Daniel Pambianchi, creator of Techniques in Home Winemaking, and author of books including Kit Winemaking: The Illustrated Beginner's Guide to Making Wine from Concentrate, Techniques in Home Winemaking: The Comprehensive Guide to Making Chateau-Style Wines, and Wine Myths, Facts & Snobberies, states he set an objective for a personal study to compare the performance of a Flextank vessel to that of a second-year barrel, both equipped with an oak adjunct.

6 months into his study, Daniel writes that the goal was to assess performance on both quantitatively by measuring and analyzing pertinent enological parameters and qualitatively by tasting and evaluating the wine.

Some exciting findings...

• The barrel-aged and Flextank wines have very similar chemistries except for some small analytical but imperceptible differences that do not all translate to sensory differences yet.
• Both wines have very similar sensory profiles with the Flextank being just a little bit smoother owning to the lower acidity (TA) resulting from the greater drop in tartrates. The Flextank sample also measured lower tannins which, coupled to lower acidity, will indeed feel smoother.
• When needing to retrieve samples from the Flextank, it is much easier to work via the access port in the top lid, i.e., at the threaded port for the green ported or solid cap.

See more about Daniel's study and 6-mo progress here.