Cheers to wood extract in wine

YOUR next glass of red wine could have been aged in a metal or even plastic container using “wood in liquid form”‚ and you might not even know the difference.

A Western Cape-based company, Oranet, has found a way to extract the “essence” of oak‚ from which wine-ageing barrels are made‚ into an ethanol-based liquid.

“The solution can treat 100 000 litres of wine with the same amount of wood that comes from a 50kg piece of wood typically used in a 250 litre barrel‚” the company’s commercial manager, Francois Malan, said.

He said the solution, called “wood in liquid form”, was developed by Woolf Katz‚ an expert in microbiology and extraction‚ and preserved the flavours and texture found in wood-barrelled wine.

The invention has seen the company earn R500 000 from the Western Cape government’s Design Innovation Seed Fund to further develop the process.

Malan said wine-makers in Stellenbosch and other areas were already using the solution for their entire ranges‚ and some of the R500 000 would be used to prove that it worked scientifically.

“Stellenbosch University will run a series of tests and trials for us to independently verify the working of our product, and to confirm it’s working comparably to barrel-ageing,” he said.

A senior wine-maker from a respected Western Cape vineyard said other forms of ageing were often used in lowerquality wines‚ but not the top-end stuff.

“There have been alternatives around for many years‚ but [they] can never fully replace a proper barrel made from oak,” he said.