Winemakers often pose the question why they should use our toasted Oak Beans rather than cheaper chip products for oak aging of their wines. The answer can be summed up into one word, quality. Our toasted Oak Beans will impart traditional fire toasted characters with enhanced extraction rates for quality wines while still maintaining economic feasibility.

Traditional fire toasted oak flavors and aromas are key elements of superior wines. We craft our toasted oak beans with the exact same process and detail to attention that we do with all our stave products. This includes three year seasoning, fire toasting by hand, stringent quality control, superior packaging, and excellent customer service. We custom craft each bag of our toasted Oak Beans, not utilizing scrap wood or byproducts as the raw materials. This ensures authenticity and choice of quality toasted Oak Beans in each of our wood origins (French, American, and Hungarian), and toast levels (medium, medium +, and heavy).

Surface area is a key factor in determining the extraction rate of toasted oak and the resultant quality that the oak imparts to the wine. Generally speaking, smaller surface area per unit volume decreases the rate of oak extraction and increases wine quality. This is best exemplified by the fact that barrels (small surface area) have not been replaced by oak powder (large surface area) as the preferred method for oak aging of wine. Our toasted Oak Beans have a much smaller surface area per unit volume than oak chips ensuring a slower extraction with less raw, resinous, green oak character and better resultant wine quality.

The quick extraction of oak chips renders them ineffective much faster than our toasted Oak Beans. Our beans have a useful lifespan of at least 1 year, allowing them to be used for multiple wines. When considering the economics it is valuable to evaluate the quality and potential of toasted oak products as these will be reflected in your wines.