Micro-oxygenation, or Mox to its mates, is a controlled, periodically continuous addition of tiny amounts of oxygen to the wine, usually red.

Forget the new world being leaders in technical winemaking innovation. Mox was devised in 1991 by Patrick Ducournau, of Domaine Mouréou in Madiran, as a way of softening the tannins of his home grape variety Tannant which has legendary tannins.

Benefits include the stabilisation of colour, the building up and softening of structure and the lessening of stinky, reductive notes. It’s now widely used across the winemaking globe, on tannic grape varieties. Mox and pinot noir are unlikely ever to be best buddies.

Since Micro-Oxygenation increases the wine’s reductive capacity, it does not reduce ageing time and is not useful for promoting the early release. After the structure is built, if the wine is sent immediately to barrels, frequent racking’s may be necessary to prevent the wine from becoming closed and hard.

My guest Clark Smith, has been working, researching, and studying the use of Micro-Oxygenation in wines since 1997.

We go through some of the myths about Micro-oxygenation and we discuss how most winemakers only use it to stabilise colour and speed up the bottling times but in truth Micro-oxygenation applied at a specific stage can help with the structure of wines tannins.


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