Jancis discusses premox and plugs Don Cornwell’s Wiki in today’s Financial Times. All attention on this topic is appreciated.
Thanks, Brady. I would have hoped that Jancis might have offered some insights into the problem. But, she doesn’t really, beyond a superificial description of the WIKI and of some winemakers’ latest attempts at combat. Maybe that’s all that’s really known…but I doubt that.
The column is really more about the 2009s, unfortunately.
Thanks for the link. I certainly wouldn’t have read it otherwise.
Thought I read somewhere here? , someone posted up some newer info that Allen Meadows had on the current theories of the premox causes?
At any rate Ms. Robinson’s article is not particularly well researched. Look at the wiki notes on Cornwell’s annual ‘what about now’ premox tastings (which as DC mentioned on another thread here will this year be a retrospective 1996, 1999, 2000 tasting of some of the prior wines tasted in previous years, but I believe other wines also?), you can see that there have been a few disappointing bottles of Leflaive.
Moreover, the now ‘leading’ wine critic of Burgundy these days, Bourghound has noted a problem with Raveneau, as noted by Robison as one of the “and Raveneau whose wines seem to be unaffected by this mysterious pox.”
in the 1996 Valmur tasted Chez Raveneau. And people have been reporting, (but not entering into the wiki pages) premoxed Burgs from more recent vintages like 2005 (some here on WB).
(> from a bottle tasted at the Domaine> ). Moderate but still very fresh secondary notes that reflect nuances of bee’s wax and the first hints of sous bois lead to intense, vibrant and mineral-driven flavors infused with ample citrus, all wrapped by a firm, edgy and pure finish. Despite the maturing fruit, I would be inclined to hold this for another 2 years and then drink over the next 5 to 10. From another bottle affected by a touch of > premature oxidation > - The color is a more advanced gold than I expected and certainly more so than the bottle of '96 Blanchots tasted a few days earlier. The nose reveals a trace of oxidation and while it’s by no means enough to kill the enjoyment of the wine, it does detract as well as give one pause as to how this will evolve over the next few years. The flavors are classic Valmur with its incredibly precise and mineral-laden, moderately austere flavors and laser-like focus. As is the case with so many '96s, the nose is out in front of the structure and while I certainly liked this wine, it’s not clear that this is going to reward further cellaring.
Score: 91. —Allen Meadows, June 16, 2006
Seems that other noted ITB people have said the problem with premature and/or oxidized expensive wh. Burgs, pre-dates 1995; just seems to be a higher incidence with more recent vintages of the last decade or so.
But I wonder if the ones from pre 95 are premox problems or just wines showing their / not stored properly.
Last night at dinner a friend brought three 96s-Roumier CC, Niellon Chevalier and Carillon Bienvenues-because he knew that to have even a chance of a good bottle he’d need that many, As it happened the Carillon was truly great in the way that 96s can sometimes be. The Niellon was totally undrinkable, the Roumier only slightly undrinkable, but very poor.As discussion around the table made clear again there are no unaffected producers.
Folks have rightly been complaining that the issue doesn’t get high-level publicity: Jancis, writing in the FT, gives it very prominent publicity. She’s not a specialist in the technical details of winemaking and may not understand the problem herself well enough to provide more info. The short FT column format (not to mention the interests of the FT audience) also limits her scope to go into detail. Whatever the strengths and weaknesses of her coverage in toto, she deserves credit at any rate for going high-profile on the issue.
Exactly right, Ian. I agree 100%.
Leflaive is definitely not immune. Until the last 6 months or so, I would have said they were one of the few producers with limited pre-mox, but no more. Recently, a number of Leflaive bottles from recent vintages (2004-2007) have shown either overt premox, or telltale signs that it is about to blossom. Raveneau has been holding up fairly well, with only the occasional bottle showing poorly. Coche has been the only producer with only a to-be-expected occasional off bottle, but a bottle of 2000 Coche Meursault-Perrieres opened tonight was disturbingly dark in color, while the nose was stunning. However, on the tail end of the finish there was a definitive oxidized note.
Someone was kind enough to email me to let me know about Jancis’ article in the Financial Times. I’m very honored by her comments about the wiki site, but those of you who know me, both personally and from these pages, know that the wiki site was born out of frustration about the lack of information from the producers themselves and the seeming indifference of many to the problem.
