I can 2nd that - even Village wines from good producers shouldn´t show signs of serious oxidation after 15/20 years, they should be gracefully “mature”, a bit fuller/deeper in colour but nothing like full yellow-brown and apple-juice and lovage flavours …
Fine 1er and GCs should still be fine with age 25/30+ …
Two recent wines: a Meursault Perrieres 1986 and a Chevalier-Montrachet 1973 - both drinking exceptionally well …
Even pre-premox there was bottle variation.
So a set of bottles, some good, some bad, is not proof of premox, as we think of it.
Sherry is a quality of regular oxidation.
Last week I opened a bottle of 1983 Stony Hill Chardonnay. It is was dark, sherried and OTH.
Assuming the bottle had been properly stored (a big if, I bought it at auction),
and assuming there are still drinkable bottles of the wine, how would you describe my off bottle - bottle variation, premox, or both?
I will always remember in 2008 I brought a 2005 white burgundy (I believe Bouchard corton) to an outdoor concert.
I opened it and it was terrible; sour and all weird terrible tasting. I feel like I remember it also being extra yellow but that may just be wrong as it was 10 years ago. Anyway, 1 or two hours later only because I had no where to throw it away at the concert sitting at my blanket I retasted it and it was 100% perfect. I have always rung that up as it was about to completely premox but because it was so new it was able to make a comeback. If it was a year or two older it had no chance.
Jeremy, it would be hard to impossible
to test for that, but ad a point of reference both 1995 and 1996 white Burgundies were very promising early on and it wasn’t
until around 2002 that the scope of the problem began to become apparent.
You could experience an premoxed bottle then taste a fully mature/over the hill bottle decade(s) later. If you had a very good memory you could compare!
Thanks for your input, Chris, and to me, your comments are so darned interesting. On this board, it certainly appears that more folks are buying and drinking more white wines from outside the US vs. inside.
It’s crazy to hear about the issues with Huet and others - the problem is a lot more widespread than just Burgundy obviously. And after reading threads like these, I always wonder if it is ‘aging expectations not being met’ or truly really bad issues.
Most folks do not expect white wines in general to age very long - that’s always been the ‘conventional wisdom’ and continues to be the case. Therefore, most consumers are drinking their whites within the first few years after bottling, not saving them for 10+ years as most do with white burgs, etc.
I know that in this country, a major push has been to minimize dissolved oxygen pick up during the life of the wine prior to bottling, and at bottling, ensure that the SO2 coverage is such that these wines should ‘hold well’ for a number of years. I have to believe that these measures are being taken in places like Burgundy as well, though it’d be great to get some confirmation on this.
But other than white burgs, try to find any kind of ‘aged white’ at retail or, even rarer, on premise. You’ll be hard pressed to do so . . .
Cheers.
The proof that it’s a fault and not just unjustified expectations:
(1) Wines like top white Burgundy and Huet Vouvray historically aged nicely for decades. Now they don’t.
(2) There’s huge bottle variation, even within a case, suggesting that the wines have changed in some way that makes them much more vulnerable to the variability of corks.
Very succinctly put!
But, IMO, not necessarily true re: the wines having “changed”. The wines are all the same. The corks (dryness, rigidity) have clearly changed. The unaffected wines are fine. (I had a 2002 the other night that was singing). Something changed. You want to believe, as many do, that the wines “changed” suddenly, and were not ageable. That, IMO, is why the “industry” has never solved the problem-- and why they can’t figure out the cause. It’s not the wines that are the problem.
When corks were spongier and moister, they at least created a good seal, keeping things in and out of the bottles. But, the corks themselves became murder to pull, particularly as they aged and dried out. So, the cork industry (to combat this and to avoid mold related/TCA issues) dried the corks so they would slide in and out better (and thwart TCA). Some became, like dry sponges, too rigid to form or hold a complete seal, letting out protective SO2. The wines then became affected, randomly, determined by the specific seals. The wines then aged erratically…but did not become truly “oxidized”, just spoiled. (The term “prem-ox” is unfortunate as it implies what’s going on is the eventual oxidation from too long-aging (which I’ve almost never experienced in my “career” with wine). This is odd and different. Is it a form of oxidation? Probably…but, it’s not even easy to determine if a bottle’s shot with the “premox”. Most are just odd at first.
