Yeah maybe I’ll check them out. I like white burgundy more aged, though in general.
IMO-global warming is affecting Burgundy more quickly than the Willamette Valley. So which GC Burgundies do you mean?
There’s a reason the use of Diam 30 has exploded among white burgundy producers, and William Kelly alluded to it as a way to freeze the wines in place (which is different than aging).
Independent of the comparative aspects of this thread, I don’t buy white Butgundy to cellar anymore. The wines are richer and more forward than they ever used to be, and I do not enjoy the results of cellaring on many of the wines that I used to routinely cellar for 5-10 years.
I’m not trying to be a jerk to a region that Oregon is a “competitor with, it’s just not realistic (IMO) to view white Burgundy with an eye to how they used to age. I really dislike caramelly flavors in white wine so this may be more a matter of personal taste. YMMV.
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I used to buy heavily in WB, stopped after pouring so many premoxed bottles down the drain, and only recently started selectively buying some if under DIAM. As someone who used to love aged (pristine) WB, I have wondered whether it would make more sense to bottle WB’s with DIAM 5 or 10 if one was hoping to enjoy the development of aging but minimize the risk of premox advanced flavors in the wines. If the DIAM corks “freeze” the wines in place for a certain length of time, depending upon the DIAM type, I am curious whether the wines would develop after that point in any kind of predictable manner. Perhaps I don’t understand how they work, but a DIAM 30 doesn’t make much sense to me…then again, I’m not 20 years old.
I certainly would rather drink a pristine WB “frozen in time” than an advanced wine, but it does beg the question of why one would want to cellar them at all, unless of course some “safer” development is taking place over time.
I think this “Frozen in Time” quote is being taken a little too seriously, and I’d be curios when @William_Kelley made it and how his opinion may have evolved since as I know that he is a supporter of DIAM and bottles his own wines under the closure. I believe this was a common concern 5 years ago, but many have come around to DIAM now that there are several examples of wines that have aged under the closure for a decade plus. From my own experience, the wines seem to evolve beautifully under the closure, and I think it’s a no-brainer. Recent bottles of 2014 Lafon Charmes and Perrieres were both excellent and evolving at the pace one would expect for 2014 WBs under a prefect cork.
@Marcus_Goodfellow I think it’s fair to say that the white wines of Burgundy have changed with the climate, but Chardonnay is having a bit of a renaissance in Burgundy as the premox era begins to dissipate. Personally, I find WB to be more exciting than RB at the moment. New and creative farming techniques, and cooler terroirs that were once written off abound, there are plenty of exciting producers making whites that age on acid with pure citrus and mineral flavors. I think of Hubert Lamy as a prime example of someone who makes this style of wine and who is pushing the boundaries of farming in a way that no-one in Oregon has the luxury of exploring since the best Chardonnay producers in Oregon purchase fruit and don’t have the same generational connection to the land.
Obviously I love Oregon Chardonnay too, and I buy a lot of it!
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Correct! A lot of comparative tasting over the last few years leads me to conclude that the “taste” imputed to Diam, and the glacial evolution of certain wines bottled under Diam, is just a result of bottling with excessively high free and total SO2 for that closure. I think that a sulfate-derived soapiness shows for totals in excess of 100 ppm, for whatever reason, much more pronouncedly under Diam than under natural cork. And you will still have noticeable free SO2 after 5+ years under Diam 30 if you bottle around 25 ppm free with minimal dissolved oxygen at bottling. I have provisionally concluded that for optimal showing in the 5 years after bottling the target should really be around 15-20 rather than 20-25 ppm free. (Of course, this likely varies in function of wine pH so these comments are based on Chardonnay in Burgundy between pH 3.05 - pH 3.25, which constitutes the bulk of my experience with this matter).
