Plenty of white varieties can age well. It’s as much about the the winemaking and the site. Some less common grapes, like Fiano, Falanghina and Carricante are known for aging well.
People have noted in this thread that the WB winemaking changed, as in to drinking well on release, but everyone is looking at the closure as the problem? It’s more like the changes in winemaking made the high degree of variability of cork permeability an issue. Using DIAM and the like is a quality control measure that allows producers to continue making more vulnerable wines. I’ll just say some producers have figured out how to continue their style without needing to switch closures to keep the wines safe.
And I had a bottle of 2011 Fevre Bougros a couple of weeks ago that was also pristine. Making me rethink my moratorium…especially now that they are under DIAM.
I opened a 2002 Domaine Michel Niellon Chassagne-Montrachet Les Champgains 1er this evening. What a beautiful wine. Some honeyed-nuttiness but plenty of citrus and a good vibrancy. Not a hint of sherry. I now have a clarity of what an aged WB should be like.
Buying wines and drinking them before they reach 5-6 years of age?
Buying wines and aging as you did in the “old days”, as in 10 years or more, and accepting that a certain percentage will be advanced or dead?
Buying wines (and overpaying) from producers you feel have a lower incidence (Raveneau, ?older Coche, pre-?2002 Leflaive, ?any others)?
Buying wines from producers bottling under DIAMs?
Not being sarcastic…just wondering what a careful hunt means for you, since I stopped buying years ago in frustration, and I miss it.
But I do not find there are even barely equivalent alternatives, nor do I think WB’s consumed before their 5th birthday are worth their hefty price tags, nor do I relish simply carrying on as if all was well and pouring a number of expensive wines down the drain.
A little bit of all above, and probably less risk averse than those that bought heavy in the mid-90s - 00s and really got hammered by POX. Don’t get me wrong, I have poured Monty’s, Chevy’s, Ramonet’s, Leflaive’s and others down the drain, absolutely infuriating.
My strategy is vintage (so far 2008, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2017 in recent years), producer, closure, quality level mostly 1er), vineyard. Buy more 1er and GC Chablis than in the past too, but it doesn’t hit highs that Puligny, Chassagne and Meursault do for my palate.
Then as I said, with the above, I am up for some risk at my age, but think I have limited what I can short of not buying at all. Raveneau, Coche and Leflaive all fall out of my price range for 99.9% of wines.
My biggest fear is will they age the same as they did in past and deliver same highs with new closures and techniques? Odd thought.
To answer the OP’s question: yes. Premox, with combination of prices and a change in palate. WB purchase and planned purchase has diminished significantly. I now prefer dry rieslings and grower champs; for they age better, I love them much more and they are far cheaper.
Ditto (just as I was about to start exploring). I still buy Macon wines, which seem to mature just as well as before, but barring the very occasional Chablis, I simply don’t buy enough to have anything (white) mature in the rest of Burg.
Unfortunately, the best strategy, and the most cynical, is to have good friends who are still willing to take the risk. My friends have all wised up, and we are running out of bottles left over from the era when we were unknowingly playing roulette.
Now we all know where we stand and the risk, I can’t imagine going thru 1996 to 2006-ish in buying mode. For as many things I regret missing: 1982, 1989, 1990 BDX, Truchot reds, etc…glad i was too young to be buying heavy those White Burg years so I got singed vs. burned.
As one of John’s wised-up friends, there is not a single producer I can find and afford (which means no Raveneau, and I am not even sure Coche under the son will be the same as it was…not unscathed but at least a lower incidence) whom I trust. I think I trust those wines under DIAM, based on what I have been hearing, to not get premoxed and stay pristine, but I am not sure whether they will age over time as in the old days. And although pristine is better than dead, there would be little difference between drinking a three year old wine (which for me is it worth the tariff) and a 15 year old wine that tastes like it did at three years of age…I mean, what would be the point? So I guess I need to hear that the wines under DIAM develop over time as they used to in the days before premox set in.
Mel, it depends on defining “problem”. To me the “problem” is the group of random wines that are spoiled, in any given group. There is no “problem” imo, with the bottles that are fine. So, what , other than the corks, accounts for the “problem”? The same wine, same bottle, etc. under a different cork (all corks are “different”) is glorious. So, it’s not the winemaking.
And, the assumption that the whole WB industry is at fault for those [minority of bottles] which are bad, IMO, has thwarted a solution. The artisanal winemakers are relegated to feeling responsible to solve the problem, when they haven’t created it, other than to stick a too-rigid cork in a particular bottle. So…no one is responsible for rectifying the problem. If Diam works, (and there are compromises, for sure) , it might shed light on the culprit: the over baked corks that act like dried out sponges trying to make a seal.
The cork industry, it seems to me, has wholly escaped blame and any effort to acknowledge the problem or figure out its cause, when it is the most logical culprit. That work is doomed by the time the finished cork leaves Portugal.
Beaunehead:
You are aptly named.
The cork industry is not perfect but I don’t think they are to blame here.
Are we to say that those producers who have escaped this issue have selected better corks than those who have made mistakes?? That Americans get better corks than Burgundians??
I still think the causes of the problems are:
1/higher must weights and lower acid levels of grapes being harvested now
2/new presses, which yield fewer solids/less lees/less glutathione in the wine
3/less SO2 being used
4/less reductive winemaking
Think of a wheel supported by spokes. You remove or weaken a few spokes and you are asking for trouble.
Then how do you explain the multitude of good bottles that are fine? Just lucky?
No one is “selecting” corks. They are punched and then baked in a kiln to kill bacteria. Because they are natural things, they are very variable. The same heat in a kiln can render one as rigid as a pencil and another a moist sponge. Luck of the draw within any given kiln batch or whatever batch you want. Same luck of the draw applies where the corks are too dry to hold the SO2 in, etc. Doomed.
None of the stuff you list dooms the good bottles. So, the changes aren’t the issue.
“Asking for trouble” is a silly argument. The bad ones receive it…because of the one CLEAR variable: the rigidity of the corks.
those are factors that the imperfect corks catalyse, or allow, if you will, premox to occur. If not, explain why Burgundy wines under Diam or screwcap don’t premox.
I don’t bite on the corks being the sole, or primary, reason for the issue (and there is an issue Stuart). How does that explain that there’s a clear and definite timeline when this started, being the 1996 vintage. What, the cork producers just happen to start stripping the bark off of a batch of bad trees?
While there may be cork involvement, something happened with the winemaking too that caused this. That’s the only plausible explanation of why everything before a certain vintage was generally ok, and everything after a certain vintage was Russian roulette.
Do we really know that people using Diam don’t suffer from premox? This technology was introduced around 2005 and has been only widely adopted since 2010.
Screw caps? I have not seen too much of this for whites from the Cote d Or.
We ve seen premox hit certain domaines more than others… did they piss off their cork supplier??
I am just wondering…has anyone here had a premoxed bottle under DIAM?
(Of course, wines that are at least 7 years of age are of the most interest, as we would expect bottles fated to turn to do so by then…but any premoxed bottles under DIAM experiences out there?)