Abstract

The use of wood chips is a common winemaking practice that has been permitted in Europe since the early 2000s. The use of oak chips, or other wood alternative products, has not always been favorably viewed by both producers and wine consumers. Beyond possible misuse, however, wood chips are a useful tool for the optimal achievement of numerous oenological objectives, including the extraction of certain volatile odor compounds from oak wood chips as well as compounds that will improve wine quality. This chapter deals with the main oenological uses of oak wood chips, the chemical transformations that underlie this practice and the effect of their utilization on wine quality. A final aspect concerns the main compositional and sensory differences between wines aged in barrel and those aged with alternative products, as well as the discriminative analytical methods used for this purpose.

Highlights

  • In Europe, their use was opposed until the early 2000s, but in 2006, Regulation (EC) No 1507/2006 of the Commission authorized the use of pieces of oak wood in oenology, enabling European producers to compete in a rapidly evolving world market

  • As a matter of fact, Gas chromatography (GC)-MS is successfully used for the characterization and quantitative determination of volatile and semi-volatile compounds directly issued from oak wood [92, 93]

  • It is worth noting that the GC–Mass Spectrometry-based (GC-MS) technique and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) analyses have been used in several studies on wood alternatives, without direct comparison with barrel aging, investigating various technological implications: the impact of time of the addition of chips during winemaking [98, 99]; the effect of wood toasting degree and contact time with oak fragments [31, 44]; and the geographical origin of oak wood from which alternative products are issued [77, 100]

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Summary

Introduction

The use of wood shavings in wine production has been documented in France since the nineteenth century. As mentioned above, there is a cost-reduction associated with the use of oak wood chips, obtained by giving a woody touch to the wine without the need to use barrels; without proper regulation, this could lead to fraud. If such wine is offered as barrel-aged wine [4, 5], the false use of quality indications on its label represents counterfeiting, which is detrimental to consumers and legitimate producers. It is clear that, due to the need of control for both consumer protection and quality assessment, the continuous improvement of investigation methods is essential, either analytical or sensory, that allow distinguishing wines aged in barrels from those treated with chips or alternative woods

The choice of wood
Types of alternative products and applications
Technological factors driving product quality
The general composition of oak wood
Volatile compounds
Compounds derived from the degradation of polyosides
Factors affecting xylovolatiles compounds during winemaking
Tannins and micro-oxygenation
Secondary compounds found in oak wood
Sensory profile of wines refined with alternative products
Sensory differences and consumer preferences
Main analytical techniques that can be used for the discrimination and evaluation of product quality
Discrimination methods based on phenolics and color profiles
Discrimination methods based on volatile compounds
Discrimination based on spectroscopy methods
Findings
Conclusions
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