**6. Conclusions**

In modern winemaking, oak products alternative to barrels are useful and flexible tools for wineries, enabling them to meet the needs of an increasingly wide and varied market. The compounds from oak wood impart a typical aromatic profile to wine and contribute to the increased polyphenolic patrimony of the final wine. Recently, the use of wood fragments has expanded, and new formats of alternative products have been added to those already known, significantly improving wine quality and dramatically increasing the opportunities of choice. Major advantages associated with the use of these products concern the reduction of both costs and production times. Furthermore, it enables the possibility of obtaining standardized wines whose compositional and sensory characteristics are very close to those defined in the phase of product design; in addition, the reduction of microbiological risks associated with the use of barrels is not negligible. Among the factors that most influence the sensory quality of the final wine, the dose of oak chips, the level of toasting and the moment of application must be considered. The different geographical and botanical origin of the chips seems to secondarily affect the result.

From a sensory point of view, it is not easy to distinguish products obtained by aging with chips from those obtained traditionally. Considering the consumer preference between oak chips and barrel wines, the variability among tasters is very high depending on the age and experience (e.g., young tasters and experienced tasters) and winemakers could take in consideration the specific preferences of different consumer groups. The distinction of the two different products is therefore mainly possible through laboratory investigation techniques: analytical methods allow expanding the compositional differences between the two products both for commercial purposes, but also for the control of fraudulent activities if necessary. Among the analytical techniques used, the spectroscopic ones are certainly those that, combined with multivariate statistics techniques, allow to obtain the best results in this field.

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**Author details**

and Federica Bonello

provided the original work is properly cited.

Maurizio Petrozziello\*, Tiziana Nardi, Andriani Asproudi, Maria Carla Cravero

© 2020 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,

CREA Research Centre for Viticulture and Enology, Conegliano, Italy

\*Address all correspondence to: maurizio.petrozziello@crea.gov.it

*Chemistry and Technology of Wine Aging with Oak Chips*

The possibility of refining wines with chips, staves or other alternative products, does not therefore oppose the use of barrels, but represents an additional option and a further opportunity for winemakers to obtain high-quality products. The two types of wines can today coexist in the wine global market, appreciated by different

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.93529*

segments of consumers.
