Emerging Technologies for Aging Wines: Use of Chips and Micro-Oxygenation

Abstract

Abstract Oxygen and wine has been usually considered a dangerous combination. An excess of oxygen in the wine implies negative consequences for its quality, with loss or undesirable changes in the wine phenolic compounds and in its aroma and mouthfeel. However, other evidence has shown that the dissolution of very small quantities of oxygen in the wine, as occurs during oak barrel aging, improves wine quality by favoring anthocyanin-tannin condensation reactions and by limiting the formation of sulfur compounds, among other reactions. Moreover, barrel aging enriches the wine in desirable compounds that are extracted from the wood. These observations were the origin of emerging technologies such as the micro-oxygenation (MOX) of red wines or the use of oak fragments during winemaking. The MOX technique comprises the process of deliberately introducing minute, measured amounts of oxygen into wines, with the aim of bringing about desirable changes in color, aroma and texture. The apparatus comprises specialized equipment that allows a very exact dose of oxygen to be administered in the wine. The use of oak chips will enrich the wine in extractable aroma and phenolic compounds in a similar way as oak barrels do. One interesting possibility is to mimic the wine aging by the combination of MOX with oak chips. In this chapter we review the different aspects of the MOX process and the management of oak chips during vinification and the results obtained after several years of study, discuss the most important factors that should be taken into account when applying these techniques, alone or in combination, and the recent innovations that can be found in the wineries.