+1 on the comment about care in serving whites.
I’m the guy that likes to drink my whites over several days and in certain cases weeks if appropriate and if I can. So you are preaching to my choir.
I’ve certainly seen this sort of thing happen a few times. Probably the wine I’ve had the most experience with is '96 Ramonet Ruchottes. Tasted fantastic when young, but then seemed to fall off a cliff, very deep colour etc. My last (of 6) bottles had last year was far from correct, but we agreed (among experienced tasters) it wasn’t oxidised and probably we were seeing very reductive / Sulphur compound things in it. A year or so before that I had deliberately opened one to check in on over several days, and it definitely improved. I would underline though that at no point past youth were any but 1 (fresh as a daisy, lovely, ca 2013/14) out of my 6 bottles “correct”.
Yesterday , we had a 2007 Dauvissat Clos . The wine was painfully closed , did not move at all , something was wrong . Who knows , maybe it would have opened up after x hours , but we certainly did not have time for that . The wine was not good and I did not drink it .
The “ other “ bottle was the 2004 Clos from Raveneau and this one was fantastic , one of the best Chablis’s I ever had .
I bought a lot of 2008 Dauvissat and these are pretty much all bad. I’ve tried leaving them open etc but nothing really helps.
When I opened the 2004 Vaillons…it seemed dead and very “dumb” ;showed nothing.
Improved over the next days , for sure.
The issue, I think, is what one’s goal is with a wine. i am preparing it to show its best when I want to drink it, based on experience, intuition and other voodoo. So, I try to aerate…or not…as that is the best prep for a white wine, IMO. (Reds involve cleaning almost every time is older than 5 years).
As Dr. Weinberg points out…nobody has time to wait or monitor a wine over a long long period, trying to drink it when it’s at its “best” aspect. That’s not my goal. I try for the best at the first meal and check evolution thereafter. These Dauvissat wines seem always at best “thereafter”, though fine and dandy (and probably at best for many who taste at that point.)
Obviously, in a tasting like Herwig describes, there is “no time for that”, even if not merely “popped and poured”. That is understandable, and the reason I don’t participate in such things: great wines can get overshadowed by “greater”: wines, when they don’t show well popped and poured or otherwise not “best” prepped to show well. I really prefer to focus on one or two wines at a time. When food is added to the mix at larger (more than 5-6 wines, for me) tastings…it can be lots of fun, but…less informative than i want.
What did that involve? Just leaving the cork off? Or did you decant it?
Would you normally decant a Dauvissat? My instinct would be to do so – which is reinforced by what everyone has said here.
Is it possible that reduction and premox can be confused? I mean, in both cases there is something amiss with the bottle, and the wine may taste poorly to completely undrinkable, but the aromas and taste seem absolutely and completely different to me…particularly the nose.
I’m fascinated by this discussion, because I’ve had my share of bottles that seemed a little off, but did improve with air time. But none of them appeared to show any “sulfur” related signs. And sulfur compounds are unlikely to darken a wine significantly. Would be nice to understand the chemistry a little better.
Kevin, 2008 was an outlier for Dauvissat–plenty of oxidized wines (although every time I decide to just drink them up, I encounter a couple of pristine wines that aren’t quite ready, so I stop). You see reports of oxidation from some folks in other years, but I think many of these (of course not all) are these “noxidized” wines. I take tasting reports on “oxidized” Dauvissat wines with a grain of salt unless I know the taster. (don’t know you personally, but I guess I’ll give you a pass!)
John Morris–if I open a Dauvissat (in fact any serious white with a little age) and it’s not showing much on the nose, and the palate seems lacking (sometimes seems like a lightweight), I will usually decant.
Open decanter…and thereafter, I leave it in open decanter. I don’t think “leaving the cork off” does anything at all…good or bad…This “slow ox”, to me, is “no ox”…Maybe it works with the stuff Audouze covets…I have no insight into that.
For as long as I have followed Dauvissat (since 1996 visit) I’ve been doing that with his wines…and often, with other WB…though less aggressively. They always improve…sometimes even by the meal I want to serve them…often the next day. If aerated significantly, they are almost always good at the meal; I’m just interested in after that…as I think the real nuances come out better.
