A friend opened a 2016 Francois Carillon Bourgogne the other night (a lovely wine, incidently), and it was under this unusual closure. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s an Ardea Seal, and I gather from the testimonial they have from Ponsot, this must be what he has been using.
Anyone know who else is using it?
What’s the take on these things?
Ponsot was one of the famous (or infamous, depending on who you ask) early adopters of this closure.
They seem really cool. I’m told that Ponsot’s wines seem to have held up fine under them over 8-10 years.
i had a 2011 ponsot saint romain under this closure less than a year ago and the wine was in great shape.
The 08 Ponsot Griotte has completely fallen apart. I don’t know if that’s the closure or the wine, though.
The ‘08 Charmes-Chambertin has grown increasingly disappointing over the past several years as well.
Is that what Cornelissen uses? Hard to extrapolate, but his wines I’ve had under this closure, if the same thing, have been holding up very well.
hope the closure works better than his temperature dot. I don’t want to pay to be his test subject—the wines are too expensive.
More than one bottle that way?
As far as I know, Carillon only uses this closure in the bourgogne wines. I’ve seen it in the Bourgogne Blanc but I haven’t seen it in any of the Puligny Montrachet wines.
16 vintages under this closure have performed very well for my Burgundy producer…
Not with me, but multiple recent notes on CT to that effect.
So you’d rather not know if the wines were subject to heat? I’d think given the amount of grey market wines in your area you’d really be interested in that. I know I am and I wish more folks were as well.
Not Alan, but of course I am interested. Out of curiosity I left an empty Ponsot bottle out on a summer day. The dot didn’t change colour. So I baked it in an oven at 250F for an hour. No change either.
Real valuable dot, that.
I was curious, so I checked out the CT notes, and the three negative ones don’t sound like a closure issue. They sound more bacterial – “dirty dishwater,” “mulch and dirt,” “musty, cheesy.” And there are quite positive notes there.
It may not have been the solution, but at least he was trying something in his own scattershot way. Did you check which color it was? Maybe it was already cooked when it got to you. In any event, that’s a false negative, so would a color changed dot keep you from buying a bottle?
I’d like to see more producers tackling this issue, especially now that Burgundy is so costly.
of course I’d like to know. I put a bottle of his (empty) in the oven at 350 degrees for an hour and the dot didn’t change. It doesn’t work. That’s my point.
exactly my experience and my point.
As pointed out above, looks like a real false negative problem. Would you buy a bottle where the dot had changed color? Frankly, with something like Ponsot, I don’t think you’re paying much for the dot, especially if you’re buying from and grey or secondary market source. You’re paying for the perceived quality of the wine.
I’m not sure that Ponsot is the thinker to push this forward, my only point is that we should want producers to be looking into this type of technology.
So here’s my take here:
These closures should be just as ‘scrutinized’ as any other closure - including natural cork. There are many on this board who are ‘balking’ at producers using sugar cane based closures because of the lack of information about how wines will age, among other reasons; there are those that balk at wines under screw cap for the same reasons, etc; I can see more folks ‘concerned’ about these because they are so infrequently used and have even less of a track record than the other ones mentioned. And single vintage data points really don’t ‘help’ - if the idea is that you are purchasing these to lay down for a long time . . .
As far the temperature dot and the technology goes, I feel it is imperative that wineries ‘control’ as much as they can - but there’s too much out of our control once a bottle leaves our hands. My wines are shipped ‘temperature controlled’ year round to most of the country, but even that is not infallible. Here’s the question - as a consumer, how much of a premium are you willing to pay for wineries to add something new that actually works to show temp changes? And even if you pay enough to get this technology, how ‘precise’ do you need it to be?
I see folks ‘freaking out’ on this board if wines get to 75 or 80 degrees for a single minute - IMHO, this is not something to be concerned with, but heck, what do I know ![[snort.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/b/bdc3944606213c4dca6c1169cf0a166c8bc4f8c9.gif "snort.gif"){kind=small}
Love the conversation - keep it going, folks . . .
Cheers!
