Storing Port in Oak Barrels

[David Coleman]

I'm thinking of purchasing a 10 or 20 liter American Oak Barrel to store my Tawny Port in. The barrel will be medium charred or toasted on the inside. My wife and I drink about 6+ ounces of port every night. I plan on topping off the barrel when it get's about half empty. Do I need to be concerned about the port "going bad" or diminishing in quality/taste?

Any advice on this subject is appreciated.

David

[Derek T.]

David,

I think you should try to find a used cask rather than using a new one. New oak will significantly change the flavour of your port. Whether that is better or worse for your taste I cannot say but what I can tell you is that port producers do not use new oak for making port

Good luck!

Derek

[Moses Botbol]

David,

I think you should try to find a used cask rather than using a new one. New oak will significantly change the flavour of your port.

I agree. I think the oak will be a negative.

[Derek T.]

David,

Can you please tell us which tawny port you plan to put in the cask? Will it be a mixture of styles/brands/ages or just one specific port?

Having given this some thought there are a few things that spring to mind that you might want to consider:

1. If you plan to use the cask to hold the equivalent of 1 or 2 cases of good quality tawny port (say, 10 or 20 yr), then I think the end result will be that you will end up with a wine that is inferior to what it was when it entered the barrel. These high quality tawnies are blended for immediate drinking and have been stabilized and filtered, so there "ageing" potential is limited, if not zero. They can really only go down-hill if you put them back in wood for a prolonged period. However, with inferior tawnies, which will also have been filtered and stabilized, you might find that the extra oxidation and wood contact takes some of the rough edges away.

2. If what you are looking to do is create some sort of Port Solera, I think you should consider starting with an unfiltered ruby port instead of a tawny. You could pour the newly bottled (2 to 3 year old) unfiltered ruby and its sediment into your cask and then let it age for a couple of years to turn into a tawny. You could then drink a quarter or half the cask slowly over a period of time and then refresh it with more young unfiltered ruby to keep the process going. This might give you a better quality wine to drink as it will be alive and evolving, unlike the stabilized tawny option.

Whatever you decide to do, it sounds like an interesting experiment

Derek

[Andy Velebil]

As others mentioned, I would find a well used cask that way the oak doesn't impart flavors to the Port.

The problem I see is that you'll need to "rack" the barrel from time to time. Port, even if filtered, will still drop some deposits over time and that is something you'll want to clean out. Otherwise you'll end up with a serious case of a foul tasting Port. You'll also need to make sure you stick to one brand or you may end up with an interesting concoction that you may not like, then you'll be forced to dump it out.

Do I need to be concerned about the port "going bad" or diminishing in quality/taste?

As to your question.....If my math is correct, for a 20 liter barrel, drinking 6 ounces a night, it would take you about 112 days to drink the entire barrel. So a few months at a time being exposed to air won't make it the freshest Port by the end. After several months exposed to air it may not be the tastest thing anymore. My issue is that you can't buy Port in bulk so is there really an incentive to buying a ton of bottles to dump into a cask where they'll be exposed to a lot of air and lose the freshness they have.

My suggestion would be to rig the inside of the cask so it has some type of collapsable air tight bag inside that will keep the Port fresh (like box wines do). That way you get the outward appearance of a functioning cask without the headaches associtated with cleaning the inside, air affecting the port, and the wood imparting some off flavors you don't want.

[Moses Botbol]

Following the Andy & Derek's train of thought, I would fill up the barrel and do it like a solera. I would empty and fill the same amount so the air gap is always the same. For instance, I would draw a bottle at a time and fill a bottle at a time.

[David Coleman]

David,

Can you please tell us which tawny port you plan to put in the cask? Will it be a mixture of styles/brands/ages or just one specific port?

Having given this some thought there are a few things that spring to mind that you might want to consider:

1. If you plan to use the cask to hold the equivalent of 1 or 2 cases of good quality tawny port (say, 10 or 20 yr), then I think the end result will be that you will end up with a wine that is inferior to what it was when it entered the barrel. These high quality tawnies are blended for immediate drinking and have been stabilized and filtered, so there "ageing" potential is limited, if not zero. They can really only go down-hill if you put them back in wood for a prolonged period. However, with inferior tawnies, which will also have been filtered and stabilized, you might find that the extra oxidation and wood contact takes some of the rough edges away.

