I don’t know if this would explain it, but I believe that vines often weren’t that healthy 50+ years ago. Plus, there has been a lot of replanting, no doubt on different rootstocks and possibly with different clones. Perhaps that alters the chemistry. I assume the numbers you’re citing, Roy, are for wines of relatively recent years.
Well, La Mission and Haut Brion both typically producer higher-pH wines because of where they are located, in the warm suburbs of Bordeaux, where nighttime temperatures are much warmer than in the Médoc. And then you have to factor in the impact of >2/3 years élevage in barrel in a humid cellar on alcohol levels. I do not find it implausible: so many things were done differently in terms of vine genetics, viticulture, and winemaking back then that extrapolating between today’s wine chemistry and that of the 1950s and before makes little sense. Instead, the numbers are interesting as an example of what once was possible and how different the wines of today are from those of yesteryear, even though they may come from the same vineyard and carry the same label.
These numbers came from a friend, so I don’t know what the level was like, but I am utterly unconvinced that even a low fill bottle is going to lose a meaningful percentage of alcohol by transpiration though a cork under normal cellar conditions. It has sometimes been claimed that wines do loose alcohol in bottle, but no one has ever been able to explain how. Nevertheless, I’m asking a winemaker friend who has a big wine library to run numbers on >20-year-old wines for which he has very accurate data on alcohol at bottling just to see. I’ll report back.
As for pH 3…75-3.85 being some sort of ideal window for Bordeaux and Napa, I’m not convinced either. That’s a higher pH than all the great Bordeaux cited in this thread, excepting only the La Mission '55. In fact, I’d argue that the deliberate pursuit of that pH range, which was built into Bordelais oenology by Ribéreau‐Gayon, is one of the reasons so much contemporary Bordeaux tastes flat and soupy after a decade of bottle age.
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A significant leaf virus problem could retard sugar production that much.
Shall we launch a Bring Back Leaf Virus movement?
Of course that would be reckless, and I’m sure you were TIC. But, there are all sorts of products and techniques that can be applied, so you can slow down sugar accumulation. Of course that’s labor intensive. There is a gradual replacement of the mistake of putting in too efficient rootstock (for sugar accumulation), but it’s cost prohibitive to get ahead of the game. It’s all a can of worms. The market can correct for misjudgements of the past, critics can learn. There is some correction going on. There are excellent higher alcohol wines that age well, so no issue with them. There is a subjective appreciation of wines that burn - we just did a retrospective of such a producer, with most in attendance being fans. They weren’t for me, but that’s fine. Some producers are clear that the big wines they make should be consumed young. That’s fine. It’s when critics and producers misrepresent how the wines will age that there’s a problem. Of course, we have seen a backlash to that. That’s why this forum exists.
Like Red Blotch?
Was browsing through this thread again and wondered if your winemaker friend had produced any numbers you might be able to share with us? Or am I asking too early? Mighty curious.
Not yet, should pester him!
Evaporation of alcohol vs water is depending upon temperature and humidity % over time. It’s possible to pick up a small amount of alcohol in bottle, but my guess is not a huge shift. As far as alcohols and pH’s, I never realized that the two were that closely aligned in Napa and Bordeaux - there is so much variability in all of the varieties that I work with that that concept just seems a bit ‘strange’ to me . . . but then again, I am not a Bordeaux expert in any way.
Cheers.
So the 1947 Cheval Blanc was 14.4%…not as high as what we’re talking about here…but one of the best vintages in 1900’s for this house?
Allegedly - that is discussed above - though it doesn’t really taste that way. If it is 14.4%, then it is totally aberrant compared to the analysis of the other great Bordeaux in this thread. And even if the high VA, high alcohol & residual sugar formula worked for the 1947 Cheval Blanc, I’m not convinced it’s a recipe we should be trying to reverse engineer and apply to all contemporary red wines…
I found that when I did acid tests on my own reds, a sweet spot seemed to be around 3.6pH for my palate. But of course it depends on tannin levels and RS etc - a very dry tannic wine can get harsh with a low pH and vice versa.
I agree, It’s more a statement of curiosity to me than anything else. I’ve only had a handful of wines from the 50’s-60’s in Bordeaux but I always noticed them as wines of lower alcohol than the standard of today. I was listing it more asa curiosity rather than a justification of high alcohol wines. My favorite red wines tend to range from 11.5% - 13.5%. I am still curious about how those wines will age over time…not that I’m gambling on many bottles. It’s sort of like White Burgundy for me…I’m willing to see what happens to a few “for curiosity’s sake”.
This is crazy when you realize that La Mission Haut Brion was over 15% alcohol in 2012 (!) but just 12% in 1990! So it’s not about global warming, folks.
William,
These numbers are counter-intuitive. I have primitive equipment here in Maine, but think I will upgrade. I’ve got '82 Mouton penciled in for this Christmas. I’ve had this wine half a dozen times, my guess would have been ~13 - 14%. When I open my last bottle, I’ll report.
Thank you.
Dan Kravitz
To this day one of my favorite articles is an interview with Madame Bize-Leroy where she details her beliefs on alcohol vs. balance and states that many of her Chevalier-Montrachet wines achieve over 16% naturally.
These were all done by ETS labs…
No wonder I never liked 61 Petrus…just couldn t get a buzz not one bit!
As anyone ever verified that the permeability rate of alcohol v. water through a cork is identical? Maybe alcohol is simply more volatile and managed to get its way through the cork faster, so the older wines show up with less ABV then they started out with. I know that in various conversations with producers in Piedmont, they have uniformly told me that they have much higher alcohol contents then they shown on their labels, but they considered a matter of pride to cheat the Government by understating alcohol content on the label.
There was some discussion in a thread back in the eBob days. The loss of alcohol over time (which, as I recall, was due to some chemical process, not evaporation, because a sound cork is pretty impermeable) was extremely small – insignificant even over decades.
Today there’s not only the tax incentive to understate alcohol. Many consumers are wary if they see a 15% Barolo. No one (expect perhaps Parker, who seems likely to have been misinformed) maintains that these old Bordeauxs were anywhere near that ABV level originally.