. The word "complexity" largely covers that.
We have been measuring these differences on our own oak for years, and we are still discovering their nuances. The exact share of oxygen, of kinetics, of toasting: we can separate them in the laboratory, far less well in a 300 hL tank in October.
The four formats, as our technical sheets have them
| Chips | Staves 7 mm | Staves 18 mm | Barrel inserts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thickness | 2 to 4 mm | 7 mm | 18 mm | 22 mm |
| Packaging | 10 kg bag or net | Box of 40 (8 kg) or 100 (20 kg) | Box of 16 (8 kg) | 4 sticks (one-wine barrel) or 8 sticks (equivalent to a new barrel) |
| Contact time | 1 month minimum, 2 to 3 months to reach the plateau | 4 months minimum | 7 months minimum | the length of a barrel ageing |
| Where it is used | From harvest through maturation | Maturation in tank | Long maturation in tank | Inside the barrel itself |
These durations come from our technical sheet. They are orders of magnitude, not rules. If you have to shorten the contact, you have to raise the dose, and the result is not quite the same. The figures, in grams and units per hectoliter, are in our conversion table.
Inserts, and the question of the barrel
A barrel releases around 60 % of its oenological capital in the first year. After four or five wines the vessel is still excellent, the aromatic contribution has almost gone. An insert, in 22 mm sticks, puts fresh wood back inside at a fraction of the price of a new barrel, and it works in a vessel that already has its own gas exchange and its own microbial life.
That leaves the real question: where exactly is this particular barrel? That is why we built a tool that estimates the residual life of a barrel. You enter its age, its history and the profile you are aiming for, and it estimates what the barrel still gives and suggests how many sticks to add on top. Four sticks for the equivalent of a one-wine barrel, eight for the equivalent of a new one. These benchmarks apply to wine.
Open the barrel diagnostic tool
It is not a new barrel, and we do not pretend otherwise. It is a way to hold a profile without replacing a whole set of barrels, and to know which of yours are still working.
The question worth asking
Not "which format is best", but "what result am I after, and in how long". An adjustment before bottling does not call for the same tool as an eight-month maturation. Our profile ranges, from Primary Colors to La Recette, then serve to fine-tune the character, from fruit to roasted notes.
And if you would rather work it out on your own tank than on our averages, AMEDEE Lab is free and needs no account. It proposes, it does not decide. If a result looks wrong in your cellar, write to us: we would rather correct a figure than defend it.
Read next : Le Nuancier des Possibles : les "Couleurs Primaires" · Our decision support tools: simple, and in your pocket