Question: what else aside from premox does “clonal selection, pick date, pressing techniques, and pre-bottling preparations” affect when it comes to wine quality.
Not saying the point of the articles isn’t valid, just pointing out that those factors can have a broad effect!
So:
A case of 12 bottles, bottled all at the same time using the same batch of corks, from the same tank/barrel, shipped together, stored identically and YET half of them premox and the other half don’t…
How can you possibly suggest that it must not be related to the corks in some way???
Well, the problem is there’s no one theory that explains premox entirely. Corks have been used pretty consistently for years, and yet Burgundy is more affected than other regions, and the degree of premox varies wildly from vintage to vintage.
I am sure the cork is a factor, but I’m equally sure it’s not the only factor.
I don’t think Chris said that premox is not related to corks in some way. He said corks weren’t the CAUSE of premox, and he is right. There is some underlying cause that makes wine susceptible to premox. The variability in corks is what accounts for the random occurence of premox, but the cause has nothing to do with corks. In the old days, there was still the occasional oxidised bottle due to a bad cork, but maybe 1 in a case, after aging for many years or even decades. But with premox, there is something in the wine or winemaking that predisposes the wine to premox.
Ok,
I get what you mean now.
Although, if you look at one of the initial earlier identified problems (as Stuart mentions above) it points to the switch from parafin to silicone corks as being one of the main causal factors, so in that sense then it has much more to do with the corks…
If you define “the premox” as the plague of wines that oxidized way earlier than they should have given their histories, the corks are “the cause” of the problem…and the extent of it as far as anyone has experienced it.
Otherwise, in a real “plague” situation the analogy is for blaming the entire population for its vulnerability, not the disease (faulty seals) itself. That’s just silly. Without the disease the population would have done just fine, more vulnerable or not. Ditto for the wines themselves…not only could they have survived just fine, but they have.exactly that in many many (maybe the majority of cases). It is difficult to measure “premox” without defining “premature” oxidation, so…we can only guess how many wine are actually just fine.
The definitions here are nits some are harvesting instead of grapes.
Well, the question wasn’t addressed to me, but I’ll respond. I’m not suggesting that it must not be related to the corks, but I will suggest that it might not be related to the corks. Here are a couple of reasons.
First, premoxed wine under screwcap has been reported. It’s been talked about on this board. I’ll try to find a link if you’d like. This does not prove that the corks aren’t somehow involved in most cases, but it does raise considerable doubt.
More importantly, and I’ve posted this before, there’s often a huge variance in the amount of oxygen in the headspace from bottle to bottle coming off the same bottling line. This could explain the random nature of premox just as easily as randomness of cork. This article https://www.winesandvines.com/features/article/66003/OXYGEN-and-WINE has some great information, including this.
The levels of total pack oxygen (TPO) measured during bottling ranged from 0.2mg per bottle to a high of 6.0mg–a dramatic range.
Clearly there is some randomness happening there that could impact oxidation down the road. I think the combination of contributing factors usually cited is plausible and even likely, but we don’t know anything for sure.
I buy Chardonnay under screw cap whenever possible and have drunk a heck of a lot of the stuff. Apart from faulty bottling (once or twice) where wine was bad from pretty much the start, I’ve never had a faulty wine. Period.
The Australian wine body research showing one or two bottles per dozen under cork having SC-like development and the rest with various degrees of development.
When solid research like this and literally thousands of producers bottling millions of bottles under screw cap over a decade or two is ignored in favour of a single quote from a producer who has been told to switch away from SC for reasons other than premix risk at a damned pro-cork industry convention (or similar), then I just dispair
Cork fans come up with a new argument every week to defend this useless, rotting piece of historical technology. The science is clear. Wise voices like Larry will eventually get through, but it’s such a painfully slow process. 
Chapeau, Larry!
I think that’s the case for TCA, which is an easily measurable chemical. For Premox I don’t think we even know what we should be measuring. Is the issue the varying amount of oxygen the wine is exposed to? Or is it some preexisting condition that makes the wine more likely to oxidize with a given amount of air? Either way it doesn’t seem all that clear. I agree the cork would be the most obvious culprit, but why did it only start happening in 1995? And why is it specifically such a problem in Burgundy?
The problem with looking at the issue scientifically is that you have to account for these anomalies- it’s no use just picking the data points you like.
Does anyone here KNOW with what vintage the problem started? When in that vintage’s development, the problem was discovered?
And, does anyone know when the cork industry started coating its corks with silicone, rather than parrafin…or mixed in silicone corks with the others sold, without telling any end users?
