Skip to content
Winemaking.net
← All styles

Barrel-fermented white

Still whiteObserved typical

Fermented and aged in oak, usually through malolactic, usually stirred on its lees. Chardonnay's classic treatment and the source of its buttery reputation.

The numbers

Each bar drawn against all 30 styles

Alcohol

12.5-14.5%

12.5% - 14.5%

Titratable acidity

5-6.5 g/L

5 - 6.5

pH

3.2-3.6

3.2 - 3.6

Residual sugar

0-4 g/L

0 - 4

Serve at

10-13 C

Worth opening after

1 years

and it keeps improving to roughly 8 years

Sulphite at pH 3.40

32 mg/L

free SO2, for 0.8 mg/L molecular

What goes wrong

Too much new oak on too little wine. At homebrew volumes a barrel is enormously over-oaked; cubes in a carboy, tasted weekly, is the sane route.

No legal definition sets these figures. They are typical published analyses of commercial examples, compiled as a planning aid.

Make it

A recipe on this site made to this style

Every figure below is computed from the ingredients and checked against the ranges above before the page is built.