J'accuse: Criminal Stem Inclusion Levels in 2009 Bouchard Red Burgundies

WINE TALK
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Since we had a few producers chime in, I’ll post a few thoughts as well.

First of all, I think its good that producers aren’t all following in one identical method. Selfishly, this gives me as a consumer more options in what to buy, lay down and to drink at different times in their individual developments.

There is absolutely no one method I look to when buying, drinking or enjoying a wine. If I listed my favorite producers, they will show methods/philosophies (I cringe more and more at ‘style’ - I imagine the bottle sporting a set of cheap sun glasses) of one producer which are at odds with the next producer’s methods/philosophies, at times almost opposites.

My personal philosophy and resulting methods are a bit more exacting, generally. I perform each step of the process, not because I think it results in ‘the best wine’, or because it will result in having a wine displaying specific nuances. My choices have been formed by what is most interesting to me. Natural? I can’t call it one way or the other.

Stems specifically can be quite pleasurable in red Burgundy. I can’t see anything inherently wrong with them. So, many wines are bought from producers that employ the use of stems for my personal consumption. When I do this, I don’t say, ‘I’d really like some stems in my premier cru for lunch’ and reach for a bottle. I generally know what to expect from certain producers and the resulting wine is much more than what one may read in reading their philosophies and methods performed. Let’s face it, all of the philosophy and brilliant recipes don’t promise a thing. It is the complete wine which you must experience, not a stylish brochure.

I de-stem everything. There is no right answer. But, what I personally am interested in seeing for myself is what differences rest in the grapes themselves. Stems can be great, but you draw a line for what makes the most sense and what you are shooting for in your wines. For our wines, I’ve focused in on wanting this comparison (grapes from vineyard A and grapes from vineyard B) as something I can look at more with less distracting variables such as the ripeness or percentage of stems used in one vintage compared to the other vintage, changes in percentages in new oak, and oak barrel age.

I’ve failed in some of this. It is a process, and it can not (and should not) be perfect. But, you try to do what you have an interest in, and try to share it. I did add whole cluster in 09 to a cuvée since it was the right thing to do given the circumstances (long story, prefer to not rehash here), and things worked out, thankfully. But, for the way that I see our wines, I prefer to see grape to grape comparisons over vintages. It is a simple preference, not the best or only path to take by any means. Needless to say, great results can be gained from any and everything, with varying degrees of usage for each activity/choice, stems being one of them.

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How about: I like fruit salad better without mushrooms, but they work well in risotto.

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Richard:

I find myself in utter disagreement with you about almost everything you said.

First, with respect to the 2009 Bouchards, my tasting notes are radically different than yours and I thought the barrel samples I tasted were excellent wines – not green or excessively tannic at all. In contrast, I did not care for the 2009 Faiveley grand crus enough to buy any of them. I’ll see if I can type up my notes for a comparison with your own. MOREOVER, SINCE 2006 FAIVELEY HAS USED WHOLE CLUSTER TOO! Quoting from Burghound Issue 41 on the Faiveley 2009’s: “The amount of destemming varied considerably, indeed between 0% and 100%.”

As for the 2008 Bouchards, the entire vintage is one marked by firm acidity and firm tannins, including not just Bouchard but every other producer. Every critic who has tasted the 2008 Bouchard reds has said they were excellent (I have not tasted them myself) and the Bonnes Mares and Beze are considered two of the top wines of the vintage.

I also completely disagree with your suggestion that whole cluster fermentation makes the wines taste green or excessively tannic. I see absolutely no evidence of that – except where someone attempts to do whole cluster with insufficiently ripe grapes. The DRC and Dujac wines, if anything, have the reputation of coming across “sweeter” and more instensely fruity than their counterparts. Crossing the pond, all of my favorite California pinot producers use whole cluster, vintage permitting, often anywhere from 20% to 50% by volume, i.e., Williams-Selyem, Rhys, Talley Rosemary’s, Anthill Farms, Rivers-Marie, Kutch and WesMar. The only other producer’s pinot I regularly buy is Rochioli, and I’m not sure whether they use any whole cluster or not.

In 2009 in burgundy, the problem in some cases was that juice lacked structure – very high ripeness with very modest acidity and in most cases very soft tannins. If anything, any added tannins that might have been contributed by whole cluster fermentation were probably welcome. Moreover, the argument that using whole cluster fermentation makes the wines more difficult to drink in the first two or three years in the bottle, even if true (and I have no opinion because I generally try to avoid pinot noir during that period), is a big “SO WHAT?” to me. The last thing in the world I want to see happen is for winemakers to start using techniques which are calculated to make the wine more drinkable in the first few years after bottling – because that inevitably shortens the longevity of the wine and that’s precisely what triggered the premox crisis in white burgundy.

