There was a bottle on night one and on night two that were goners. So part of me thinks it’s common. Both wines were straight from the importer
2005 White Burgundy Vintage Assessment and Oxidation Check Dinner No 2 @ Valentino February 20, 2013
Welcome, Danielle. A great post, and I hope you will stick around. The randomness of premox is one of the most frustrating things about it. You make a great point about vintage variations and whether that is a flaw or an attribute. But still, most of us tend to prefer the style of some vintages more than others.
Danielle:
Welcome to the Board. Do I correctly recognize your name as someone who works for Becky Wasserman? (Mikulski is one of the Becky Wasserman brands.) Part of the reason I ask is because Todd and a lot of the other members are usually pretty strict that people in the business need to indicate that they are ITB in their signatures.
In any event, we had two different bottles of the 05 Mikulski Meursault Genevrieres and they both came directly out of the stock of one of Becky’s importers, Fine Vines in Chicago. The wines were also shipped in February by two-day air in some new insulated shippers made from a plant-based material and arrived noticeably cool as though they were pulled out of someone’s cellar. One bottle was served on night one and was totally oxidized. The second bottle was served on night two and it was significantly advanced, but not yet oxidized.
I had acquired the Mikulski on the recommendation of an MW friend in the UK, Greg Sherwood who works for Handford Wines that imports Mikulski in the UK. Greg expressed his opinion that Mikulski has had a low incidence of premox problems and was therefore someone whose wines should be tasted and reviewed in my annual set of tastings. I applaud Fine Vines for sending me the replacement bottle, but unfortunately it served only to confirm the first experience.
Trust me, as much as I love Meursault, I’d love to find another Meursault producer making great Meursault from MP, Genevrieres, Charmes and Porusot with low incidence of premox. Mikulski has some great vineyard holdings and his reviews from Tanzer, Meadows et al in recent years have been pretty good. I’ll try Mikulski again, but at this point I’m not prepared to leap in and buy in quantity.
Thanks for your responses to my post. I apologize for not explaining who I am in the first place. I did not realize the protocol as I’m totally new to this and don’t usually enter the wine blogger community. But as I love and admire the work and wines of François Mikulski, I felt compelled to share my positive experiences with his cellared wines.
To be clear, yes, I do work for Becky Wasserman. And I now realize that perhaps some might not trust my opinion as I am in the business. But I also should explain that I am new to the company, yet have lived in Burgundy for two and half years and have tasted at as many domaines that have welcomed me, regardless of who they may be represented by abroad. So I would also not hesitate to stand up for anyone I’ve had positive experiences with. While I appreciate the sharing of wine experiences to a wider community online, I find it sad how minority speculation can prevent the majority from trying for themselves and forming their own opinions. I simply wanted to provide another perspective, and note that perhaps the atypical 2005 vintage expression may unfortunately lead some to jump to the wrong conclusion about any given domaine in general.
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Atypical 2005 vintage expression?
Just some more spin on some of the many issues that have now shown themselves to have plagued many of the wines, premox being only the primary one…
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Danielle:
Thanks for the clarification on your status. At this point I don’t think it’s appropriate to call two consecutive bottles direct from the US importer for Mikulski “atypical.” And certainly as far as the total number of wines which were either advanced or oxidized at the three different dinners, the only thing “atypical” about the 2005 vintage is that has more advanced wines than any other vintage by a factor of 2x and that the total of either advanced or oxidized wines was 31%-- the worst year to date.
Don,
We’ve had the 2005 Carillon Bienvenues Batard twice in the last week. The first bottle while good was advanced. The second bottle was fresh as could be and showed a decade younger then the first.
Sarah:
That’s decidely mixed news because Carillon is one of the few producers who had actually increased their SO2 use as of the 2005 vintage.
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Hi Don,
FWIW, opened an 05 Bouchard Montrachet after your postings of the 05 premox testing. Thanks for your heads up regarding the direction 05 vintage is headed.
Certainly not as young as last tasted in october 2011, more of a flavour spread and noticeably more advanced, but still lovely and nowhere near fully developed.
Have had concerns about Coche 05 mersault’s rapid development (thought it fully mature about a year ago), but reading
note about the 05 Coche MP reads nearly identically to the caillerets from last August, which I thought had a long way to go.
Looking forward to hearing about 06.
Cheers,
Don Osborne
The wines are pretty tasty Don. I had them with Mikulski in NYC at La Paulee.
I am drinking most of my wines earlier than I wish except for the few in which I have tremendous confidence. Your tastings really help me organize my schedule for imbibing these wines. I appreciate it. Thank you.
A recent 05 Niellon Chassagne was going down the hill so now those are on the front line to drink. Disapointing to me since I love Niellon. One of those however with pretty big problems in these premox years. FWIW.
Don
What vintages did you taste with him? What was his take about the two consecutive bad bottles from his US distributor?
I didn’t talk with him about the bad bottles from his distributor. Until it came up here I didn’t know anything about it.
