micro-oxygenation
From The Oxford Companion to Spirits & Cocktails
refers to a technique used in wine production on a large scale since the 1990s and sometimes for spirits in different ways since the end of the nineteenth century. For the present technique, minute amounts of oxygen are percolated through wine or spirits via a tube immersed in the liquid. The oxygen softens and integrates tannins without oxidizing flavors or aromas. So far, when it comes to spirits, the technique has been mostly employed by some of the more experimentally inclined micro-distilleries.It should be noted that wooden barrels, because of their porosity, allow this natural interaction between oxygen and the spirit contained in the barrel during routine aging, and that the gradual and progressive addition of water that is performed while reducing cask-strength spirits to bottling strength assists the oxygenation process. See élevage; maturation;, speed-aging.
Anjos, Ofélia, Ilda Caldeira, Rita Roque, Soraia I. Pedro, Sílvia Lourenço, and Sara Canas. “Screening of Different Ageing Technologies of Wine Spirit.” Processes 8, no. 6 (2020): 736.
By: Alexandre Gabriel
This definition is from The Oxford Companion to Spirits & Cocktails, edited by David Wondrich (Editor-in-Chief) and Noah Rothbaum (Associate Editor).