2. If what you are looking to do is create some sort of Port Solera, I think you should consider starting with an unfiltered ruby port instead of a tawny. You could pour the newly bottled (2 to 3 year old) unfiltered ruby and its sediment into your cask and then let it age for a couple of years to turn into a tawny. You could then drink a quarter or half the cask slowly over a period of time and then refresh it with more young unfiltered ruby to keep the process going. This might give you a better quality wine to drink as it will be alive and evolving, unlike the stabilized tawny option.

Whatever you decide to do, it sounds like an interesting experiment

Derek

I plan on storing only Penfolds Club Port in the barrel. Being new to this I thought that the port would continue to age in the barrel, looks like I was wrong. The Solera is an idea ( I googled Solera), just not sure if I want to go that route right now. I guess I'll see how the Penfolds Club behaves in the barrel first, then take it from there.

Thanks for the info,
David

[David Coleman]

As others mentioned, I would find a well used cask that way the oak doesn't impart flavors to the Port.

The problem I see is that you'll need to "rack" the barrel from time to time. Port, even if filtered, will still drop some deposits over time and that is something you'll want to clean out. Otherwise you'll end up with a serious case of a foul tasting Port. You'll also need to make sure you stick to one brand or you may end up with an interesting concoction that you may not like, then you'll be forced to dump it out.

Do I need to be concerned about the port "going bad" or diminishing in quality/taste?

As to your question.....If my math is correct, for a 20 liter barrel, drinking 6 ounces a night, it would take you about 112 days to drink the entire barrel. So a few months at a time being exposed to air won't make it the freshest Port by the end. After several months exposed to air it may not be the tastest thing anymore. My issue is that you can't buy Port in bulk so is there really an incentive to buying a ton of bottles to dump into a cask where they'll be exposed to a lot of air and lose the freshness they have.

My suggestion would be to rig the inside of the cask so it has some type of collapsable air tight bag inside that will keep the Port fresh (like box wines do). That way you get the outward appearance of a functioning cask without the headaches associtated with cleaning the inside, air affecting the port, and the wood imparting some off flavors you don't want.

112 days......... Looks like I'll just have to drink it quicker.

When I was looking online for barrels I saw one of the casks with collapsable air bags inside advertised on one of the websites but that was before I had the other useful info the folks here in the forum have provided so I just passed over the info. If the oak barrel idea does turn out to be a bad idea (which it sounds like) then I"ll probably look into the collapsable air bag style of container. I'm still interested in a container that functional and ornamental for storing port.

Thanks for the info,
David

[Eric Menchen]

New oak will significantly change the flavour of your port.

And a 10 or 20 liter barrel has an incredible amount of surface area relative to the contents, so you get a lot of flavor quickly. I haven't aged Port in a barrel, but I've aged beers in a variety (size, although most in the 50-60 gallon range; and previous contents, fresh, whiskey, sherry, merlot) of barrels now. If you really want a barrel for presentation, I think you can buy some of the small barrels with a pitch coating on the inside.

[Eric Ifune]

If the barrel has an inert lining such as plastic or pitch, I doubt the Port will age. It would be like a big bottle.

[Roy Hersh]

When I visited Portugal for the first time in 1994, I purchased a small oak Port "Balseiros" miniaturized to hold approximately five bottles of Port. I initially seasoned it by leaving Bin 27 in it for well over a year, but the good news is that it pretty much zapped the oak influenced tannins out of the wood and it remained fairly neutral. Subsequently, once I knew it was "clean" I began pouring Graham's Six Grapes bottles to fill it up and later around 2006, some Sandeman Founder's Reserve. It has a little brass spiggot at the bottom and looks/works identically to the real McCoy. It worked really well until one of the seams sprung a tiny leak and I never figured out what I could do to stop it without using glue. Now it rests on a bookshelf in my office as a fond memory of my first trip to the motherland.

In retrospect, at the time ... it was the PERFECT size as the wine in it lasted well and remained preserved for a couple of months, by which time it was empty anyway. It is dangerous to have access to it as it was always a temptation. I lived alone at the time, but my girlfriend then was a real sucker for Port, after having spent 3 weeks with me in Lisbon, Porto/Gaia and the Douro. She liked to drain that thing anytime she could. I never stopped her.