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Hi Will,
I don’t think Diam 30 actually freezes the wines in place, but as William notes in his post, it slows evolution of the wines down and retains SO2 in the wines. I’m not sure why someone would have SO2 in excess of 100ppm in their wines, but I have heard that at that level it can lead to off flavors. I’d also point out that William notes that 15-20ppm gives optimal results at 5 years past bottling, so that’s perhaps a good indication of a new aging curve for WB, vis a vis the historical idea that some GC WB needs 10-20 years in the cellar.
If you have a list of producers that you think are delivering high quality WB with energy and drive, from cooler sites (in addition to Lamy) I’d love to check out some of your recommendations.
But a blanket statement that no one in Oregon can produce wines like your WB faves because we purchase fruit sounds like a serious personal bias to me. I have as much influence on the farming at Whistling Ridge as anyone in Burgundy. It’s a monopole and they farm as I ask because they believe in what we’re doing.
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Also, just to be clear, I have used Diam closures exclusively since 2013. I’m experimenting now with Portocork’s technical closure because they use 100% cork rather than a portion microspheres (which are microplastics).
Over the past 12 years of experimenting with the Diam closures the 3 evolves so quickly that it’s non-functional for us. The 5 is the closest match to natural cork, the 10 is a slower evolving closure that allows wines a significant time to mature, and the 30s are slightly slower than the 10s. While
It might be tempting to start assigning black and white assessments on performance of the upper three versions of Diam, each wine is different and what it brings to the equation is complex enough that a dialogoue as to which closure is the correct choice is going to be part truth and part hunch at best.
And to circle back to aging Chardonnay, there are a number of other factors besides just SO2 that really contribute to ageworthy WV Chardonnay.
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I think he is saying that as long as you don’t use too much SO2 the wines don’t age too slowly. That said there are a lot of other factors to consider and I’m not going to pretend like I have more experience with this topic than you do. 
I do know that when premox was at its apex, a lot of producers ramped up the amount of sulphur they were using (in some cases to 100 ppm) and when they later moved to DIAM they did not immediately adjust sulphur. Lafon’s 2013s are a good example as that was the first year he used DIAM and the wines were overly reductive until very recently. He adjusted sulphur substantially in 2014.
I would be very interested to learn more about this topic from your perspective. I recognize that producers such as yourself have a ton of control over the farming, and I think that the best Willamette Chards easily compete with White Burgundy, but where my bias kicks in is at the very incremental bleeding edge of farming. I still think Burgundy is the place pushing this limit. Using Hubert Lamy as an example, he has converted sections of his vineyards to high density plantings at 30K vines per hectare to reduce yield per vine and he prunes exclusively by hand. When he bottles a wine with the designation “Haut Densite” it means that the extra vines he planted to convert the parcel to “high density” are a minimum of 10 years old and those young 10 year old vines are interplanted with vines that his grandfather planted. That’s what I mean by generational connection to the land. I know that there is plenty of minutiae surrounding vine density and soil type that I don’t fully understand, but my point is, It’s much more difficult to do things that require a ten year time horizon when a vineyards is under contract. A ten year time horizon is a riskier and frankly more expensive investment when you don’t already own the land. I recognize that there are very talented farmers in the valley that do think long term like this but it’s easier to experiment when you own the land and make the wine, and sometimes it takes a generation to fine tune it. Lamy’s high density planting was actually a happy accident. His dad accidentally ordered too many vines when he was replanting a parcel and he decided to plant them all determined to get his money’s worth. Things did not go to plan, and he ended up with a significantly lower yield per vine. When his son took over, he liked the additional concentration that he found in the high density parcel and began expanding the farming technique across their other holdings. There is definitely less info out there about the Willamette, so I’d love to get some pushback on this idea that Burgundy ultimately has the advantage at the margins when it comes to farming as a result of generational ownership over the land.
In terms of producers other than Hubert Lamy that still make great acid driven wines, I think these are a good place to start, but there are many more (some of which are sadly out of reach for us mortals):
- Dureuil Janthial - the Meix Cadot can be sourced for $120 and is a crazy good wine.
