Found Collection

I'm starting a kit this weekend that comes with two 30 gm bags
of oak. If I decide to age on the lees am I going to end up letting
the wine take up too much flavour from the oak?  I guess the
question is really, does the wine pretty much leach out all of the
flavour in a couple of days and thus aging on the lees won't make
any difference in the final amount of oak?

Don

Wine penetrates the first millimeter of oak in a few days, but several
months are required to penetrate five or six millimeters.  Consequently, oak
extraction time pretty much depends on the size of the chips.  For very fine
chips...."Extraction is quite fast and takes only a few hours to reach
equilibrium."  See  "Concepts in Wine Chemistry" by Yair Margalait, page
235.

I often age wine on the lees and aalso use wood chips.  I do taste the wine
occasionally to keep track of things.  You can rack both the wine and most
of the lees off  the chips if necessary.

Good luck,
lum

Incidently, I sent an email to BrewKing and they said the kit (Valpolicella)
was suppose to have two 30 gm bags of chips. Their supplier delivers it in
30 gm batches. Makes sense for a kit manufacturer who might have lightly
oaked and heavier oaked kits. A packing list would be a good idea though.

Don