These, to me, are the crucial questions to at least make a temporal tie in to something…or not.
I tried to do research on the second issue in 2017…but when I asked to deeply bored questions…I was shut off from any industry sources. I did find things online suggesting these things started more or less contemperaneously…of course, it took time to discover the effect…after the vintage.
Whether one agrees with my trail of thought…(it’s not a train)…if anyone can answer these, that would be most helpful. If not…no one can really offer any opinion that it’s not the corks that have “precipitated” the premox. And, we’re just back to the usual suspects as post # 27 typlifies…a “perfect storm” of possibilities…as we are focusing on the victims, rather than the potential carriers of the epidemic. This is really a more epidemiology study than it is a scientific study, IMO. Just like studying the plagues really are. Why did some US Indians get wiped out, and others avoid the problem…with the 16th century European colonizations in the US? What is the variable among the native groups…other than merely geography? though…perhaps…that is the variable.
Don’t buy enough white Burgundy to know, but is the claimed start of the problem around 1995/1996 vintage definitely true? Or is it just that Burgundy was becoming more popular at that time, and wines were being stored longer from those vintages, and the problem has actually always been around?
Have you asked D. Mowe who posts here occasionally? He would know.
Never heard of him, but would love to.
Can you provide contact info, etc…?
Or get him to post here…
Or, better yet, ask him.
Who is he?
Thanks
PM sent.
Here’s my understanding of the history:
Certain bottles, but far from all, of 1990 Clos St Hune matured / oxidized very quickly. No one called it premox then but in my mind the trail starts there. The more widespread premox problems with Hune continued to increase until it was clear there was a big problem. 1995/1996 then became a poster child but not the beginning.
Certain dry white Bordeaux started to show what we later called premox in the 1994 vintage IIRC. Bottles showing early oxidation at an increased rate. Again not as much notice was taken because in my view historically these wines were ornery and difficult and hard to assess and drink with pleasure in their youth, especially with widespread use of a lot of oak, but the signs were there.
It’s possible it started in 1994 in white Burgundy because no one really cared about that vintage and therefore didn’t pay much attention until 1995, and I never heard anyone identify a 1993 or earlier as premox. By the time 1995s and 1996s were about 4 to 6 years from vintage, it was clear there was problem. A lot of brownish oxidized Ramonets were a sure sign of something terrible.
In other regions the signs came later and were more sporadic. Certain muscadets that were excellent young but matured too quickly, including certain vintages of beloved Clos des Briords. 2002 Huets. Can’t think of others right now.
The science that shows screw caps prevent premix.
It doesn’t show what the root cause of premox is though. Aren’t you in any way curious as to what that is?
Seems to me that if you believe oxygen transmission is the sole cause, that if you reduce the amount of oxygen in the bottle you might reduce the degree of premox. But you also in tandem reduce the degree to which the wine ages. Therefore the wine will premox at the same stage in the wine’s development, but that will happen later in time.
In other words, you might open your wine after seven years and it will taste like a two year old cork-closed wine. Great that it’s not premoxed, but of no greater value than the two-year-old wine. In other words, a waste of storage time.
Anyway, hopefully Laroche will set the trend for a move back to cork. Good on them. ![[berserker.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/8/8600bbd4810d342b8fbd4ffb62b4f0026275fd37.gif "berserker"){kind=small}
Oliver,
You know that wine still develop under screw caps, don’t you? It kind of sounds like you don’t believe that they do.
And you also should realize that with the randomness of permeability in corks, some wines develop incredibly slowly and some much quicker under the same closure.
I know that you are trying to simplify things, but it’s not based on fact.
Cheers.
Of course it develops- nobody disputes that. But equally nobody disputes it develops differently, and enough of the blind tastings I’ve seen have shown a clear win for cork-closed wines to make me wary (plus the admittedly weak anecdotal evidence that I’ve never tasted a truly transcendental screwcap wine).
And you also should realize that with the randomness of permeability in corks, some wines develop incredibly slowly and some much quicker under the same closure.
Which is a great theory for premox, if not for the elephants in the room that the problem apparently only appeared 25 years ago, and varies enormously depending on what wine region you’re in. If your theory is correct, I should be seeing the same variation in old bottles of Cali white that I do with Burgundy. But that’s clearly not the case.
I know that you are trying to simplify things, but it’s not based on fact.
I’m not trying to simplify things, I’m trying to look at all the evidence, not just the bits that support the conclusion I’ve reached in advance. I don’t really understand why some people are so resistant to understanding the actual cause of premox. What harm can it do to know more?