Alt Nautral wine with a dope label 2015 Hirotake Ooka Cornas (France, Rhône, Northern Rhône, Cornas)

Was recommended this wine by a retailer. Asked around, apparently Domaine de la Grande Colline (Hirotake Ooka) is a well known name in the alt-natural world. He shuns all methods of vine treatments and no additions in the wine. I think 2015 is only his second bottling of his estate wine, a vineyard he planted in 2008 in a steep hill of Cornas and released in 2011 and 2015 (destroyed a couple of times in the middle due to no vine treatment).

He also worked with Thierry Allemand in the early 2000’s after working at Guigal as the Chief of Vineyard management for Hermitage and st Joseph vines for Grippat/vallouit.

So I was anxious to pop a bottle. It settled for about a week and we ripped it open.

  • 2015 Hirotake Ooka Cornas - France, Rhône, Northern Rhône, Cornas (8/22/2017)
    Massive concentrated wine on the pop and pour. Incredibly fragrant and powerful on the nose. Your mouth is absolutely coated with clean purple syrah fruit and piercing acidity. Floored by how much intensity and mouthfeel he gets from such young vines.

After a couple hours of air it took a really weird turn. It became spritzy. In that co2 all natural wine kind of flawed way. I don’t think i’ve experienced one of these style of wines to turn like this after a couple of hours open. Wine had a TON of potential when we first opened it so I’m hoping it’s a one off.

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all his wines end the same for me, goût de souris. strong pass.

That’s what I’ve heard. Still curious where the other two go, maybe the same way… just never experienced a bottle get spritzy after air.

So he’s one of these guys who shuns SO2 and believes CO2 is a preservative?

I guess drink it in the first half hour!

From Charlie’s notes, it sounds like the CO2 was created after opening. If it were in the wine all along, you’d experience the spritz immediately upon opening. Freaky!

At the risk of some thread drift, I was told by one of the cognoscenti at Prieuré Roch that that domaine subscribes to the view that the CO2 protects its wines without the need for sulfur. The wines taste good young, but I’d say the jury is out on ageability. And not just at Prieuré Roch. I’m skeptical.

There seem to be some residual sugar and some lees left in the wine … usually that leads to 2nd fermentation in the bottle with warm shipping - but maybe in your case it might have happened mainly after opening (although I doubt that it happens that fast) …

I once had a Cotes-du-Rhone with 2nd fermentation and cO2 … the wine-maker told me to leave the bottles stand-up for several months at 20°C … and decant after opening for some hours … it worked quite well but not 100% …

FWIW …

Dissolved CO2 coming out of solution? I’d have thought a good Fourrier shake might help and that the incidence of this should diminish with bottle age anyway.

I don’t see any controversy or real question about elevated CO2 and reductive winemaking allowing winemakers to reduce SO2 additions.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you are making 2 reasonable assumptions that may not hold, for example, in certain portions of the natural wine camp: (1) reductive winemaking; (2) reduction (versus elimination) of SO2 additions. If the aim is long term chemical stability along a well proven path, people are taking some chances these days, and the chances are not transparent even to the savvy consumer. Certainly guys like Marcel Lapierre took chances and the results were variable with wonderful highs and also undrinkable soup mess on occasion. Which is to say, people are taking chances relating specifically to non-reductive winemaking and no sulphur addition whatsoever that in certain instances may not be consistent with a 10-20+ year aging trajectory. (Which isn’t to say I don’t often like the results. I do, and I’m particularly sensitivity to reduction in young or old wine.)

Personally I don"t ttink there is universal truth. Or a right or wrong. Just choices and consequences, good and bad.

I’ve always worried about Sans Soufre wines.

Though I’ve had some Dard & Ribo wines which aged far better than I had feared.

+1 Had one bottle didn’t purchase any more.

Same.

I’ve had them from Kutch and they have been just fine. Drink them young as intended.

I’ve never had a bad Lapierre sans soufre. I prefer in this format if available.

If these wines were stocks, one would be advised to reserve them for the speculative component of your portfolio.

That’s how I treat the Sans Soufre, drink young. And the best part is, they are so damn good and fresh. Allemand included.

This was it. It’s the same thing you get in Fourrier. We were almost done with the bottle so no shake could be done. Normally the fourrier spritz comes at the beginning of the bottle. Just weird to have the dissolved CO2 coming out 2 hours in is all.

You haven’t really lived until you’ve had allemand SS with 15+ years on it. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the 2001 Allemand SS that JBray opened in May 2017 is one of the top 3 syrahs I’ve had

There is no controversy. It doesn’t work. CO2 is not an oxygen scavenger, and doesn’t protect wine against oxidation. It always disappoints me to hear a winemaker say they use CO2 instead of SO2. Makes me suspicious of his understanding of winemaking in general.

Now, if a producer wants to make a Sans Soufre wine, that’s his choice. And they can be spectacularly good (e.g., Allemand - as I see Charlie just said). But you better keep them cellar cool through their life to have a chance to a good bottle. I’ve heard too many stories of Allemand SS bottles being bad.