- Paul Pillot (High elevation Chassagne Montrachet 1er Crus La Romanee, Les Grand Ruchottes and Les Caillerets are killer wines - price to match unfortunately)
- Jean Claude Bachelet - the Puligny-Montrachet Les Aubues is a great wine
- PYCM
- Lamy-Caillat - same holdings as Paul Pillot above are the ones to look for - sadly even more expensive
- Bachelet Monot
- Latour-Giraud - amazing Meursault Narvaux for under $100
- Arnaud Ente
- Dauvissat - despite the run of hot vintages these wines remain mineral driven and high acid except for maybe 2018.
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Thanks for the excellent post Wil.
I wondered, based on William’s post about SO2, if producers had been using higher levels to combat pre-mox prior to switching to Diam. It makes sense as no one would know the real impact the Diam could make, and there’s too much at stake to risk a vintage on a new technology.
Producing wine is a remarkable job, but one of it’s drawbacks is that there’s really no way to practice. You can study, deconstruct previous work, and do a lot of things to help improve your skill set but harvest is a bit like an athlete that hasn’t played in a year coming on the court for the first time in the playoffs. Implementing new ideas is the only way to constantly push yourself but when you look at the price of failure, it can be daunting to maie changes.
Thank you for the list as well. Dauvissat is prehaps my favorite white Burgundy producer, and I enjoy a few of the others as well. I’ve never had Dureuil-Janthial but have friends who swear by the wines.
I also get your point regarding the long game that owners play vs. the shorter timelines that contracts bring. There are definitely estate producers though, Eyrie, Bethel Heights, Brickhouse, and quite a few more.
But I feel like I ought to come clean and say that I don’t follow the high density idea. I’m more obsessed with site expression, and the idea that the inputs of the site itself are what I want to explore. When the topic of vine density comes up, the word that almost always shows up is “concentration”. I feel like I’ve kind of lost my taste for that direction (along with double IPAs and Imperial stouts), so I am willing to cede that ground. I don’t think everyone or even most people feel the same, so I definitely get your enthusiasm for what the Burgundians are doing, and there’s some high density plantings in the WV that iit would be interesting to compare.
We do all of the pruning and other canopy management by hand though. Being in the vines is a crucial part of growing and seeing the living plant in front of you is necessary both for life and for success with the wines.
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This thread exemplifies the kind of conversations that keep me reading here and learning. I read a fair amount on wine (other than Wine Berserker, I’m presently in Lepeltier’s great One Thousand Vines) and there’s a temptation to simply follow advice that I’m learning to trust. I’m resisting this temptation. One way I branch out and make my wine consumption interesting – a little craft in itself – is by trying unlikely OR Chardonnays to better understand how they taste young and age, and Grochau and Drouhin are two examples. These are very different makers in multiple ways, from size to winemaking approach. Opposite would be too strong a word, but they are markedly different.
So, I’m coming to the question of aging from the perspective of the drinker. In other words, by what circumstances – related to juice oxidation, phenolic extraction at pressing, the site – lead to early aging, too modest mouthfeel, stewed notes, loss of vibrant fruitiness, feeble and odd acid profiles, and feeble and oddly placed warmth (nutty, vanilla, buttery characteristics)?
I suspect that the Drouhin and Grochau wines fall into the category William describes for different reasons, with the former turning to predetermined “best practices” while the latter might have been working more out of opportunity or happenstance. I’m not sure about this. It would take longer visits to Willamette to gain a better appreciation of its fine-grained winemaking histories. That’s part of the fun of consumption as a craft of its own, particularly in a region whose histories have barely been published.
I’ve been appreciating wine for decades but it’s only been for about 3-4 years that I’ve taken a more serious interest. My introduction to OR Chardonnay happened with the '21 vintage of PGC’s estate bottling. I was struck by this wine’s distinct flavor profile, its positioning of warmth at the end of the palate, the presence of an of-its-place minerality. It felt like I was drinking something different, not WB but a new North American expression, and this excited me.
