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If your idea of heaven is relaxing with a glass of oak-aged, full bodied yet mellow red, but not the price tag that comes with it, there's a new oak barrique wine bottle in town that might save you digging deeper into your pockets.
Billed by the Italian producers, Pinocchio Barrique, as "the smallest and most powerful barriques ever" we're talking about the oak barrique wine bottle they claim will "oak-age" wine and other alcoholic beverages in a minimum of 72 hours, rather than the months or indeed years that it would usually take in a barrel.
The idea is to simply decant a bottle of wine, grappa, beer or spirit, or indeed anything with at least an abv of 12% into the oak bottle and leave it to develop those complex softer beloved notes of vanilla, coffee and chocolate usually achieved from the oak-ageing process.
The theory being, the longer you leave it, the more pronounced those characteristic notes become, as the porous oak lends flavour to the alcohol within – and with the liquid-to-wood ratio much higher than in a traditional barrel, it happens much faster.
Its makers claim that in just 10 days the Pinnochio Barrique Bottle will offer the benefits of six months in an oak barrel.
The bottles come in four different styles made using FSC Europea oak, and depending on which beverage you want to age. A 70cl barrique wine bottle retails at 69 euros on their website.
The concept has also been taken to market by Joel Paglione, founder of Oak Bottle in the USA.
