Has Premox changed your White Burgundy buying strategy?

After collecting red burgundies for a number of years, I got the white burg bug a few years ago. While, I’ve been buying recent vintages, I’ve been reluctant to buy older wines at auction due to concerns about premox. As a result, I’ve purchased almost no wines from before 2006 and mostly have focused on wines from 2010 onward. Has premox influenced other people’s purchasing strategy?

Massive change. I probably own less than 1/10 of the white Burg that I would own if not for the PremOx issues…

Don Cornwall has a major premix site, yes? But does it have a Premox 101 or where is the best place to go for that?

Good site

I stopped for awhile, but I’m back with a new plan that is working for me.

I’m basically cherry picking good buying opportunities (many from board member Don Eschev) in the $40-60 range or so, a mix of village and 1er Cru, and just drinking them young. I’m mostly drinking 2011-14 vintages recently.

I am just not finding that these wines need age, certainly not such that it’s worth playing premox roullette. And I think they compete well with good new world chardonnay around that price range.

I’m buying less and consuming them younger. I buy almost no grand cru. I’ve also shifted to more white Bordeaux, Austrian, and Germans.

If there was NO premox issues i’d Be buying a lot more White Burgundy. As it is…I think I’m buying about 12 bottles a year with the intent of consuming them in 1-2 years. I buy no Grand Crus and very few 1ers. If it was not a problem…i’d Probably be buying 4-6 cases/year from top to bottom. Now Champagne, Germany, Rhône, & the Loire gets allmost all my attention for whites.

This is a difficult one. My response is to buy pre-1995 white Burgundy, and a handful of lower-risk producers: Bernard Moreau, PYCM, Raveneau, Coche-Dury (though I am very disappointed by Raphael’s wines from 2013 onwards), Domaine de Bongran. I also buy Ramonet, hoping they’ve fixed the problems and believing that the highs are high enough to justify the risk at the very reasonable UK allocation pricing. Dauvissat too, which I don’t mind drinking on the younger side. And I’m buying a lot of Guffens-Heynon Mâconnais wines, which have the cut and amplitude of the Côte de Beaune’s best but also show a lot of what they have to give after just five or six years (though my experience with vintages from the 1990s has been positive too). The best producers in the Mâconnais and Côte Chalonnaise have a lot to offer in the premox era, as the problem has neutralized many of the Côte de Beaune’s hypothetical advantages.

Bourgogne blanc drunk within 3-4 years, village/premier cru chablis also drunk early and the rare 1er & GC drunk no later than 5 years by producers who have a good track record.

Yes, massive change about 10 years ago. Very minor purchases since then and zero GC Beaunes or Chablis.

William: May I ask why you are very disappointed in Raphael’s from 2013?

Simply, they don’t taste like Coche any more. In the glass, the difference is glaringly obvious. I would expand, however, I realize it’s always difficult for a son to fill the shoes of a father like Jean-François, so I do not want to be polemical about it. But with '13, '14, and '15 looking like swings-and-misses chez Coche, I am pretty concerned about what the future holds for this great Domaine.

I’m a novice to white Burgundy but have just resorted to buying it off wine lists and letting the restaurant take the risk. For example I recently found 2006 Bonneau du Martray Corton-Charlemagne on a wine list; per Don’s wiki it is something “to now be avoided like the plague.” But the somm promised it would be good, and so it was Certainly a much less stressful experience than if it was my own bottle

Like many here, not buying anything very old. Still buying 2007+ and bits of new vintages but my intent is not to age more than 5-10 years. I’m really enjoying 7/8/11 now, but Bourgogne Blance, village and 1ers only. I’m also tasting more similar profile wines from other regions like Macon, plus others like Loire, Germany, and coastal California (i.e far west Sonoma, Santa Cruz mountains).

I buy less, always have a backup, and bitch a lot more. The highs are still so high.

The caution I would offer is that since 2006 there have been instances where previously low incidence premox producers have suddenly become hotbeds for the phenomenon. Domaine Leflaive is a key example. On both quality and perceived near-immunity to premox, Leflaive’s wines have become about the most expensive in the marketplace, and yet starting with the 2007 vintage the premox problem has suddenly become quite serious per anecdotal evidence.

Best to keep a watch on Don’s wiki- I follow and post there and it is a tremendous resource- as that site is the best centralized location offering frequent evaluations and unbiased conclusions.

For my part- I stepped away for a while, but there is just nothing on this earth like a great mature white burgundy. So what I have done is select a very small number of wines that I love most where I also have observed lower levels of premox, and then I buy at least 6 bottles (sometimes 5 if that is the best I can do) of each wine instead of taking 3-4 bottles each from a wider array of a producer’s portfolio.

For me, these days that means 3 wines from Ramonet and 2 wines from Bouzereau. I would like to add Sauzet back into the mix again too, but I need to see a bit stronger history develop since a time when they were among the most problematic.

Overall, this means my actual purchases in terms of numbers of bottles each vintage is down about 50% from where it was until the mid 2000s.

I used to begin mid-morning thinking about what white Burgundy I might have with dinner; those days and that mindset are long gone. And as much as I love the wines, I never thought that they had no qualitative equals, and I can’t think of any of the other excellent white wines out there that are priced so ambitiously.

As a general statement, they don’t need age nearly as much these days anyway. Most white Burgs are ripe, open, and not scorchingly acidic nowadays - there just isn’t a strong incentive to age them into No Man’s Land anymore.

I buy regularly the new Chablis releases of Dauvissat, some Raveneau backfilling, Fevre as earlier drinkers, Louis Michel 14’s and others. However, I consume such that 2010 is my earliest vintage. If anything, premox has caused me to allow my California chards to age while I consume white burgs- mostly Ceritas and some Rhys sits. I buy a fair amount of Corton Charlemagne from various producers. For all these I watch CT notes for any signs of advancement.

I am not convinced that any producer is spared if given the enough time in the cellar, except maybe Raveneau, and I can’t find those wines at decent retail prices as opposed to grey market prices. Used to drink Coche, but again won’t pay grey market and sorry to hear that the wines under the new regime may not be the same. Leflaive used to be my go-to spared producer but are now patheticly poxed…unless you drink them upon release. I love mature white Burgundy, and if you can’t age them reliably then they ain’t worth the tariff IMO. So I drink Bourgognes by the case and long for the old days.