Let me see if I can help focus the comments on this thread a bit. No one has ever said (me included) that any producer is 100% free from premox. My friend Allen Meadows wrote about the oxidized bottle of 96 Raveneau Valmur, which he noted was tasted at the domaine, I believe to make that point. While I’ve not had any oxidized examples of Coche or Domaine Leroy/D’Auvenay or DRC to date, nor any Raveneau from the 1995 vintage on that was oxidized, I have tasted two examples of oxidized Leflaives – but you have to put the percentage of incidence into perspective. Leflaive is probably my favorite white burgundy producer and I’ve had well over a hundred bottles in the last decade during which I experienced two oxidized bottles. There’s still no doubt in my mind that Leflaive has one of the lowest incidences of premox on the planet. I still buy Leflaive’s wines with confidence that there will be virtually no premature oxidation among those bottles I purchased.
What I’ve said repeatedly, on this Board, on the Squires Board, and on the wiki site, is that the incidence of premature oxidation varies considerably among producers and that there are a handful of producers --the ones I list as Category V on the wiki site – “who have very little premature oxidation as a percentage of bottles opened and indeed seem to have no higher incidence of premature oxidation since 1994 than they did before, i.e., Coche-Dury, DRC, Leflaive, Leroy/D’Auvenay and Raveneau.” At the opposite end of the scale, some producers have a far higher incidence of oxidation than their counterparts (i.e., Guy Amiot, Blain-Gagnard, Bonneau du Martray, Colin-Deleger, Coutoux, Droin, Fontaine-Gagnard, Gagnard-Delegrange, Jadot [starting with 2000 vintage], Jouard, Juillot, Matrot, Montille, Tessier and Verget. In my opinion, those are producers whose wines should be avoided.
People who declare that because no producer is 100% free of premox they aren’t going to drink white burgundy any more are foolish in my view. Make no mistake, there have always been bottles which failed due to premature oxidation, for every producer, even before 1995. I’ve been drinking burgundy since 1978 and I certainly experienced a number of oxidized bottles before 2003, the first year that the phenomenon of what we now refer to as “premature oxidation” was recognized. The difference was that in the old days the incidence was generally very low (on the order of 3% to 6% for most producers and even lower for some) and when premature oxidation occurred it most likely was triggered by catastrophic seal failure – when a particular piece of cork that happened to go into your bottle was far more permeable to oxygen ingress than average and allowed more than the normal amount of oxygen to into the bottle. (See the discussion on the wiki site about variations in cork permeability for more information if you’re interested.)
White burgundy has never been 100% free of premature oxidation. But yes, the problem definitely got much worse after the 1993 than it used to be. But the two relevant questions are (1) why did it get worse? (And conversely what do winemakers having a higher incidence of premox need to do to fix it?); and (2) which producers have the best and worst records on premox? One of the express purposes for creating the wiki site was to give burgundy buyers some accurate information about the variation in that incidence of premox to help identify the worst offenders (i.e. those to avoid) and those producers who had the least problems (i.e. those you want to buy). If you use the information on the wiki wisely, its still quite possible to buy and enjoy white burgundy.
The sad thing is that the progress of scientific research on the premox problem is agonizingly slow. Part of that delay is inevitable as it generally takes between 6 and 7 years before the incidence of oxidized bottles gets high enough to be detectable. So that means that even if the cause(s) of premox were identified and agreed upon by everyone, and winemakers made corresponding changes in the wine-making process to resolve the problem(s) (e.g. adding higher levels of SO2 and/or more firmly pressing the grapes in computer controlled presses) it would take a minimum of seven years after those particular changes were made before anyone could prove that these changes did or did not not resolve the problem. Let’s assume, for example, that the fundamental problem is determined to be that many producers people cut the use of SO2 or made changes in their pressing practices that required correspondingly higher levels of SO2 to keep the wines from oxidizing. Many producers, and perhaps a majority, have increased their level of free SO2 at bottling in recent years, but most of those producers did not increase the level of SO2 until the 2006 or 2007 vintages were being bottled. The net result is that we won’t really know whether the increased use of SO2 has made a bottom line difference on oxidation rates until 2013 or 2014.
