Who It's For: WSET and CMS candidates working on structured tasting and anyone who has been reading "notes of vanilla and toast" on the back of bottles and wants to actually understand where those come from.
Oak is one of the most important tools in the winemaker's kit and one of the most misunderstood in the drinker's vocabulary. The species of the tree, the country it grew in, the size of the barrel, the amount of toasting, and the age of the wood all leave measurable marks on a finished wine. Once you know what to look for, oak stops being a single note in your tasting book and starts being a full sentence.
This class works through the major oak choices and what each one does to a wine. French oak and its restrained spice. American oak and its coconut and dill signature. Hungarian oak and its lighter aromatic profile. Neutral versus new. Small barrels versus large. Toasting levels. We taste side by side so the differences move from theoretical to obvious, and by the end you can start naming the barrel program before you check the tech sheet.
Educator: TBD