If you don’t like whole-cluster fermentation flavors then you’d better avoid the 2009 burgundy vintage in total, because my understanding is that a lot of producers used whole-cluster in 2009 who don’t normally do so due to the very high ripeness levels and concerns about making big fruit bombs. I’ve spoken to a couple of producers who have insisted that using whole cluster can help lower the alcohol level by half a percentage point. For a lot of burgundy producers, that would be a huge help in 2009 and I suspect that for many any additional tannin that whole cluster fermentation might have added was quite welcome.

The winemakers I’ve spoken to about this over the years all insist that doing a percentage of whole cluster does three things: 1) it adds considerable aromatic complexity, most often adding an element of rose petals or brown spice (and I find rose petals all the time in DRC, Dujac and Williams-Selyem wines); 2) it adds mid-palate complexity to the wines – again spice and light earth tones – and deaccentuates the fruitiness of the wine a little; and 3) it adds a softer mouth-feel to the wine.

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You beat me to it Claude!

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As posted in the original thread, stems can be extremely interesting in Syrah. We ferment all of our Syrahs with 30-100% stems. Why? Aromatic complexity, intensity and depth of flavor. What is most interesting, and I think this is where many producers go wrong, is that percentage of stems, in our experience, has nothing to do with the degree of stem lignification. We have some vineyards that have neon green stems and we can ferment 100% without green flavors. Other vineyards has woody, brown stems and if we ferment even 50%, the wine turns to asparagus. Its a trial and error process to figure out what percentage with each vineyard. I have had talks with Rhone producers as well that have confirmed this as well.

Great debate.

Stems rule.

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Sounds like you tasted barrel samples; I tasted recently released finished wines. There have been huge changes at Faiveley since '06, but I don’t believe stem inclusion is one of them. Jasper Morris, in the book published last year, writes that “[t]he grapes are entirely destemmed” at Faiveley, at least since 2007. I will check with Faiveley’s U.S. distributor, however, to see if I can get a definitive answer on the '09s.

The '08 Bouchard Beze and Bonnes Mares did get very high ratings from Allen and Tanzer. I have not tasted the BM, but I found the Beze dreadfully mired in stems. My rating and comments on it are in my post above. More often than not I agree with Allen and Tanzer, but in this case I do not. So what’s your point? The '08 Bouchard reds I tasted were pretty green across the board. I think they, and the '09s, suffer from too much stem inclusion. I used to love the fruit on the Bouchard reds, and now they’re enveloped by a whole lot of stemmy flavors. That’s what I’m reporting. Clearly there are some who enjoy stemminess as much or more than they like pure Pinot fruit. I am not among them.

I already expressed my position and the support for it in my two posts on stems. I am unaware of the reputation you claim for DRC and Dujac wines.

You, like others above, have seized on my comments about what the high stem inclusion does to the drinkability of the village and lesser premier cru wines in the first several years as though I endorse drinking grand cru Burgs in the first few years after release. I don’t, as I’ve already indicated in this thread. Village and lower level wines should, however, be drinkable after two to three years in the bottle in most vintages, and may not last all that many years after that, so the fact that stem inclusion makes them more tannic and overwhelmed by the green flavors is the problem I was referring to in my post.

I’ve heard the same claims from some winemakers who use a lot of whole cluster. I think #3 is probably quite true, from a lot of samples I’ve tried, but I don’t highly value a softer mouth feel compared to the loss of pure Pinot fruit. I question that stem inclusion is necessary for #1, as I find a lot of those same aromas in Pinots made without the whole cluster. The kind of complexity stems add, when more than about 15% stem inclusion, tend to swamp the pure Pinot flavors that I’m looking for and not just add to the flavors. If they simply added to the flavors–as they do in some cases, of course–I’d have much less objection.

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Greg,
You and a couple of other people on this thread seem to have ignored this statement in my original post: “If you want to include a lot of stems in making red wine, I urge you to consider Syrah, which can greatly benefit from stem inclusion. When it comes to more delicate red grapes, and their sexy red and blue fruit characteristics, however, such as Pinot Noir and Grenache, kindly keep all that green material to a minimum.”

I think stem inclusion can be a wonderful thing for Syrah, and I’ve definitely argued for it on my blog. What I’ve tried to explain is that Pinot is a more delicate grape, and that it can easily get swamped by the kinds of stemmy flavors that Syrah seems to accommodate very well.

I appreciate your very interesting observation, though, that the degree of lignification does not correlate, in your experience, with being able to ferment without the green flavors. That’s quite fascinating.