But part of the delay in obtaining scientific data on premature oxidation also seems deliberate. The only organization that is doing significant research on the problem is the burgundy trade organization known as BIVB. While that organization shares its data freely with its burgundy producer members via an extranet, BIVB withholds that data from outsiders (even accredited “press members” of the BIVB like Bill Nanson and me). BIVB is extraordinarily slow in releasing information to the public and when information is released, it tends to be concuslory press releases unsupported by data or plausible explanation rather than the release of published data or studies. In 2009, for example, the BIVB put out a short press release purporting to summarize the bottom line conclusoins of some their study efforts about oxidation. That press release found that there were no problems related to cork treatments and also claimed that low SO2 use and light pressing of grapes in new computer-controlled bladder presses had definitely contributed to the oxidation crisis. Now nearly two years later, the underlying data upon which these purported conclusions were based has still not been released. In the meantime, some producer-members of the BIVB, including a couple of very well-regarded winemakers, have condemned these particular findings of the BIVB. We poor consumers who buy the wines and provide the revenues which fuel the burgundy wine-producing machine, are left in the dark trying to figure it out. Our only way of “voting” on this issue is to avoid purchases from producers who consistently produce oxidized wines – and particularly those producers with high oxidation incidence who fail to acknowledge the problem and won’t tell us what they’ve done differently in an attempt to avoid the problem.
The wiki site is merely a tool. It provides an opportunity to educate oneself to help avoid making very costly mistakes. It also provides a clearinghouse for information about the problem. I can assure you that the wiki site does sometimes have a material impact on a given producer who is singled out for oxidation problems – anybody who doesn’t believe me should go ask Gerard Boudot of Sauzet, who was once one of the poster children for premox and was once listed in Category I (the worst offenders) on the wiki site.
Finally, l want to add a note that some producers have absolutely no interest in resolving the oxidation problem other than giving it lip service when purchasers who cellar the wine and expect it to survive and thrive through a normal burgundy life-cycle complain. This type of producer has made the intentional choice that they are going to produce very forward soft wines which will taste like they are ten year old wines after only two years in the bottle. One of the producers who is listed in Category I on the wiki site (who shall for the moment remain nameless), recently engaged in an exchange of emails with a friend of mine who was outraged over the fact that a huge percentage of the wines made after a given date were oxidized. The domaine in question responded with some platitudes about how they were continuing to try to work to identify and fix the “atypical agiing” problem but also stated that: "It is also true that consumer taste has changed and we want white wines to be ready right the way. Most of us want a white wine of 2 years to taste like a white wine of 10 years."
The sad truth about the premox problem is that for at least some producers premox is not a technical failure due to unknown causes, but rather results from a very deliberate choice to make wines in a very forward style which will intentionally oxidize much faster than the wines used to. The critical question for burgundy collectors is – for which producers is this true?
Thanks, Don for your thoughtful and detailed reply.
I think Ms. Robinson clearly “gets it” even if the depth and direction of her response is limited by column inches and, perhaps, relationships. I thought the article was reasonably damning, and gave access to more information for anyone interested.
I don’t know if it’s true in this case but there’s usually a longer version of her FT articles on jancisrobinson.com.
Brady:
I agree completely and I can say that from private conversations I’ve had with Jancis, I know she gets it.
She’s doing all of us a public service – writing about the premox problem in a general circulation newspaper. She’s exposing people to the magnitude of the problem who are more casual burgundy drinkers who don’t subscribe to Burghound or International Wine Cellar, or even the Purple Pages. I know its working because I got an email this evening from an old classmate that I haven’t spoken to in over a decade who read the article, looked at the wiki site, and then emailed me. I could only wish that the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, the Wine Advocate and the Wine Spectator had similar articles.
+1!
Everyone needs to remember that anyone that collects wine is in a pretty geeky/obsessive crowd. And then, there is the subset of supergeeks that enjoy reading/writing and sharing experiences via message boards and blogs (us). Of all the people that buy & collect wine, I’ll bet there are less than 10% that have given the premox issue serious consideration. Any publicity regarding this problem that alerts more consumers is good because is just further pressures the producers to open up and give it its proper attention.
Chris
Thanks Don for writing so sensibly and eloquently about the second worst aspect of the premox problem: the tendency toward the casual tarring of every producer’s reputation and by implication the notion that one can’t any longer sensibly be a buyer and drinker of White Burgundy. I’m particularly glad you had the opportunity to reply to a “softball” on this issue–the observation that “there have been a few disappointing bottles of Leflaive”. In hitting that pitch out of the park, you very effectively underscored the importance of bringing perspective and context to discussions of this issue. Again, thanks.
Yes, I didn’t mean to say she necessarily lacks the technical insight; more that technical depth is beside the point for the purpose of a column like the one she wrote in the FT. The accountability lever for white Burgundy makers is a combination of their own integrity and their fear of damage to their reputation in the popular (not just the geek) market. Discussing the issue pointedly in widely read fora like the FT is one way of pressing on the lever. The potential for reciprocal damage to her relationships with regional producers, as well as folks in the whole retail chain, means that it must have taken some courage to write on the topic.
