Journal | November 18, 2025
Barrel Conundrum
The cellar is now quiet. Fermentations are mostly complete, and all the new wine is in barrel. This year’s yields were down by almost 50%. This presents a unique problem that impacts both last year’s and next year’s wines.
It’s because of the barrels. Oak barrels are not sanitary like stainless steel tanks. They are porous, fragile, and a magnet for spoilage microbes. Our principle cellar task during the year is to make sure that barrels are properly filled, topped, and maintained. Barrels do not do well when empty. This is because they really can’t be totally empty. There is always residual wine imbedded in the wood staves. After we empty them, they are pressure cleaned, steamed, and pressure washed again. But the little bit of wine soaked into the staves can spoil, turn to vinegar or worse if barrels are left empty too long.
And herein lies our problem with this short vintage. We could have lots of empty barrels that would remain empty until we harvest the 2026 vintage. That’s too long.
There are several options to mitigate the problem.
Cycle out of all the empty barrels. But then where do we age the 2026 vintage? Buying lots of new barrels would “over oak” the wines. New barrels have an outsized impact on wine. This would overwhelm Linden’s finesse and style. We could slowly, over years, build back our barrel inventory and age more of the wines in stainless steel, but again this would impact our signature style.
Delay bottling of some of the 2024 wines. We could continue to barrel age the 2024 vintage an additional year, keeping the barrels sound. While this may be an option, we do worry that the wines could lose freshness if too long in barrel.
Attempt to maintain empty barrels until next harvest. This could be a possibility with white wine barrels, but red wine barrels tend to “go bad” if left empty too long. The residual red wine infused in the staves tends to be more susceptible to spoilage organisms (acetobacter and Brettanomyces).
So we weigh the options, taste the wines, and eventually come up with a plan.
Linden Vineyards / Learn More / Latest at Linden | Hardscrabble Journal: November 18, 2025