Oaky means tasting of the wooden barrel it aged in. An oaky chardonnay, too oaky, oaky vanilla notes.
The barrel gives vanilla, spice and a little tannin, and how much depends on how new the wood is and how heavily it was toasted. It swung from fashion to insult and part of the way back. Cheap wine gets the flavour from oak chips rather than a barrel.
1adjectiveoakyTasting of the wooden barrel it aged in.
“This white wine is rich and oaky, with a hint of vanilla.”
oaky is a quality of flavour.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂eyǵ- — oak
Proto-Germanic
*aiks — oak
Proto-West Germanic
*aik
Old English
aac
Middle English
ake
English
oak
English, today
oaky
Built from
From oak + -y. oak Middle English ake, hok, oek, ok, oke, from Old English aac, āc, ǣċ, from Proto-West Germanic aik, from Proto-Germanic aiks (“oak”), from Proto-Indo-European h₂eyǵ- (“oak”). 2 From Proto-Germanic: Scots aik, ake, yik (“oak”), frr iake, iik (“oak”), stq Eeke (“oak”), West Frisian iik (“oak”), cim aicha, oach (“oak”), Dutch eik (“oak”), German Eiche (“oak”), lb Eech (“oak”), wym aach, aeh́, ǡh́ (“oak”), Danish eg (“oak”), Faroese, Icelandic and Norwegian Nynorsk eik (“oak”), Norwegian Bokmål eik, ek (“oak”), Swedish ek (“oak”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA