Recently snagged several bottles of 2011 Lapierre Morgon and 2009 Thivin Cote de Brouilly from the local PLCB shoppe.
Over the past year or two, I’ve had several bottles of each from non-PLCB sources. Both are favorite Bojos with the 09 Thivin amongst my top picks for the vintage.
The dulling of the aromatics and fruit is pronounced in both wines. Not just one PLCB bottle, but multiples of each. The Lapierre has a reputation for being short on sulfur…which doesn’t seem to be much of a problem for the non-PLCB bottles. These wines have been heated…not enough to render them overtly flawed, but enough to steal away the flowers, softer minerals, subtle aromatics and fruit complexity. There’s still fruit but it’s much jammier. The freshness is squelched and for the most part, gone for good. None of the bottles are visibly damaged or show any signs of heat stress. The acidity seems a bit less, very subjectively. It’s the difference between opening a bottle and exclaiming “Yeah Baby!” or “This will do, but I’m not sure I’d buy more.”.
Similar experience with the 07 Taupenot-Merme MSD village about a year ago. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any non-PLCB bottles for comparison.
Absolutely nothing new, Caveat Emptor when buying from the PLCB…no matter how much of a bargain.
No. I probably should, but I’m down to a couple of each. What would I exchange them for? They’re drinkable and not every house guest is a connoisseur (i.e.: my visting sister, who is plenty happy with Yellow Tail, which we don’t happen to have).
This happens in some though not all French wines from the PLCB. Woe be to anyone who purchased the large amount of 96 Lynch Bages at the PLCB, especially the Waterworks store. It is all cooked. There are plenty of other examples, but that is the most notable one in my mind.
Brian, all the 2011 Lapierre Morgon (PLCB and non-PLCB) bottles have been “S”.
There’s simply no way to tell in advance if the wines have been cooked: no corks bulging, no leakage, no staining, no obvious indicators. If served these at a PA restaurant, it’d be hard to justify the shortcomings to a Somm. If I were the Somm and only knew the PLCB wines, I’d insist the bottles were sound!
Not to defend the PLCB, but they do have a pretty good return policy that I would not hesitate to take advantage of. So long as it is within 90 days, they’ll pretty much take anything no questions asked. Doesn’t help cellared bottles of course but anything purchased this summer should work.
PLCB certainly has its issues. It’s nice to be able to return bottles for pretty much any reason. They used to honor receipts for years. It irritated a lot of importers/distributors having bottle costs deducted (due to returns) 5 or even 10+ years after the wines were originally sold to PLCB.
Under Jonathan Newman there seemed to be a push to treat wines better: improved handling, refrigeration, etc. Some of that surely pre-dated his involvement. Despite the efforts, the system is still broken. With fine wines, the results of mistreatment can be hard to notice without obvious visual clues. It’s not always so easy even when you’re tasting the wines, unless you have correct bottles to contrast.
There’s a story of a savvy employee at a Philly fine wine shop who was trying to elevate the game. He made sure to keep the store temps below70F, including the storage areas. The problem was that when he wasn’t working, the other employees would raise the thermostat (during the winter) to 75 - 80F+, to keep the store warm because the customers kept letting the chilly air in. He eventually quit in disgust.
Several times I’ve been to the “back” of specialty stores during summer weather…usually looking for specific bottles that would normally be in the cold room. These storage areas are often hot enough to induce sweating.
PLCB sells some very fine wines that I’d like to own. Despite the periodic blow out prices, can you reliably trust the provenance? They don’t cook everything…but how do you know what is or isn’t?
I had an experience where I was looking for a particular bottle that the store was shown as having on the website. I couldn’t find it so I asked a store employee. They said it should be in the “cold room” - this was at a store with perhaps the largest cold room I’ve seen, but I had looked there and couldn’t find it. They eventually found it in the back storage area. When the employee handed me the bottle, I noted that it was most certainly not cold. It wasn’t hot, but room temperature. So what’s the point of having a cold room if the wines aren’t stored cold before they get in there???
Then of course there was the time they got caught storing wines in non-air conditioned trailers in the middle of summer.
I wonder if there are any positive stories of heroic employees saving wine from the heat? I am starting to meet some wine specialists via my blog, so I will have to start asking, though it’ll probably have to be off the record.