I know this is 
, but I feel compelled to respond to those who blame the wines, when the wines are all the same and most/many do just fine. The variability is in the humidity of the corks from kiln’drying. That wasn’t done to the degree it is today/in recent years…until relatively recently. IMO, it might have diminished TCA spoiled wines, while creating a whole 'nother problem.
Stuart, when you say “the wines are the same,” I assume you mean the wines in the good bottles vs those in the bad bottles.
But clearly there have been changes in winemaking when comparing 1980s and earlier to post-1995 White Burgs. So from that perspective the wines are not the same. And those changes are just as likely to be responsible as changes in corks and bottle fit.
Before you go back to beating your dead horse by repeating “but the wines are the same,” take a moment to consider that premox may be a two-hit process, requiring both a seal problem and a wine that is now more susceptible to a seal problem.
If you can accept that possibility, it’s entirely possible that the cork seal variability has remained unchanged since the 1980s and early 1990s, but the more modern wines have changed so that they are more affected by an imperfect seal. Your experience with cork hardness correlating to premox does not disprove this possibility. If anything it is consistent with it.
You may think that there are more stiff corks now, but without actual data from the pre-premox era it is more likely that your impression is due to confirmation bias. A bias that is likely to be significant given the vigor with which you defend your theory.
It’s also entirely possible that you’re right. That even if a 2-hit process is necessary for premox, the cork seal issue has significantly changed from the pre-pox era to now. But I’ve not seen any actual evidence of that.
I agree with David about the wine (white burgs et al) being more prone to oxidation…and with Stuart that corks likely aren’t what they once were (tho TCA taint has gotten massively better across the board).
Imo, the wine side is due to climate change & more ripe picking have pushed pH’s up…and more gentle pressing/handling has reduced phenolics in the juice/wine. And low pH + phenolics is a potent antioxidant combination. Also, I’ve read several places that cork bark is harvested much younger now than ~20 years ago (7 year old bark now vs 20+ year old bark 20 years ago), which changes/reduces the resiliency of corks (plus plausibly the issues Stuart raises).
Pretty simple. If the wine is someone else’s wine, he kept it too long and the issues are the result of natural oxidation. If it is my wine, I opened it at the precise proper time and any issues are the result of premox.
excellent post
David, yes. The good and the premoxed wines are the “same” wines at bottling. Likely identical as they were assembled before bottling; nobody really does barrel by barrel anymore…or then.
I am not arguing that the winemaking/wines pre-premox has not changed. It likely has. But, I argue when people suggest that that is the sole or major reason for the premox. Since I consider the premox= a plague , and the majority? or many? remain fine, I don’t think that’s the answer…at least the sole answer. The variability part to me is key. What causes some to remain fine and some to become “Premoxed” is , to me, the “Premox” problem; not the entire universe of such wines. In other words, I consider the focus/ the category to be the bad wines. So, I focus on the bad wines and why they are bad and the bottle in the case in the next separator is doing just fine. The only thing I can think of is the integrity of the seals.
Whether they are all more vulnerable…I can’t answer…and suspect they are. But…the problem, to me, is exclusively the bad bottles. If the winemaking were the cause, they should all go bad. That only some do…compels the focus on what made them bad as opposed to the good bottles. Could it be a “perfect storm”…yes…of course. But in a “perfect storm” everything gets destroyed…like Panama City…unless you build your house (wine) to survive anything. And, the only way you can do that is to drink it the day after bottling.
Looking back, I first experienced “premox” in the 1989 vintage, via one producer’s Corton Charlemagne. I visited that producer with two friends in March 2001 (and later saw him that night in Chablis with someone other than his wife; he came over and explained it was not what it seemed. 
) One Friday we tasted his 1989 CC. The bottle was shot. I told him that I had tried a few before that one…and that they were shot. What’s going on? He denied there was a problem. I guess I was pretty persuasive as he asked if we would come back the next day and taste some other bottles of it. As I remember, 2/4 were shot…maybe 3. He was amazed…but had no clue what was going on…and nobody did at that point.
Incidentally, he is one of the producers who told us that yields were too high in 1999 …in both colors…for greatness. I think he might be right, especially as to the reds, which have markedly short finishes for their structure…to me, a sign of dilution by overcropping/harvesting. I am concerned about them, as these have been from really good producers of Cote de Nuits 1er crus.