I imagine concern about damage to the reputation of those producers who are really working on the problem would also make good writers hesitate to play up the issue extensively.
People who declare that because no producer is 100% free of premox they aren’t going to drink white burgundy any more are foolish in my view.
Don,
I agree that such an extreme reaction does not make a great deal of sense, but I for one have sworn off buying any expensive white burgs for aging until the issue is settled, with the exception of Leflaive and Coche-Dury whose wines in my experience have been relatively spared. I buy a number of bourgognes for everyday drinking, and a number of premier crus if they are well priced that I plan to drink within their first 5 years or so of life.
I think the work you have done with your ongoing vintage tastings and the wiki site has been invaluable, and the single most important source of information for consumers. Although many wine critics have discussed the issue in a general sense, specific information on producers and their track records (and why some producers are more spared and what aspects of their winemaking techniues might account for this) have been lacking.
The members of my wine tasting group and i have opened a fair number of white burgs since the problem became evident in the 1995 and particularly the 1996 vintage, and although the classification of producers into the now five groupings is absolutely spot on and mirrors our experience, it seems that the percentage of premoxed bottles in your vintage tastings are consistently lower than ours. For example, although the perecentage of premox in the 1996 vintage was in your tasting something around 18% or so, our experience has been much higher over the years. There have been some marvelous exceptions, but in our tastings over the years (though certainly not as controlled as yours), the bottles of 96’s that have NOT been affected seem to be the exception, or at least in the minority. I have not yet had a Jadot white that has not been premoxed, nor a 96 Sauzet, nor any of my 96 Carillon’s, etc. Although the producers particularly affected has been well described on the wiki site, the absolute percentages we have experienced has been much higher. These wines were all purchased on release and stored in temperature controlled storage, so I am wondering what may account for the differences. If you lived on the East coast (we live in the Northwest) i might wonder whether source and shipping may account for it. Although you also live on the West coast, I wonder whether you source your white burgs through normal channels of distribution or import them yourself from Burgundy, and whether this might make a difference. Some of my wines may have been purchased from Premier Cru, and perhaps grey market sourcing plays a role as well. Again, the trends you have found and the producer variability mirror our experience, but the prevalence in our case has been much higher than in yours.
I only make a point of this because the prevalence may make a huge difference in to what degree someone continues to buy white burgundies and take their chances. If someone experiences an 18% prevalence, they may continue to take their chances, guided by the producer-specific information on the wiki site. If they experience a 60% or greater prevalence, they may be less willing to risk it, particulary with expensive wines. Of course, the wine buyer’s financial circcumstances enter into the equation as well. If I loved a particular producer’s Chevalier and a third of the bottles were affected, my disposable income would influence whether i would continue buying and simply factor the losses into the “purchase price”, versus being unwilling to take chances with bottles that may cost $250+. For some, the pain of finding their expensive grand crus undrinkable is enough to discourage them from buying any expensive wine that will only show its stuff after extended aging.
Again, i continue to buy VERY VERY selectively, and I have not turned my back on the region…I need white burgundy, even if only lesser wines that give me a hint of what I once experienced in my grand crus. And, fortunately, I have enough white burgs in the cellar that most from certain producers and maybe some from some other less reliable producers might be OK. But I understand why someone’s personal prevalence might encourage a wine drinker to turn away, at least for now.
Very well stated, Robert. IIRC, Don’s annual tasting is usually about 6.5 years after the harvest, although I could be off by a year, and that is on the front end of when premox begins to show up in earnest for some vintages. Could that perhaps explain in part your finding of greater % oxidized? It seems evident to me that, for any given wine, the odds of finding oxidation increase as time goes on.
BTW, if turning one’s back on the region makes one foolish, then I’m a fool… but most folks already know I’m a fool…
I believe that the first tasting of the 96 vintage was held in 2006 ten years after the vintage, and the subsequent tastings were held 8 years following the vintage. It is true that I continued to open and taste the 96’s, which was one of my very favorite WB vintages, over a period longer than 10 years…just had a heartbreakingly premoxed 96 Niellon Chevalier last month. Only remaining 96’s I have left at this point are Leflaive, Coche-Dury, and a couple more Niellon Chevaliers that I have to decide what to do with. With each of Don’s vintage tastings I have been surprised at how few wines were oxidized compared to what we have found. With any somewhat randomly occurring affliction, I would expect to see that, for example, their tasted 96 Jadot Chevalier-Montrachet Demoisselles was fine and every Jadot I’ve had has been premoxed, but you would think that Don’s luck would run out at some point and the percentages would climb. That’s why I am wondering whether sourcing might have something to do with it. I await with great anticipation the notes from the retrospective tastings Don is holding now. The Chablis tasting as expected showed a much lower rate of oxidation than previous white burg tastings…we shall see how the other wines have held up!
