Zin barrel plan
We have 120 gallons must.
This is 72 gallons wine. (120 * 0.6)
A full barrel is 59 gallons. We will have 13 extra gallons; we will keep this in glass for topping, probably two large carboys. We can swap this in and out of the barrel over the next year.
We purchased a 59 gallon re-coopered French Oak medium toast barrel for ~$250 from ReCoop in Sebastopol, CA. They take used barrels, clean them, remove 1/4″ of the interior staves, and re-toast the barrel. The oak in this barrel will not be as strong, so we may be able to leave the wine in here until we bottle in a couple of years. If we do need to get it out of the barrel, we can buy a used 3 year old barrel when we need it.
I heard an interesting rule of thumb today: How long can you leave wine in a new oak barrel without it being over oaked? 1 week per gallon. So a 15 gallon barrel gets 15 weeks, and 60 gallon barrel gets over a year.