Bourbon Barrels for Wine

Should a winemaker use an oak barrel that was previously used to make bourbon to age their wine? That's a tricky question. Perhaps the short answer is ... well, I am going to leave the short answer for later.

I am somewhat of a purist. You knew that; I didn't have to tell you. 

But, despite that, let's consider what is happening with Bourbon-barrel aged wine. And to do that, let's consider the differences. Bourbon barrels go through a heavy char. They produce a brown whiskey. And, that brown whiskey tends to have a smoky, often nutty flavor. Alcohol content is much higher with a very high alcohol, but non-fortified wine having alcohol content approaching 16% ABV, but many whiskeys having ABV in excess of 50%.

In 2020, most of the wine that you buy, while it might come from what was once a family-owned winery and it might still have ties to that family is likely produced by a huge wine and spirits company. Every one of those behemoths produces at least one line of Bourbon-barrel aged wine and most produce multiple SKUs.

These products are marketed very differently than what we might refer to as traditional wines. And, they are marketed primarily in the US. Advertising tends to feature rugged outdoorsy types in front of a raging fire as compared to more subtle and demure advertising for traditional wines. These Bourbon-barrel aged wines don't worry about ratings, they worry about machismo. 

It's selling. In the last 5 years, sales in this product line have increased roughly 30-fold. That neither makes it wine nor fails to, but it does show a trend.

The wine companies producing these wines have been very careful about how they brand these products. They refuse to "taint" the labels reserved for higher end consumers. So, for example, Constellation Brands has limited their Bourbon-barrel aged wines to their Robert Mondavi Private Selection (when you see the worls Private Selection on a wine bottle, prepare for the swill) and their Cooper and Thief brand which has only spirits-barreled SKUs. You don't see them tainting the Schrader name, for example, with Bourbon-barrel aged wines.

I said tainted. Does that mean that Bourbon-barrel aged wines are tainted? It means they are different. And the smart Marketing people know that the high-end names need to be kept pure. The consumers of wines that consistenly dot critics' lists with massive ratings want their wines pure. So, if those brands start producing Bourbon-barrel aged wine, will they wonder what it is that they are drinking when they open their $100 or $200 or $500 bottle? 

To date, I have knowingly tasted one Bourbon-barrel aged wine. A taste was poured for me. I did not know what it was. I didn't find it horrible, but I was not a fan. It tasted too much like "not wine" to me. Although I couldn't pinpoint what it was, it was too artificially smoky for me.

So, to answer the question I posed at the beginning, I suppose that these are wines, but for me they are perhaps more like wine products, but way better than the wine coolers of my youth.