Making oak additions

Whatever floats your boat. ;^)

It's too late for this batch, but in future I recommend that you add oak to the fermenter, right from the beginning. The fermentation tends to fine the harsh tannins in situ, and the result is oak character that is much better integrated with the fruit. That's one of the reasons that barrel fermentaions are so desirable for oak aged white wines.

For this years batch, I'd suggest that you pull out a gallon or so, add a weighed eyeballometric amount of oak to it, let it sit for a couple or three months and taste it. If that's about right, treat the rest of the batch in the same proportion and duration. If it's overoaked, breastrate it with some of the unoaked wine until it tastes right and calculate from the added volume of wine what the correct oak addition for the remainder of the wine should be. Simple, no?

Basically, it works analogously to conducting fining trials. Run a test on a small portion of the batch and then scale things up to treat the entire batch. Be sure to check your numbers though. Better still, especially if your math skills aren't so hot, get someone else to check your calculations.

Tom S