Aging fruit wines in oak
Hi all! I'm on my fifth batch of homemade fruit wine (this one is apricot, cardamom, and marjoram) and I'm starting to speculate about ways to take my wine further or just experiment with new things. I poked around a bit on the internet and it looks like there are a couple of people selling new, toasted, 1-gallon oak barrels (I mostly do 1 gallon batches, I just don't drink that much wine) for a price I'm willing to consider - but it's a bit pricey for an experiment, so I wanted to ask the community for opinions.
I mainly want to know if there's anything undesirable about aging in oak that I might want to consider, and how long it would take to see noticeable results. Also if you have opinions about using the barrel for more than one batch of wine (aging for X time, bottling, then reusing the barrel for a new batch). Obviously not doing any actually fermenting in the barrel.
Thank you in advance! (image of the apricot mash for eyeballs)
