text: Sipping a glass of glorious red wine which has been carefully aged in a hand-crafted oak barrel is my idea of heaven. But until now the only way to enjoy a tipple with that gorgeous authentic taste that can only develop through spending years in a special wooden cask has been to pay through the nose. The second I see the word ‘spicy’ on a bottle label (which suggests an oaky flavouring), I instantly know the price will be much higher. A £5 bottle has suddenly become £12 because the wine has lingered in an oak barrel before bottling. So when I read this week about a new gadget that claims to be able to ‘oak age’ wine in hours rather than years, my curiosity was seriously roused. The Oak Bottle promises to impart an authentic aged flavour — a process that can take up to two years — in just a day or two. Who wouldn’t drink to that? Scroll down for video . TV wine expert Oz Clarke puts to the test this oak bottle that claims to 'oak age' wine in hours rather than years . The product, which retails at £50, is the brainchild of 30-year-old entrepreneur Joel Paglione. Growing up on his parents’ vineyard in Canada, Joel became fascinated by the process of ageing wine. Watching his dad painstakingly filling small barrels of wine for oaking, he wondered why the wine couldn’t be stored in the same huge vats that had been used to ferment it. When Mr Paglione Snr explained that the smaller the oak barrel, the faster the oak infusion, Joel got his Eureka moment. How about a bottle made out of oak which will ‘oak age’ a single bottle in a fraction of the time? Now, after three years of experimenting, Joel has developed what he claims is the ‘smallest possible oak infusion vessel ever made.’ The idea is you decant a bottle of wine into the oak bottle, leave for up to 48 hours (depending on the strength of the oak flavour you fancy) and — hey presto! — your supermarket bottle of plonk fresh from last year’s grape harvest should suddenly taste like a posh wine from a world-class vineyard that has had years to mature and develop oaky flavours. Ageing a wine overnight is the holy grail of wine lovers. It’s like finding the elixir of eternal youth — in reverse. But can a simple gizmo really mimic such a time-honoured process? Can I turn a cheap plonk into a lovingly aged wine? I’m eager to try. When it arrives, the Oak Bottle looks like a wooden version of the thermos flask I take on picnics. It’s plain and reassuringly sturdy. For my test I choose a Bulgarian Merlot (Simply Merlot, Tesco £4.20). It’s an unpretentious, fruity wine, great for glugging, but it’s hardly stellar quality. However, as with the French wines such as Bordeaux and Burgundy, Argentinian Melbecs, Australian Shirazes and, of course, the Spanish Rioja, once you add oak to a Merlot you are entering a whole new world — and price bracket. Merlots benefit hugely from being oak aged. I’m itching to start my test. But first I have to fill the Oak Bottle with water. Oak shrinks when dried out, so the instructions warn me the Oak Bottle is inclined to leak until it is sealed using lukewarm water to swell and close up any open wood grain. Sure enough, water drips out over the next two hours — enough to saturate the kitchen towel I put underneath. Eventually, the wood ready and the drips stop. Now I can start. I pour out the water, decant my Merlot, pop the stopper on and wait. Joel suggests the whole process can take anything from 24 to 48 hours. That’s a drop in the ocean compared to the 12-to-18 month ageing process in a proper barrel. The Celts weren’t wine drinkers but apparently were the first to use oak barrels to store and transport their beer and mead. The wine-loving Romans leapt at the invention — they were sick of their ceramic jugs crashing and breaking on long sea voyages. The Oak Bottle promises to impart an authentic aged flavour . They quickly discovered the wooden barrels not only added flavours to the wine but, because wood is porous, also allowed air (specifically, what we know as oxygen) to permeate the contents slowly, removing harsh flavours. In fact, that’s the other reason we pay such a premium for barrel-aged wines — the oxygen changes the molecules in the wine, sweetens the acids, softens the bitter bits and lets the tannins (or sediment) drop to the bottom, giving it a gorgeous rich mellowness. Great European winemakers have been using the same technique ever since. It’s still all done by hand. Barrels, which hold up to 300 bottles of wine, can cost well over £1,000, with the price determined by the quality of the oak that’s been used and the skill of the cooper making them. While the overwhelming aroma you get from oak is vanilla, if the wood is toasted a bit over a fire, you also get nutty flavours of hazelnuts and almonds. Toast even longer and you add chocolatey flavours and, later, coffee and burnt toast. The skill of the winemaker is deciding just how much flavour he wants in his barrel. All these flavours infuse the wine. And it takes months. Can the Oak Bottle — which apparently has a ‘medium toast’ flavour — do the same in just one day? And, just as important — can it turn a young fruity wine into a vintage quaff? If it can, I’ll be the first to splash out £50. The length of time you leave your wine in the Oak Bottle depends how oaky you like it — but it’s advisable to sample the contents regularly. Therefore, 14 hours into the experiment, I decide to see how the magic is working. Pulling out the stopper, sadly, has none of the heady satisfaction of uncorking a bottle. But I’m prepared to overlook the disappointment if the taste is right. As I take my first sniff, I immediately get a delicious aroma of vanilla. My spirits rise, but after the first sip they crash. It’s wine — with a hint of furniture polish. Even though the wine has been in the Oak Bottle for less than 24 hours, the taste of wood is overpowering. All the natural freshness of the fruity young Merlot has disappeared. I feel like I’m licking a plank of wood. Oz Clarke said the Oak Bottle is a fun product that would certainly make an interesting gift for a wine buff . In a traditionally oak-aged wine, the woody flavours would integrate over many months to give a rich, mellow taste. But this has been forced. This might be remedied by leaving the wine in the bottle for less time. In fact, the Oak Bottle’s developers say you can taste the wine every hour until you reach a level of oakiness appropriate for that particular bottle. I also think the Oak Bottle might actually improve the more times you use it. With each use, I imagine the strong oak flavour will fade. This is because alcohol, which is solvent, dissolves the flavours from inside the bottle. The Oak Bottle is the result of three years of experiments . For example, in winemaking a producer might empty his oak barrel after 18 months. At this point some 80 per cent of the flavours created by the barrel will have disappeared. Reuse the barrel, and there should be only 20 per cent of the oak-lined flavour left. By the third time you use the barrel, you might only have 5 per cent of the original flavour. I suspect it will be the same with the Oak Bottle, so those overpowering notes of beeswax furniture polish would mellow. The Oak Bottle is a fun product, and would certainly make an interesting gift for a wine buff. But there is another trick you can use to improve wine. Simply open your bottle of wine, pour half a glass, screw the top back on (or put in a stopper) and give the bottle a good shake. This forces oxygen into the wine, loosening the flavours and making it more drinkable. Leave for five minutes before you enjoy. Perfect — and it won’t cost you a penny.
target: The Oak Bottle claims to 'oak age' wine in hours rather than years .
  The product retails at £50 and promises to impart authentic aged flavours .
  Oz Clarke says its a fun product and would make an interesting gift .
  Visit oakbottle.com. The Pocket Wine Book by Oz Clarke is published by Pavilion Books at £9.99.