COFFEE, OAK, WINE and POLITICS

I have been meaning to write something about oak flavours for a while now but couldn't quite decide how to start. While having an early morning coffee with a friend, discussing the shock election result in Victoria, it came to me, as the unmistakeable aroma of fresh coffee filled the room.
This fresh roasted coffee aroma is a wonderful thing and even attracts those who don't drink coffee. It's gloriously evocative, seductive and lives in the memory. The connection with wine comes in the form of oak barrels, which are heated over a fire as part of the manufacturing process. This heat eventually caramelises the oak sugars and forms compounds that add coffee, mocha characters to the wine stored in the barrels. At Squitchy Lane, we don't think these characters are suitable for our wines so we ask our coopers to heat the barrels gently. This more subtle heat provides aromas and flavours in the vanilla spectrum (another most attractive substance). The more roasted flavours are likely to suit fuller-bodied wines such as Barossa or McLaren Vale Shiraz.
We use exclusively French oak, looking for more support and structure from the oak rather than overt oaky flavour, such as American oak can provide.
Most, if not all, barrels used for wine will have some degree of heat treatment. If they don't, you run the risk of raw, sappy wood characters in the finished wine. This is also the case if the oak is not seasoned properly before use.
A winemaking colleague claims that we all love the roasted, toasted flavours seen in oak (and also of course in barbequed meats) because we have an atavistic memory of our caveman days grilling woolly mammoths over open fires. He may be right because I have yet to meet a person who doesn't like these aromas and flavours. The trick in winemaking is to get the balance right and not have them dominate the fruit.
As for the politics, I will leave that for you to judge.