(Wines&Vines) - It definitely wasn’t Ali versus Frazier or even Pacquiao versus Mayweather for that matter.

Rather than a knockdown brawl, the seminar Barrels vs. Alternatives was more of a sedate conversation about the advantages of the time-tested, traditional barrel compared to the new uses of oak barrel alternatives.

Hosted by the French American Chamber of Commerce at the Napa Valley Country Club on Tuesday, the session was the third such conference about wine and winemaking organized by the group.

Jean Hoefliger, winemaker and general manager at Alpha Omega Winery, led a panel discussion by oak suppliers followed by a winemaker panel. The debate wound through various topics but always seemed to come back to the question: Can alternatives replace barrels?

‘An interesting evolution’

Sebastian Lane, the West Coast sales representative and managing partner of cooperage Tonnellerie Baron, said the top end of the wine market would need to be aged in French oak barrels. “At the top end, I think it has to be a high-quality French oak barrel,” he said.

At the other end, where wines are made quickly to be priced low and consumed young, barrel alternatives are an ideal way to add oak flavors. What’s not clear is how oak will be used in producing wines for the middle of the market. “That’s going to be an interesting evolution,” Lane said.

Cyril Derreumaux, the business development manager for winemaking supplier Laffort, said the right alternatives could make a wine of very high quality when paired with a fine wine and given time to age. “If you don’t give it the same potential, you obviously will have different results,” he said. 

Derreumaux is the former general manager of Vivelys, a winemaking consultancy and barrel alternatives supplier, who has worked with larger wineries seeking to ensure quality while reducing the number of barrels they need to maintain, store and manage. He said a barrel is an excellent vessel for aging and improving wine, it but can require significant resources. At a certain point, he said, wineries need to examine alternatives to reduce their barrel loads.

He said barrel alternatives also allow a winery to be flexible, or reactive, to trends in the retail and bulk market either by fine-tuning a wine to fit a brand or getting a wine ready for bottling sooner.

Winemaker Tom Rinaldi, who will be working his 40th vintage this year, said over the course of his career he’s witnessed the evolution of oak in winemaking. He said he first started using barrel alternatives to deal with grapes that exhibited strong vegetal flavors such as spinach and broccoli. He said the various powders and chips were like “magic bullets” for dealing with the issue.