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BARRELS been available in the United States for more than a decade; they get distribution through every major international cooperage, and they work their magic in every size and shape of winery, small to large, West Coast to East. The broad European oak category probably accounts for somewhere between 10% and 15% of the oak import market. But still, European oak gets no respect: The false binary freezes it out of the discussion way too often, as though it was Quercus invisibilius. To rectify that omission, let's give European oak its 15 minutes of fame, which is about how long it will take to read this article. The complex Oak comes in several hundred species, and the sub-genus of Quer- cus (which is where we want to be in the timber taxonomy) con- tains nearly a hundred of them. Quite a number have some degree of potential as barrel material, including Oregon (Q. garryana) and Virginia (Q. virginiana) oak. The players in the usual binary tree-toss are Quercus alba, the American white oak, and two contenders from France: Quercus petraea, aka Sessile oak (apparently a reference to the fact that leaves are attached directly to stems, with no stalks), the predominant species in the Allier, Nevers and Tronçais forests; and Quercus robur, or English oak, predominant in Limousin. These two "French" species are closely related, often confused for each other, often used interchangeably in cooperages and given to spontaneous hybridization. Highlights • Hungarian and other central European oaks are widely used in the U.S. wine industry, often below the radar. • The same species of oak that populates the well-known French forests grows all over central and Eastern Europe. • European oak has improved in quality in recent years, and it remains a much less expensive alternative to French oak. I put "French" in quotes just now because, in fact, these species are distributed across most of Europe and into western Asia. And indeed, the main species in the forests of Hungary and the rest of central/Eastern Europe is good old Q. petraea, the same tree growing in higher status French forests. It would make as much sense to call this particular plant "Hungarian" oak as "French," since as Sandor "Sonny" Kallai of Zemplén Barrels notes, most of the countries in the growing region were once part of the Austro- Hungarian Empire, before Hungary had the misfortune of being on the wrong side of one war after another. Again, no news here. Mel Knox, broker for Trust Hungary barrels (in partnership with François Frères) and Kadar barrels (in partnership with Taransaud), puts it this way: "The fact that French and Hungarian oak are the same species should be known to every barrel buyer in the free world." But the right oak species and five bucks will get you a latté. Those same buyers are likely to think that forest trumps species; France's Allier is a famous forest for barrels, Hungary's Zemplén, not so much. Wines & Vines FeBRUARY 2012 35 Q uer cus