Wood

Not that we ever come to blows but, it has to be said, the two of us have different tastes in wine. Richard likes fuller wines with lots of fruit whilst I go for more of the dry, light wines. OK, he would say skinny and thin. In this case we went for it - seven brand new French Oak barrels which immediately doubled costs and, they made us pay up front! This might seem a strange decision considering neither of us likes oaky wines but when you have intensely flavoured quality grapes barrel aging definately adds complexity and softens out harsh tannins. On poor quality it just gives a taste of plank and not much else. For cheap wine, this is exactly what winemakers add plank or oak chips.
The other decision that we took was to try not to mess about with what we had - no filtering or finning, just the occsional racking off any sediment to keep it clear and that's about it. The major reason for filtering is that the wine is more stable but what you gain in stability you lose in flavour. One result of this will be that the wine in the bottle will carry on evolving interesting flavours and may throw a sediment which would put some people off but we figured that we would know most of the people it was destined for anyway.