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Patrick Bize bucked all conventional wisdom and went 100% whole cluster in 2010 and the stems were neon green. Like Greg states and others like Roger Boulton at UC Davis have stated, stem lignification is overrated IMHO in whether any greeness will be extracted. I find no greeness in the 2010 Bize wines, if anything a pronounced fruity character along with the structured goût de Bize.

Yes Greg, Stems rule.

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I didn’t ignore it at all, though up til now I hadn’t commented. It jumped off the screen at me. I’m relatively new to your writing, Richard, but from what I have read I found that out of character. It’s the first time I’ve seen you stake out a dogmatic position on a matter of personal preference or individual taste. I was surprised.

EDIT: Whole cluster fermentation of Grenache is a traditional, though by no means universal, practice in Chateauneuf. An example: Rayas, often 100% whole cluster and considered by many to be one of the finest expressions of Grenache on the planet.

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Richard:

I did indeed taste Bouchard barrel samples on March 2 and the 09 Faiveleys were barrel samples as well tasted on February 21. Given the differences in our views, I’ve got to believe what you’re reacting so negatively to is the traditional “bottle shock” and/or “travel shock” because the wines didn’t get excessively tannic and green between March 2 and now. As for Faiveley’s use of whole cluster, my information is direct from Bernard Hervet, when he was here in Los Angeles earlier this year. It is also published in several places, including Burghound. That’s not the first misstatement I’ve encounterd from Jasper’s book (though I do like it for the most part) and as others have pointed out there are others on his list of alleged destemmers who do in fact do some whole cluster fermentation in some vintages.

As for the 2009 Bouchard wines, here are a selected set of notes that I took in March which I think will better reflect what the wines are like without bottle/travel shock:

2009 Bouchard Chambolle Musigny
Deep violet color; rich cherry and strawberry aromas; rich, really nice cherry and light earth flavors; very charming, and reminds me of a Roumier Chambolle from a good vintage. 90-92

2009 Bouchard Echezaux
Pretty violet-red color; aromas of earth and red berries; this is lean, structured, and it has an earth undertone behind dark cherry fruit; very nice for Echezaux. 91-93

2009 Bouchard Volnay Caillerets Cuvee Anciens Carnot
Deep red-violet color; plum and cherry aromas; on the front of the palate this is richer than the others; there is a forward swell of blue and red fruit, than a tighter middle which is more structured; the finish on this one has noticeable tannins. 90-93

2009 Bouchard Le Corton
Very deep red-black color and close to opaque; blackcherry aromas; some dust, brambles, and background red cherry and blackcherry on the palate; this is powerful wine and very rich and very long on the palate with lots of underlying structure concealed in voluptuous fruit. The class of the evening by far. 93-95

And some notes from a February dinner with Bernard Hervet where the grand crus from 2007 to 2009 were served all brought directly from Faiveley:

2009 Faiveley Latricieres Chambertin
Very deep garnet; hints of violet, plum and mocha tones in the aromas; rich plum and mocha notes on the flavors, fairly rich compared to the prior vintages, but no noticeable tannins or acidity. Is there any structure here? 91

2009 Faiveley Mazis Chambertin
Deep violet color, nearly opaque; forward exotic plum and mocha aromas; on the palate this has rich mocha notes and some background fruit which seems a bit diffuse; it is very soft and I really don’t have any sense of where this wine will go. Later, I noted that there is more tannin in the finish on this one than the 09 Beze. 90+?

2009 Faiveley Chambertin Clos de Beze
Deep violet color; extremely forward and rich berry aromas again with mocha notes; on the palate this had some rich blue fruit but very modest tannins and low acidity; charming fruit but the very low acidity really scares me on this wine. 90+?

2009 Faiveley Clos de Corton
Deep violet color which is dense but not opaque; aromas of cherries, mocha and cream; cherries and mocha flavors; some modest acidity is at least detectable in this wine as are the soft edge tannins; this clearly has the best balance and structure of the 2009 Faiveleys, but its clearly not as good as the 2008 in my view. 92+

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I like the new, curmudgeonly RJ. Stand up for your rights! What other incendiary positions will you be taking? Will we see you this weekend?

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Thanks for these notes. For my tastes these wines seem like a nightmare of wasted money so Im glad to read this.

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I think this thread shows that winemaking is a complex and sometimes unexplainable endeavor; and those of us who think otherwise are not as smart as we think we are.

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Thanks Ian. There are a few things that get me wound up now and again. I love Pinot Noir too much to see it overwhelmed by stemmy flavors, and this tendency has definitely been on the rise the last few years.