Your list of good Chardonnay producers makes sense to me. The easier route would be for me to follow along. And for the most part I likely will. Rather infuriatingly, I saw on this site somewhere that you wrote Grochau’s PN are good value long before I thought I had made a discovery! There’s a lot of wheel reinventing in the art of consumption. Nevertheless, I want to get there on my own and with understanding, even as I do so with guidance. It’s fun to do it this way. And I’m acting under neither the pressure of career enhancement nor profit extraction thus limiting my interest in learning efficiency.
There’s a question for you, Marcus, here. Are there distinct phenolic extraction methods being practiced among the WV Chardonnay producing wineries you list? I’m curious about how harvest temperature, the must’s contact with seeds vis-a-vis skin and stem affects flavor profiles, how sulfiting might slow oxidation of polyphenols. If you do think there are distinct methods that give WV Chardonnays characteristic profile(s), do these methods also indicate the drinking windows you mention above? Put differently, separate from the WB viticultural practices described above by @Wil_Raley, does WV practice distinct viniculture that contributes to its Chardonnay flavors and aging characteristics?
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Wil:
I appreciated your clarifying comments about Diam usage and SO2 levels impacting the aging curve. One of the variables IMO is the amount of molecular SO2- the gaseous form of SO2, which provides the most effective protection against oxidation- in the wine @ bottling. And the amount of molecular is dependent on pH: lower pH, higher molecular. Even with white Burgs, there’s quite a range of molecular after a few years. As Will and Marcus have appropriately mentioned, there are other factors affecting longevity in Chardonnay. At the same time, some of the producers listed have higher molecular years after bottling. We continue to evaluate our approach but as Marcus points out, one needs to be thoughtful.
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Great set of threads and discussion about Diam. I admittedly don’t know much about making wine–I’m more of a drink, don’t think, guy, but we seem to be in the midst of an appropriate swing back in terms of diam usage. folks switched to high number diam corks with somewhat too much sulfur as a reaction to the premox scourge, but I thinkmost folks now realize there was a bit of an over-reaction. Diam 30 to me seems silly. I’m most familiar with Fevre (since about 2002). They shifted to long diam 10’s, which cured the premox, but for me the wines are moving somewhat too slowly (some of their negotiant wines are under diam 5’s) In my mind, a Diam 7.5 (which doesn’t exist as far as I know) with an appropriately reduced amount of sulfur, would be perfect, depending upon the wine, of course.
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This is interesting, and makes sense
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I think that a lot depends on pH. I’ve had 10 year old Ganevat Chardonnay with no added sulfites that’s fresh and alive, largely, I think, because of a careful, extended elevage and very low pH. There’s a lot we don’t really understand about sulfites…
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Diam number versus sulfur seems to be solved by Lafon to me. They are nailing EVERY vintage IMHO. I know it is more complicated than that with picking time (ripeness) etc.
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20 lafon meursault Perrieres was just ridiculous.
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Yes Michael. It still is ridiculous. One of the special ones.
I love all the info in this comment itself, including still not fully understanding sulfites and their interaction with different closures.
We do know that lower pHs requireless SO2 to prevent oxidation, all things considered. But we also need to look at dissolved oxygen levels at bottling, total SO2 levels, and a few other variables.
Then we need to look how how the wine was stored after bottling - temperature affects the rate of all chemical reactions and therefore the warmer the wine is stored, the less effective free SO2 will be, again all things considered…
Cheers
Let me ask you - do you honestly think that people commenting on their experiences in this thread have anything but excellent storage?
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regarding storage, i remember reading in an interview that ganevat’s cellar is not all that cold and that he seemed to think that allowed for his wines to be more durable.
somehow he and labet (probably a few others too) manage to harvest at high potential alcohol over 14 degrees in this string of recent hot vintages and still retain ph closer to 3 than 3.5.