Robert:
Your question is a good one. I think that the differences can be explained by the following:
(1) I stress to the people attending that I want them to bring bottles in primo condition that were purchased on release and cellared by them. I impose an almost absolute rule that people cannot go out and purchase a bottle from a retailer to bring to the tasting. I also tell the people that I invite that if they don’t have such bottles they either need to choose not to attend, or they should make arrangements with me or another attendee who has original issue stock to obtain a bottle. This rule makes an absolutely HUGE difference, as we demonstrated with the counterpart tasting of 1999’s in New York a few years ago. (See the explanation below);
(2) The annual tastings we do, especially the more recent ones, tend to focus on grand crus and the super 1ers. We also tend to focus on the highest regarded bottlings from among those candidates. Obviously, if we exclude village wine and most of the premier crus we’re going to get a lower percentage of premox at 7.5 years of age than a similar tasting that includes those wines because as we all know, grand crus tend to be longer lived than their premier cru and village counterparts. Also, picking the top-performing or top-rated wines may also be a little bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The wines that got the top scores were judged early on to be those that were the best made wines. Wines that exhibit too much ripeness, too little acid, or which may show markers for rot (which can cause premox), get selected out;
(3) The overwhemling majority of my own burgundy is now purchased in Europe and shipped door to door refrigerated. A few of my colleagues who participate in these tastings do the same thing.
This won’t win me any friends in the US retail industry, but with the exception of a handful merchants around the country who display and store all of their burgundy in proper cellar conditions (e.g. High Time), I would have zero confidence in buying bottles that aren’t new releases from the US retail trade. I simply don’t do it – period. When a US merchant I do have dealings with offers me some wine that isn’t a new release (and I keep track of the normal release dates on the burgundies I care about religously, both here in Europe), I immediately ask the question where did they get the wine from and when did they get it.
One of my biggest peeves about purchasing wine in the United States ![[soap.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/a/a7ea1fffd3ef237e8f19d17a83270ad8452218ca.gif "soap"){kind=small}
is the deplorable conditions under which most of it is cellared and stored by wine merchants. The typical wine merchant receives the wine from the distributor, who may or may not have stored the wine in a refrigerated and properly humidified warehouse, often by non-refrigerated truck delivery, and then “stores” the wine by placing it on the sales floor, where it sits at ambient temperature and humidity conditions until it is sold. Wine ought to be handled like the fresh produce in your grocery store, but its not. I’ve tasted some wines that have been purchased off the sales floor of some well-regarded Southern California, Northern California and New York City wine merchants that have been either notably advanced or prematurely aged and it was obvious that the problem resulted from being stored at ambient temperature for one to three or more years worth of time. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to determine that if a bottle spends a year or more sitting sitting in a retailer’s bin at ambient temperature and humidity the bottle will have a shorter life span than a bottle which went door to door under refrigerated conditions and was stored in proper temperature and humidity.
I don’t mean to suggest that buying from European retailers is radically different, but in many cases it is. To be sure, some merchants in the UK and continental Europe store a lot of their wine on the shop floor too, but the good ones don’t.
How much of a difference does the “purchased on release” or “no purchases from retailers to attend the tasting” rule make? A huge one. When we conducted the series of three 1999 tastings here in Los Angeles we got a 23% incidence of premox. A couple of months later several New York City area collectors decided to conduct their own premox dinner. They got about 45% premox. I compared notes with the organizer and a couple of the collectors who attended and found out that there were two major differences. First, there was no attempt to restrict the tasting to purchased on release bottles and a some people were known to have gone to a certain well known New York retailer I won’t name and they purchased bottles of the 1999 vintage [eight years after the vintage] to attend the tasting. It was no surprise to me that those wines almost universally turned out to be premoxed (and there was a nasty story about the retailer refusing even a partial refund on the purchased wines.) Second, the organizer wasn’t as selective about limiting the bottles contributed to the top wines in each category.
A few months later New York collector Chet Kern reprised the tasting on a more limited scale with some equally enthusiastic white burgundy collectors, strictly limiting the wines to originally sourced bottles or their near equivalents and limited to the top wines from the appelations in question. This time they got just over a 25% premox rate.
