Got an unopened 12 bottle case of 2004 Jadot Meursault gratis from a local retailer in exchange for some favors I have done from him. He received this wine from the local distributer the same day he turned around and gave it to me, so I don’t blame him for this, and maybe some of the other 11 will be better.
This color looked real bad right still in the green bottle, and sure enough, when poured, the wine was medium golden. Nose and taste just like dry sherry. Hey wait a minute, I don’t mind dry sherry. So with some roast chicken and Sriracha sauce, I finished off about 2/3 of the bottle, and it wasn’t too bad.
A couple of years ago, I talked to Jacques Lardière at a big Jadot dinner, about whether Jadot was using the old wax-lubricated corks, or the new silicone-lubricated corks, and he said to me [paraphrasing, from memory], “Oh yes, we love the silicone corks, because they are so much easier to push into the bottles!”
[In fairness to him, there was a little bit of a language barrier, but I am pretty sure that he understood what I was asking him about.]
Nathan, I might have missed this, but are you saying that there is a school of thought that a contributor of prem-ox is silicone coated corks? Is it a reaction with the silicone, or do they let more oxygen in? If they were more permeable, wouldn’t fill levels go down, too?
You must have had some pretty good Jadot wines that evening!
As I understand it, in the mid-90s, [many of] the cork manufacturers switched from wax- [paraffin-] coated corks to silicone-coated corks because their marketing people were able to sell the idea that the silicone would make the corking on the bottling line much easier for the wineries.
But it has been posited that, for the very same reason, over the long haul, silicone-coated corks won’t form as good a seal with the glass of the bottle [compared to the traditional performance of wax-coated corks], and that the random failure of silicone-coated corks would be the most likely explanation for the [seemingly] random nature of the premox plague.
BTW, I just noticed over on [u]that other board[/u] that someone had a dead 2005 Le Montrachet from Jadot.
Yikes - that’s a lot of $$$s to be pouring down the drain.
Don Cornutt just singled out Jadot for criticism in a new post over at [u]that other board[/u]:
That would tend to jibe with my observations of a certain winemaker’s cluelessness on the issue [possible problems with language barriers notwithstanding].
That’s an excellent question, which many people are asking.
Right now, the standard explanation seems to be, “Well, the red wines have so much more anti-oxidant stuffing - more sulphur, more tannins, more extract - that they are naturally more resistant to oxidation than the whites”.
But if the silicone coating is the culprit, and if the red-wine-makers used silicone-coated corks, then you have to wonder whether the drinking windows on the “great” red wines will have to be pulled back from the 40-60 year timeframe down to the 15-20 year timeframe.
And, of course, not all of the silicone-coated corks will fail - it’s just that, right now, it seems as though they have a vastly higher failure rate than the old wax/paraffin-coated corks.
"Moreover, premature oxidation first became a serious issue in 2005 "
Um… no.
I’ve never heard the silicone cork theory and I’ve been around the issue for years. The prevailing theory at least a few years ago was that there had been a change towashing the corks in peroxide and that the peroxide as not completely neutralized before being used. Peroxide willl react with, and neutralize, SO2. Combined with the fact that many producers backed off on SO2 in the mid-90s to make the wines more approachable when young and you have a good recipe for premox and why it’s variable even within a producer’s lineup.
There’s [u]a new thread, over at that other board[/u], wherein people seem to be in general agreement that [more or less] all of the Jadots from this general timeframe are completely shot.
I broached the topic with a regional Kobrand rep about a month ago. He told me it was the first he’d heard of PremOx. When he got back to me a couple of weeks ago, he told me that 03 was problematic, but 04 and 05 were smooth sailing!
Considering the 04 Folatieres I had taken back in-between conversations, I have written off Jadot whites for good.
That’s one of the problem of trying to make good sherry better known and understood in the US - the fact that people believe that oxidized white Burgundy smells and tastes like dry sherry.
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