Barrel Fermentation

When wine is allowed to ferment in the barrel, the flavors of the wine tend to be more integrated. It's somewhat like cooking a stew in a pressure cooker. The flavors of all the ingredients are more married. It's a lot of work to ferment in barrel. It's somewhat like cutting six sound tracks of six instruments and then blending the sound into oneas opposed to recording all the instruments in one sitting.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 1999