Oak Flavoring

Can oak wood chips or oak wood powder be used in wine labeled “made with organic grapes”?

By Whitney Frobe

Some wine producers use oak wood chips or powders to enhance the flavor of their wines, offsetting the rising costs of oak barrels, which are traditionally used to flavor wine during the aging process. Are oak chips allowed for use in wines labeled “made with organic grapes” or labeled as “organic”? If so, what review standards are used to determine the compliance of oak chips and powders?

Wines that are labeled as “made with organic grapes” are, in fact, allowed to use agricultural ingredients such as oak wood chips and/or oak wood powder, with some caveats. The wine must contain a minimum of 70% organically produced ingredients that are produced and handled pursuant to requirements in §205.301(c). All ingredients must be produced without the use of excluded methods (genetic engineering), ionizing radiation, or sewage sludge, as described at §205.301(f)(1),(2), and (3).

There is also a second way to consider oak chips. What is their function within the wine? The chips are acting as a flavor. Nonsynthetic flavors, under §205.605(a)(12), are allowed when organic flavors are not commercially available. These flavors must be derived from organic or nonsynthetic sources, and must not be produced with synthetic solvents and carrier systems.

Do oak chips qualify for use as a nonsynthetic flavor? Within The National Organic Program Handbook, Policy Memo 11-1 states that as long as an ingredient meets the FDA’s definition of a natural flavor and otherwise meets the annotation at §205.605(a)(12), it can be used in organic production. Oak chips do meet the FDA’s definition, and are found within 21 CFR §172.510, Natural flavoring substances and natural substances used in conjunction with flavors.

Wines labeled as “organic” could include the use of such nonsynthetic flavor ingredients. Section 205.301(b) states that the wine must contain no less than 95% organically produced raw or processed agricultural products. The remaining ingredients that make up the wine must be nonagricultural substances found at §205.605, or nonorganically produced agricultural products at §205.606 (subject to commercial availability restrictions).

This article was originally published in the fall 2020 edition of the OMRI Materials Review Newsletter, and was revised in September 2025 by Bilingual Technical Research Analyst Jacky Castañeda.