Buying from Retailers Who Import Wines from Europe
You mentioned buying wines from Premier Cru. That’s something I’m no longer willing to do, and I haven’t done so for many years. Why? Well, as recognized in multiple threads on this website and previously on the Squires Board, when you buy burgundies from Premier Cru it typically takes 18 months to two years, or sometimes longer, to get delivery and I’ve had it take as long as three and a half years. I’ve also had three instances in which I bought wines from Premier Cru only to have them tell me years later that they couldn’t obtain the wine and would have to refund my money or credit it against something else. While I’m told that Premier Cru has excellent warehousing here in the US, I have no confidence about what happened to the wine in terms of storage and transportation within Europe for the 18 months to 3 years prior to my receiving my purchase from Premier Cru. That relates to how wines are bought and sold in the European market that make their way to the US as so-called grey market imports, as explained below.
My experience with the bottles I bought at Premier Cru has been mixed at best. Some of the wine has been pristine and wonderful, but some of it has clearly not been. I’ve had lots of six bottles where every bottle I opened was either oxidized or heat damaged and needless to say, they weren’t willing to refund my money after the fact when I discovered this either. I’ve also had bottles that showed up with evidence of prior seepage or slightly depressed corks and I’ve had bottles that years later, when tasted side by side with a bottle sourced elsewhere, were notably more advanced.
One of the things that most people don’t realize about buying in Europe is that there is a large industry which has grown up there of "wine traders. These people basically act as traders and brokers. In many cases retailers who purchase some of their wines directly from the domaines also act as traders and purchase wines from other retailers/wine traders who are offering them. The wine traders buy wines from whomever they can and they resell them both to individuals and to other wine traders. Many of these wine traders will immediately take an email that they received from a source offering wines and even though they don’t own the wine, they immediately (or within a day or two) send out the same list of wines to their own customers with a 15% to 25% mark up added. They hope to have a customer offer to purchase the wine from them and then obtain it to fill the order if it is still unsold from the party who originally offered it to them. It is not at all unusual for me to receive an offer from a source I’ve bought from in Europe and then to see the same set of wines reoffered by two or three other retailers/wine traders within the next day or two.
The net result of all of this is that the price on a given wine in Europe can vary markedly depending upon how many times that wine has been bought and sold among the traders and it takes a great deal of knowledge and active ongoing monitoring to know what is a good price and what isn’t.
When somebody purchases the wines from the re-offering wine traders, the wines are shipped from the initial source to the purchasing wine trader and from there to the next purchaser, who may be yet another wine trader. In vintages with very high demand, as for example with 2002, 2005 and 2009 reds, or white wines in very high demand like Raveneau, Lafon, Roulot and Coche-Dury, the same bottle could change hands as many as five or six times before it leaves Europe for the US. At each step, the wine is shipped from one merchant/wine trader to the next by ground transportation (often UPS trucks or the equivalent and generally not refrigerated). It is stored at the receiving location for some period of time and then shipped again (and sometimes again and again.)
This leads to the next dirty little secret. Some of the California retailers who buy bottles in Europe (mostly these purchases are from other retailers or brokers in Europe, not direct from the domaines) ship their wines in less than full container loads (referred to in the trade as LCL). The wines are packed in containers with other goods bound for the same port by freight consolidators. I am told that wines shipped LCL are sometimes not refrigerated, but I have no personal knoweldge on this subject. While it is theoretically possible to ship wine LCL in refrigerated containers, that either limits the cargos with which the wines can travel or it increases the price for shipping everything in the container. Before any of you ask me, I have no direct knowlege one way or another about whether the wines shipped by any particular California retailer/direct importer are or are not shipped in refrigerated containers. [ADD: Further info on 2/23: In checking with Hillebrand, who does the lion’s share of the shipping out of burgundy, I’m told that they frequently load refrigerated LCL containers of wine at their Beaune facility for multiple owners who have the wines shipped to the same port.]
At the end of the day, the only way you can really control what you are putting in your cellar is either to buy directly from a US retailer who receives the wine directly from the importer/distributor imediately on release, or to buy in Europe directly on initial release and control the process door to door by utilizing one of the handful of licensed importers who offer wine importation services. Most of those importers are located in California and New York, although I have heard of such services being offered in Illinois and Florida as well.
Don:
Do you feel able to say what other US retailers manage shipping and handling of Burgundy in a manner that commands your confidence?
Thanks.