I look forward to seeing you, and checking out the latest Coastviews this weekend.

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I pointed it out earlier and I will point it out again. Take a look at Rousseau’s webpage and his classement des millésimes. His village wines in years that he believes are to be consumed relatively young are suggested to be opened after 5 to 6 years.

Fruity wine designed to be consumed within 2 or 3 years are wines made with 10 days cuvaison and are aged in inox tanks. The entire purpose of longer vat times and élevage in barrels is to draw out additional complexity from the grapes (and wood of the barrels) which results in a finished product that will take longer bottle aging before the more concentrated characteristics of the wine have reached an equilibrium. Stems are just another source of complexity that the vigneron can choose to add to the mix.

I do not and will not consider Rousseau’s, or any other good vigneron’s, Village wines as being designed to be consumed early for their fruity pleasure. The vanillin from the barrels takes longer than that to integrate, even if the barrel regime is 0% new wood. If you still find Village wines with stems unenjoyable after 5 or 6 years then so be it. But don’t argue that a 2008 or 2009 is too “stemy”. Please revisit these bottles (Village level only) in 2013 for the 2008’s and 2019 for the 2009’s to pass correct judgement. Or correctly state that you have concerns the 2009’s might not integrate the characteristics introduced by the stems by the time they are ready to drink rather than arguing the Village wines from 2009 will be too green to drink in 2012.

It seems that you have a problem with the philosophy of a lot of producers. I hope your frustration is shared by a limited audience. I would be devastated if Burgundy moved to making wines more enjoyable at 2 years old. That would be a “criminal” loss of the elegant complexity pinot noir can offer.

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Paul,

You’re hung up on what Eric Rousseau of Dom. Armand Rousseau says about when to drink their villages wines, and are taking that as the rule for the rest of Burgundy? Tres bizarre! The Rousseau wines are certainly among the greatest in Burgundy. I’m sure Eric often declassifies fruit from premier and grand cru vineyards in particular vintages into the villages. He totally destems. There also may be some ambiguity with Rousseau’s suggestion. The website just says “to drink after 5-6 years.” That probably means after the vintage, rather than release as I’ve been talking about. Most producers that give drinking windows are typically referring to the vintage, as that’s the easiest way for most consumers to count forward, just looking at the bottle. Most of us aren’t going to know exactly when the wine was released. At any rate, Eric may feel that these wines are best appreciated five to six years after the vintage, which would be three to four years after release. They may well be. At any rate, I go with what my palate tells me. I’ve drunk hundreds of villages Burgundies over the years. From some heavily structured vintages like '05, I may want to wait two to three years, or more, but usually the villages and lower level wines are best drunk, in my experience, within the first one to five years after release. That would be three to eight years after the vintage, n’est-ce pas? Some that I’ve overlooked for several years are pretty much worse for wear by the time I get to them. At any rate, you are welcome to follow Rousseau’s proposed drinking window advice for wines from throughout Burgundy, but I hardly see that advice as a logical basis for attacking a post that was dealing primarily with the effects of heavy stem inclusion.

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Rousseau used stems in 2009, that is why I selected his wines. It didn’t hurt that he published a schedule to bottle age recommended online. I am not painting with a broad brush, I have selected a single vigneron that you seem to like. If you enjoyed Rousseau’s 2009’s, you might rethink your argument.

Drinking the wines at a young age is your choice. I have enjoyed form my own collection and been served by vigneron +10 year old village wines and have appreciated the majority. I guess I am just lucky.

Richard, I am just a little surprised that you came out and poo-pooed so many great estates and their current philosophies. I have enjoyed reading your blog and was disappointed to read this recent article. I thought you were past extreme opinions. But if you hold true to form that is one less buyer of some pretty great domaines.

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Paul,

I have not yet tasted the Rousseau '09s. Do you know what percentage of stems Eric used in that vintage?

In my post, I highlighted some of the great estates that use stems, as so many people point to them as the example. I am frankly tired of the high stem inclusion in DRC. They have some of the most amazing vineyards in Burgundy, and their wines would be even more amazing without 100% stem inclusion, IMHO. And I’ve had great enjoyment from Bouchard wines in the past–that’s why the '09 (and '08) tasting was such a disappointment, leading me to write a (hopefully) provocative piece that would get people thinking about the trend toward greater stem inclusion in Pinot Noir. From this wonderful thread, I’m thinking I was at least somewhat successful in that.

I"m glad you’ve enjoyed the blog in the past.

warm regards,
Richard

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The market’s spoken. I’m afraid you’ve been outvoted.

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The market has bought more DRC with stems than DRC without stems?