I've only used white oak chips up until now. Man did that make my weekend. These barrels were from "Stags Leap" winery. This was the first time I've seen barrels that weren't already sitting in the weather and all greyed up. Also I have a new respect for the build quality on these. I took a hammer to one of the staves thinking the whole thing would collapse after that. Wroooong. I had to hammer out quite a bit of staves, and work out the nails out of the loops, and eventually 20 minutes later it all came apart. I kept the barrel bottom together in one piece as decoration for the garage, looks kind of cool.