Oak Barrel Schedule

I’ve been a (grape) home wine maker for 7 years. Every year, I put my wine in non-permeable stainless steel kegs and leave it there for the next 12 months. I rack it 2-3 times to clean the lees of the bottom. And then I bottle it, right before the next harvest. This is pretty standard stuff, I imagine many many others adhere to a similar protocol.

I’m looking to upgrade my winemaking, and age in an oak barrel. Of course, everybody knows, you’ll get better quality aging in oak, rather than the non-permeable steel; you get the oak flavor that gets imparted, but you also get the microoxidation, which really cannot be replicated in steel (or glass). My question: what is an appropriate schedule for oak barrel usage in the next few years?

As a home winemaker, I have restrictions that the big wineries do not. I can’t have a fleet of new and neutral barrels, shuffling wine around as the taste permits. And, I know that once you have a barrel, it’s optimal to keep it full of liquid all the time. I’ll have one 60 gallon barrel, and once the wine is in there, it’s pretty much stuck there until I have something next year to replace it.

Now (November) I think would be a bad time to put the recent harvest’s wine in a new barrel. I’ll have no new wine for 11 months (next October), and wine in a new barrel for 11 months would be waaaaay over oaked (I think???). So I think I let it sit in my stainless steel kegs for a few months, then move it to a barrel so that it won’t be over oaked by the time I’m able to replace it. But if I replace it in October 2022, can that wine be in the barrel for 12 months until the next harvest, or is 12 months in a “second run” barrel too much? Etc etc etc.

So I’m looking for some advice: Year 1 put wine in a new barrel for X months. Year 2 put wine in that barrel for Y months. Year 3 put wine in that barrel for Z months. Etc etc etc. Can somebody offer guidance here? (And yes, this is for a full sized 60 gallon wine barrel).

Thanks!