winemakers replacing oak barrels and s/s with plastic

[adama_bill]

Hi all

I thought this may be of interest:
A Melbourne company is trying to convince wine producers to replace oak maturation barrels and stainless steel ones with plastic tanks.
Winemakers need to use oxygen in the maturation of wine to soften tannins and integrate the flavours. The only way in the past winemakers have been able to do this is to put the wine into barrels where it not only picks up a bit of oak flavour but it also allows it very slow contact with very, very, very low levels of oxygen. Unfortunately there are some drawbacks with using barrels.
Plastics like almost any material have microscopic holes in them, pore sizes. Now, oak barrels of course have pore sizes because liquid goes in and out and also gases go in and out. The pore sizes in plastic are very, very fine and so they only let limited small molecules in and almost no molecules out.

[full article here: http://www.abc.net.au/ra/innovations/st" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow ... 594364.htm]

Manufacturer here: http://www.flextank.com.au/Index.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

Regards

PS: www.flextank.com.au ~ looks like they have oak 'planks' to drop into the plastic storage tanks.