I drink Dauvissat wines a fair amount when I’m in Maine with my favorite Maine food: steamed lobster. And…I generally just put in decanter in the morning…and see what evolves. I am almost always satisfied.
Bob…re: premox and reduced wines…the colors are usually both alarming. With the premox…it’s sherry stuff…with the reduced it’s devoid of anything aromatically. In my experience.
Prompted by Robert’s query, I poked around on the web. I didn’t find a good answer to the question of what compounds might mimic oxidation when a bottle is first opened. But I did find this interesting chart of different sulfur compounds and the aromas they are associated with. You can probably make more of this than I can, Alan.
Note that (a) none of the aromas listed resemble those normally associated with oxidation and (b) some of these are not a function of reduction in the winemaking.
I do recall a winemaker saying in a discussion here a couple of years ago that some sulfur compounds have an odor that can be mistaken for oxidation.
I have never heard of or seen reduction darken the color of a white wine the way oxidation does, or really affect the color of a white wine in any way. What do you mean by “alarming”?
The chemistry of wine, including reduction, is incomplete and poorly understood unfortunately. There are lists, like the Scott Labs one that John posted that include the most common & really offensive compounds that are likely to be produced in barrel, but the ‘full list’ is far larger (for example, the classic ‘Leflaive’ reduction compounds aren’t listed anywhere). So not seeing it in the literature isn’t evidence/indication that reduction can’t be mistaken for oxidation unfortunately.
Also, since we’re talking about oxidation, it’s worth noting that the use of reduction is a poor/confusing term for compounds produced in barrel or bottle when the wine has a very low dissolved oxygen level (not that this was esp helpful, but at least it won’t be confused with oxidation-reduction (which always occur together…molecular sex with electrons sort of!).
My observation is that a reductive wine can initially appear dull, tired and lacking freshness (and will lose those with air contact). This can, sometimes easily, be confused with an oxidized wine…as others have pointed out, premox comes with some sort of sherry note, which is different.
My rule on reductive wines…if it gets better (goes away) with air time then it’s reduction. If it doesn’t then it’s brett, or oxidation (or something else).
Eric - The really puzzling thing is not wines that seem flat on opening, but those that seem to have a madeirized or bruised apple scents that go away with air. Those are the ones that seem to be faux oxidation.
John–I don’t find maderized notes or bruised or baked apple notes in the Dauvissat wines we’re talking about. To me, along with sherry notes, these are hallmarks of oxidation and don’t go away with air. I look for these notes in an aged white that seems “off” or unimpressive. If they are missing, then i’m much more likely to be patient with the wine and optimistic that it will recover.
Isn’t this similar to what the Montelena Chardonnay went through just prior to the Paris tasting in 76 where the wine turned Amber then corrected itself later? What if this is somehow a variation of that?
I don’t know about the Dauvissats in particular, but I’ve had whites that smelled oxidized at first but cleaned up. The first time I experienced that was with a Lopez de Heredia white. There was something that seemed distinctly like madeirization and I assumed the bottle was shot. Given the long wood-aging for the LdH wines, I assumed it was oxidation until it went away. I’ve experienced that on occasion since with other whites.
Note that Jasper Morris says in that passage above that he’s been fooled by bouquet and the taste, and not just color, into mistakenly thinking that white Burgundies were premoxed, only to have the wines clean up with air.
I assumed that this was what Stuart experienced, but rereading his OP, he seems to have focused more on the color and the lack of aromas, which sounds more like your experiences. That’s different from smelling something that seems for all the world like oxidation but which dissipates.
Yes, in my experience, and unfortunately I have had a lot of wines that were premoxed, I have never encountered a wine I considered premoxed with maderized or sherry-like notes that freshened up with time…in fact I cannot remember any that improved to any degree over time as they have almost always worsened. But I admit that I have not tried them days later. I would not toss any wine based only on a somewhat darker color if it tasted fresh, nor assume it was premoxed if it tasted a bit flat or short on the finish. I would always give them time and air and hope for improvement.
I’ve encountered it only occasionally, and it was baffling. Hence, I was very interested to read Jasper Morris’s piece and find that he’d had similar experiences. But the vast majority of the time, if a wine smells oxidized to me when it’s first opened, it is.