Oak

[Thomas]

The point Bucko makes is: it is not a matter of good thing or bad thing; it is a matter of taste preference.

But then, there are the rabid purists like Roberto and yours truly. We believe there are such things as bad winemaking practices. In many cases, injudicial oak aging is one of those bad practices. When you dig deeper you often find that the wine would be nothing if it were not wood, which is why the oaking gets such a heavy hand--to mask the flabbiness and faults. But again, this is not always the case, and there are those (strange as they may appear to be) who do like all that wood.