I tasted 1999/2005/2008 Meursault Genevrieres at the verticals. I really liked the 08 quite a bit.
None seemed tired or over the hill but that is one small data point in time.
Cheers.
2005 jadot BBM. Beautiful palate - premox nose. Made my note on the wiki to find my previous note from the last bottle I had. Silly me to not find this bottle earlier. Sillier to buy Jadot though.
nb: Frequent Australian bad notes re oxidation may well be a criticism of the Australian distributors (company name “red and white”) and their import / storage and handling procedures.
Anthony:
There’s nothing unique about the Australian importers when it comes to Jadot. It’s clear that premox is a global phenomenon with with Jadot’s post 1999-wines. There’s really no excuse for it as their 1995 to 1999 vintages were about as premox free as Coche or Leflaive. Despite the denials, it’s patently obvious that there was a change in the winemaking that began with the 2000 vintage.
Agree.
Greg also had issues with his Jadot’s also striaght out of France IIRC…
I once asked Jacques Ladiere about premox in his wines. He verde between denial and acting insulted. There was surprisingly very little reflection from him about it, which is surprising, as he is a very reflective (and entertaining) winemaker. A shame on many levels.
Steve
In January of 2012 my friend Bill Nanson (Burgundy Report) visited Jacques at Jadot. The visit was set up in advance with a view specifically to discuss premox. It was occassioned by some data I had put together from tasting Jadot whites from the vintages 1990 to 2006, which showed that that Jadot went from exceptionally low premox levels in the 1995, 1996 and 1999 vintages to being the worst performer of all starting with 2000. According to Bill, Messr Lardiere said that any premox problems with Jadot wines were caused by cork problems not changes in winemaking.
However, there’s some reason to doubt that – both from the data itself and from some comments made Jadot’s export director Olivier Masmondet. The following is extracted from the Jadot producer page on the Oxidized Burgundies wiki site:
NOTE FROM EDITOR (DON CORNWELL): Jadot appears to have made a distinct change in its winemaking with respect to its whites beginning in the year 2000. As indicated below in the notes on each vintage, there is a very low incidence of premox among the Jadot wines produced in 1995, 1996 and 1999. However, beginning with the 2000 vintage, Jadot has a very significant incidence of premox. This has also been borne out in our annual vintage assessment/oxidation check dinners. One of the individuals who has participated in most of those annual dinners opened a series of 2002 and 2004 Jadot whites from his cellar and found them all oxidized. So he wrote an email to Jadot complaining. He received a response from Olivier Masmondet, Jadot’s Export and Sales Director, dated December 10, 2010, stating as follows (Note the highlighted language)
"Dear Sir,
Thank you for your message. I have been informed of your comment on the Kobrand website.
It is never pleasant to get involved in such experience and I’d like to let you know that we are sorry and we feel disappointed as well.
Atypical ageing evolution has been taken extremely seriously and be assured that our winemaker is fighting it with all his weight and energy. In Burgundy, this is not our style to stand still and we are fighting this all together.
It is also true that consumer taste has changed and we want white wines to be ready right the way. Most of us want a white wine of 2 years to taste like a white wine of 10 years. We truly hope that not a single producer in Burgundy will be affected by this issue again, but as you certainly have read in the press, on certain wine blogs or web site there are many causes to the Atypical ageing evolution. We all wish here in Burgundy to find the solution to it.
This is also true that wine is not perfect science.
If you find yourself in Burgundy we will be very happy to welcome you at our winery and to taste together the new vintage.
Sincerely,
Olivier
Olivier Masmondet
Maison Louis Jadot
21 Rue Spuller
21200 Beaune
Tel: +33-3- 80-22-10-57
omasmondet@louisjadot.com"
I will note for the record that Olivier Masmondet has pointed out to me that English is his second language and he states that he did not mean to suggest in the email that Jadot has changed its wine-making style to intentionally make a faster-aging wine.
From my perspective, regardless of whether Jadot intended it to happen or not, the Jadot wines from the vintage 2000 and on are radically different than their pre-2000 vintage counterparts. Prior to 2000, Jadot’s oxidation performance would place it in Category V (producers who have no higher incidence of premox after 1994 than they did before.) But from vintage 2000 on, Jadot is a Category I producer and, in my opinion, has the single worst premox performance of any burgundy producer over that period. So buyer beware!
It was interesting that at the Chevalier “Les Demoiselles” vertical at La Paulee recently, that in the 90’s the following vintages were served : 90, 92,93,96,97,98,99. However post 2000, only these vintages were presented: 00, 06, 07,08, 09, 10. A striking absence of 01, 02, 03, 04 and 05. Wonder why? 
Less chance of being oxidized from 2007 on (since they’re only five years or less old) and 2006 likely has enough botrytis to help protect it as well, though I have tasted some oxidized 2006s.
I met Lardiere a few years ago [circa 2007-ish?], and asked him about the new silicone-coated corks versus the old parafin-coated corks, and he said that they loved the new corks because they were so much easier to push into the bottles!