Talk:Oak (wine)

European "Acacia" is not true Acacia, but Black Locust (Robinia Pseudoacacia)
First of all, ATIBT (Association Technique Internationale des Bois Tropicaux) and CIRAD do not even mention true acacia as a possible type of wood for barrel fabrication in their manual (see page 72 "tonnellerie" https://www.atibt.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/ATIBT-GUIDE-FR-web.pdf ), instead they mention Iroko, Movingui, Pao rosa and a few others as African species which could possibly be considered as alternatives to traditional woods used in barrel making. Also, in French, "acacia" is erroneously but very widely used to designate robinia pseudoacacia, whose correct common name in French is "Faux Acacia" and or "Robinier". Despite the name confusion, the erroneous term is often used commercially, for example with honey harvested from Black Locust flowers, under the name "miel d'acacia",the same flowers being used in the French dessert "beignets d'acacia". Check this wine barrel maker, "Tonnellerie Rousseau, Père & Fils" http://www.tonnellerie-rousseau.fr/activites who mentions briefly the common misleading term "acacia" and later corrects it when describing the correct name of the wood "Robinier Faux Acacia". Check this wine barrel maker, Jean Thoulouse, who uses the incorrect but somehow commercially accepted term "acacia" http://www.barriques.fr/#three , see in the background the photo of the trees: black locust. The company explains that already in literature from 1861 black locust had acquired a reputation for being excellent if not the best for certain types of white wine, especially those of the Sauternes region, where some large sized black locust barrels were at least a century old. Here is a reference, from "Forêt Entreprise n 138, 2001, page 38" https://www.acacia-robinier.be/Documentation_comment_planter_foret_robinier_sylviculture_acacia/Fo%20r%20%EA%20t%20-%20e%20n%20t%20r%20e%20p%20r%20i%20s%20e%20%20n%201%203%208.pdf where they summarize various older articles from 1988, 1992 and 1996 where Robinia Pseudoacacia (Robinier Faux-Acacia in French) is mentioned as being used for making barrels for Sauternes liquorous wine. It is not mentioned in this article, but black locust wood is generally heat treated or simply steamed to get rid of the toxins if the intended use is contact with food or beverages. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.195.123.143 (talk) 03:24, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Attribution
Some of the information in the Barrel alternative section is from the merged Oak chips article. AgneCheese/Wine 05:20, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Wish list
Some items that I would like to expand on in the article (but need more sources) is a little more history on the development and use of oak as well as a criticism section on the "over oakiness" of some modern wines. AgneCheese/Wine 02:29, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

I wish this page listed the exact species of oak meant by the terms "American oak" and "French oak". Matthew cargo (talk) 04:01, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Unfounded health claim
I've deleted the following claim from the page, as I beleive it to be scientifically unsupported:

"Studies have found that there maybe some health benefit from wine that has been in contact with oak. In 2003, scientists at Institut Européen de Chimie et Biologie in Pessac, France found that when the oak tannin vescalagin interact with phenols in wine a polyphenol known as acutissimin A is created which has been shown to be 250 times more effective then the pharmaceutical drug Etoposide in stopping the growth of cancerous tumors." (ref: J. Gaffney "French Scientists Find New Anti-Cancer Substance in Red Wine" Wine Spectator Dec. 24th 2003)

While I am not a Wine Spectator member, and thus cannot read the directly referenced article, I believe it is a popular press account of the following scientific paper from scientists at the Institut Européen de Chimie et Biologie:

The authors of this paper did not study the effects of acutissimin A on "the growth of cancerous tumors". Rather, they showed that acutissimin A is formed in red wine aged in oak, and determined the chemical reaction which creates it. They the referred back to a 1992 paper by a Japanese group which compared the ability of acutissimin A to inhibit a test-tube reaction catalysed by DNA topoisomerase A, the target of the chemotherapy drug etoposide. Interestingly, while the Japanese group found that acutissimin A was 250 times more potent than etoposide in inhibiting the test-tube reaction, they also found that this did not create breaks in DNA, the mechanism by which etoposide kills cancer cells. Since neither the Japanese nor French groups seem to have studied cancer cells (let alone cancer patients), these studies give no support to the idea that this chemical found in wine is useful for either the treatment or the prevention of cancer.


 * I see your point about the researchers using data from two different studies. We can probably rewrite the section to make that distinction more clear.AgneCheese/Wine 02:02, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Proposed revision
In 2003, scientists at Institut Européen de Chimie et Biologie in Pessac, France found that when the oak tannin vescalagin interact with phenols in wine a polyphenol known as acutissimin A is created. In separate studies this polyphenol has been shown to be 250 times more effective then the pharmaceutical drug Etoposide in stopping the growth of cancerous tumors. With this revision, we remove the phrasing "health benefit" and just mention the two studies. The reliable sources mention both tidbits so it is not synthesis on our part but we are making more clear that there are at least two different studies at play. AgneCheese/Wine 02:10, 10 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm afraid that doesn't work either. As I pointed out above, there don't appear to have been any studies on the effects of acutissimin A on "cancerous tumors." The study that produced to "250 times" statistic was studying the effect of acutissimin A on a mix of enzymes and DNA in a test tube. There were no cancer cells involved.


 * Here's a direct quote from the French paper" "While it would be quite inappropriate to infer from the presence of acutissimin A in red wine that this beverage possesses antitumor properties, our work shows for the first time that wine contains polyphenolic molecules displaying both ellagitannin and flavanoid structural features." -RustavoTalk/Contribs 04:33, 10 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Ok, actually, I need to take back some of the above - there is a third paper (which the french paper didn't directly cite) in which the japanese group mixed a whole laundry list of tannin chemicals with several different cancer cell lines and found that many of them, including acutissimin A, killed one type of cancer cell (see ). The abstract I have read makes no mention of etoposide or any other established cancer drug, so it's not clear that a direct comparison was made. In any case, these studies were still done in a test tube, and it is a very long stretch to say that this chemical could prevent or cure tumors in an animal or person. -RustavoTalk/Contribs 04:52, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Thoughts on assessment
This article seems to be a fairly safe B. The one glaring need is a stronger lead summary in accordance to WP:LEAD. I suppose it could go into more details about the different sizes or barrel types used but that info is probably better suited to the aging barrel article. Other thoughts (particularly the French Project which has this rated as start) would be welcomed. AgneCheese/Wine 23:50, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

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Page move
This article is specifically about the winemaking aspects of oak because there is already a main Barrel article that would deal with the use of oak barrels to hold other liquids. As this is a winemaking topic (as evidence by the fact that there is little to no non-wine related content in the article), the wine dab seems highly relevant. I would hope the editor that did the page move would reconsider. AgneCheese/Wine 08:01, 8 November 2011 (UTC) --Jerzy•t 04:58, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Note that Oak barrel is now a redirect to this article (Oak (wine)). I think it should be a redirect to the "Beverage maturing" section in the barrel article rather than a redirect to Oak (wine). There are certainly other uses for oak barrels besides winemaking (such as whisky and brandy). —BarrelProof (talk) 11:42, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
 * If the above suggestion had been implemented, i'd assume that my Rdr from Oaking (suggested to me by the current ad campaign for "Naked Wines" (?) that are "unoaked") should likewise have gone to barrel. I hope the wisest heads prevail in this, when it is clearer which are they.

Butter notes...
There is some contradiction in this article with regards to oak imparting butter flavours to wine. One sentence seems to state that oak adds a butter note, then later on another sentence claims this is a myth.

Can we get a bit of consistency regarding this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.151.4.156 (talk) 23:47, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

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