When I was in Burgundy last year I was getting offered 2010-12 Lafon Perrieres for stupidly “low” pricing. Low enough for me to almost be tempted to buy some and ship it back. But I realized, doesn’t matter how low it is, even if it was $50 dollar i’d just be throwing away $50.
I remember how I used to search out the Lafon Perrieres and Charmes. Poster child for premox (though perhaps Jadot might beat them out). Can’t trust Leflaive anymore, pretty much comes down to Raveneau but I can’t find them so whatever. I am done investing big prices in white burgs to age. I am down to buying WB for early consumption, and if I have to drink them before their maturity then I am not spending $100 plus for premier Cru …let alone $200-300 plus for grand Cru. Too bad there are enough people willing to pay high prices for flawed product, or the producers would feel the financial hit and stop denying that their wines are affected. Oh well, sad.
Wine is a strange product in so many ways. Imagine a manufacturer sells you a product with a defect, let´s say a refrigerator. Would any buyer accept it? But wine can be corked, cooked, oxidized … without the chance to get a refund. And the producers, retailers etc. can continue business without any trouble? Really strange.
What do they think the root problem is?
As to why the wines keep selling…
Let’s say a Cultish Burg producer needs three states to sell all their U.S. Allocation. Cutting edge restaurant X and top notch retailer Y were there first, but it took 10 years for them to sell enough PremOx wines to sharp customers for there to be a backlash. They stop buying, but there are slightly less savvy and very jealous competitors who buy the wine for a few more years. Then they learn their lesson and quit. Perhaps the wine gets passed around to a few new accounts.
But, more likely than not, that cultish, PremOx prone winery “cuts allocations” to their old markets so they can open new ones. There are 50 little individual wine markets in the U.S. By the way, this model works with excellent wines. If you ever read a NYC sommelier’s lament about trimmed allocations, it’s because I’m getting those wines in KC ( and I will sing the same sad tune soon enough).
Domaine de Bellène (Nicolas Potel) uses DIAM.
Not trying to take the blame away from producers, but reading US forums really makes me think there’s something going wrong with transportation. A least as much premier or grand crus are opened as here and no way you have the same rate of premox bottles. I’d be interested to know if people are having the same issue in Asia.
Blain Gagnard has often been referred as “a poster child for premox”, but I’ve had quite a few bottles and never had one premoxed. Maybe one was advanced, but that’s about it.
Then again, they are not denying a problem exists. I wanted to buy some older bottles from them and they wouldn’t sell for fear of premox. So there’s that. They’ve been experimenting with different corks but not sure a definitive answer has been found, especially since as pointed above you can get the results only years after the change.
Alain
I’ve gone through half a case of 2004s and all good. Hoping the other 6 are also good. Also had 2007 and I think 2005 with Dominique last week and they were both excellent.
this has been thoroughly debunked perhaps a few hundred times.
Is there evidence that DIAM solves premox?
isn’t it true that Leflaive changed winemakers and subsequently the way the wines were made about the time they first started having problems with premox, which was several years later than when most had issues (starting in 95-96)? Leflaives just taste more forward upon release than they used to years ago…I know that this problem may be multifactorial, but I wonder to what extent making the wines more accessible early on with less prominent acids to please the wine critics may have added a nail to the coffin.
from a statistical standpoint, it’s both too early and too small a data set.
“fingers crossed” is the near-term strategy.
Pierre morey left around 07/08. That’s when their premox shift really hit. Some of the vintages like 00/02 had some premox issues but not near the wide scale level of 07 and beyond.
Alain,
Exposing wine to temperature extremes is certainly something to worry about but, if anything, the shipping and storage of better quality wines have gotten better in the past decade or two. Premature oxidation of white Burgundy really only became a serious issue starting with the vintages '95 and '96 and continues to this day.
Additionally, premature oxidation smells and tastes different from heat damage, IMO.
So you’re saying it’s Travel Shox?
Was anyone on board with DIAM earlier then Fevre? Premier Cru bottlings in 2007, Grand Cru in 2010 (is that vintage or year of bottling, not sure). Seems like we should start to know quite a lot about those wines pretty soon, if not already.
@Yaacov: didn’t know about this, I guess it would still be difficult to replicate since you cannot compare bottle to bottle (ie. cork to cork and possibly other parameters), but ok. As Frank pointed out, heat damage also tastes different than premox.
I’m not particularly informed on this topic, I like to read about it, and it seems everyone has a different opinion on the causes. It’s really just that two domaines that I like and drink regularly (Blain Gagnard and Ramonet) have a lot of premox TNs on this board, which doesn’t match my own experience or some of people I know. So I’m just wondering, and this transportation stuff has me thinking there might be something to it. But my experience in no way constitutes a meaningful sample size so I guess I’ll be left wondering…
@Alan: sorry, didn’t get the joke! 
Alain
I thought i posted this, but I don’t see it, so I must have screwed up. Anyway, my thought was…if I was a wine detective working for an industry that gave a shit, I would go figure out what changed in wine making and vineyard practices at Leflaive which caused them to go from one of the least affected by premox (for years after the 95-96 onslaught) to being just like everyone else. And then maybe look into why Raveneau is essentially spared.
That thought is a bit of brilliance.
And thus one of wine’s greatest experiences, that being drinking wonderfully mature white Burgundy, is a thing of the past, unless one is willing to pour a fair amount of money down the sink.
A small play on words, mixing “travel shock” and “premox” ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
Robert,
I visited Leflaive in 2008 and the presses had been changed from the more extractive and oxidative Vaslin presses to modern (more gentle) bladder presses along with the winemaker change. FWIW, I do not believe that the DIAM corks will prevent premox but they might reduce the bottle to bottle variability that comes with the problem. Lately Burgundy is picking earlier (not later) and SO2 has been on the increase (to near problematic levels) but overall the causes of premox are still not understood.