Exactly! I feel the move away from traditional time “pre-oxidizing” without sulfur (whether on skins to basket press or not) due to the modern bladder press and the use of less SO2 during the aging process (so the wines presented better for barrel tastings) are most likely the biggest contributors to Burgundy’s declining ability to age. This all happened too coincidentally around the early to mid 90’s as the next generation started modernizing their wineries and the power of wine critics became apparent. I also believe there was an increase in lees stirring and a general interest in making “bigger” more “rich” wines. This can lead to tired less resiliant wines if low free SO2 levels are also being maintained.
I have learned a lot by studying the wines and Brad Webb’s/Bob Sessions notes on Hanzell going back to 1956. Since the beginning, the fruit has always been crushed with significant time resting on the skins prior to pressing. Before a new bladder press in 2003, all Chards were basket pressed like what was traditional in Burgundy prior to the modernization of their facilities. Today, we try to mimic the basket press in the more modern bladder and still let the juice completely brown for 1-2 days before fermentation. The wines of Hanzell have aged well and consistently. There are of course a few bottles here and there that are way more oxidized than the others. Even from the same case. Could be cork. Could also be something operationally that happened at the time of bottling. All these wines were bottled one-by-one in those days. Including in Burgundy. Filling machine or corker goes down, a bottle could sit for awhile prior to being corked. Could this lead to more rapid aging for that bottle? Sure. Point is, hard to make any conclusions on oxidation 10-15 years later, from few examples, and without a definition of what the wine “should be”.
I’m also in the camp that does not care if it’s pre-mox (whatever that means) or nor-mox. Any oxidation that takes away the wines ability to express its place with grace and vitality is not good. In order for something to be pre-mox you would first need to determine precisely the time in which it would be nor-mox. Would you not?
Anyhow, I have noticed with the Hanzell example that wines produced with younger vines do tend to lose their energy at a younger age. look at the time in which Burgundy went through major series of replanting their vineyards. Food for thought…
I believe that most of the wine is consumed very quickly, but for every single bottle that’s stored for “just” one year, it would take 2,918 bottles to be consumed within 1 hour after purchasing to make the average 4 hours. But it only takes one bottle consumed after 4h to make the median 4h…
A casual wine event doesn’t change math, it would still take close to 3,000 attendees picking up the wine on the way to make up for the host’s cellared bottle.
Hard to believe you are not typical…so many people open up bottles from the 19th century…so hard to keep track of all of them!!
Of course, these stats apply to all wines, but I suppose if you take the average buyer of Burgundy the numbers are different. One famous maker of St-Aubin said to us that most of his wine was drunk within two or three years but he was judged by people who aged his wines ten years.
Jason,
So many people suggest that Burgundians are forgetting to let the juice brown I am beginning to think they are right. This is how we made chardonnay in the 70s. The wines were sulfured to an inch of their lives but they lasted forever.
One study by Lavigne and Dubourdieu suggested it was a lack of glutathione that led to premox. This could be caused by practices in the vineyard and in the winery. The new presses promise fewer solids so this could be key.
I always feel that these discussions are bit like, Monsieur X died. You can look at the body from a distance but no autopsies and no asking his friends what happened.
Same with me! I am drinking my 2013’s now and all have been fine. I had a 2013 Kistler Vine Hill just the other night that was beautiful. Next up is a 2013 PM Indigene
Agree with Jason’s post. The Burgundians went through a lot of changes at the same time.
With a bladder press, it sure is tempting to include the late press juice. It can be quite attractive. But, the pressure brings out a large dose of stuff that’ll make the wine prone to oxidation. So, it should be kept separate if you’re trying to make an age worthy Chard. Turn off the press, dump it after testing, declassify it to a daily drinker, or possibly treat it differently with the aim of adding it back…?
On a pair of hot afternoons, I’ve been drinking the 2013 Hanzell ‘Estate’ chardonnay [Sonoma] which has the unusual combination of light body, high 14.3% abv, while seeming more like a French example of this varietal, than what I’d expect. The nose has some apples, then straw on the palate, while the acidic edge blurs away by the 2nd day. I liked it better upon opening, and - unsurprisingly - found it more interesting in a traditional Burgundy bowl, rather than what is pictured. It’s packaged in heavy glass which makes it deceptive when pouring. These are indeed interesting wines, but my tastes in this varietal are prosaic/commercial, and I don’t find benefit in cellaring them, so I’ll pass on future offers, saving rack slots for reds. The B grade reflects my tastes, rather than what other WB’s likely would judge.
This is an interesting concept - and I’d like to echo Otto’s question. My guess is that the pH increases due to this but curious as to why other than exposure to oxygen?
Not sure that’s different than what I said, except I have no idea what techniques are used in Burgundy. Here, we commonly use a rotating bladder press for whites. They allow much better higher pressure. With fermented juice (reds) the solids are broken down so a manual basket press (for example) can get as much extraction as you’d want. With whites and rose, simply putting the grapes in a basket press will leave a lot of juice in the solids.
What I’m guessing William is saying, is with a basket press, you’d have to take you the cake, break it up, then repress it to get more out pressing again. A rotating bladder press does this for you. Operating it manually or in a program, you press to a certain pressure. More and the cake sort of gums up and won’t break up. Then it does a rotation cycle that breaks up the pommace, and you press again to a slightly higher pressure. You do that a few times. The late press fraction(s) will leach out potassium. If you press that hard and simply include that juice, you run a serious risk of premox.
Yes, not loss of potassium. The opposite. Breaking up the cake enables pressing out more juice, and passed some point the pressure is leaching potassium from the stems and into your juice.
But, while equipment and technique vary, you can learn where that point is, You can just not press passed a certain point, or you can separate the last press fraction or two and see what they do or treat them differently. So, wisely deferring a decision or intently strategizing. That last bit can be great or very not great. You might want to be aiming to add it back in after taking care of it, or declassify to spruce up your base level Chard, or end up deciding to dump it.
With each breaking of the cake, you release potassium, bumping the pH up appreciably each time.
This concept is at the heart of the separation of press fractions in Champagne. The “cuvée”, from the first real pressing of the marc, is the cleanest juice with the lowest pH. The “tailles” at the end are separated and often sold off in bulk or relegated to a lesser cuvée.
Of course, when making still Chardonnay, whether in California or Burgundy, we are not looking to produce vins clairs in Champagne (where traditionally a minimum of skin extraction was sought, as CO2 amplifies the perception of bitterness), and our grape skins are riper; so we can crush the grapes before pressing, which delivers a better juice yield and the structuring dry extract that lends the wine structural shoulders and mid-palate presence. But, we had better then take care not to break the cake repeatedly during pressing as this would bump our pH up too high. You could call this the Guffens / Coche-Dury school of pressing white grapes.
The alternative school is to pick less ripe and break the cake more during pressing. The higher acidity of the more tart fruit somewhat compensates for the potassium pH upticks during pressing. You may then need to chaptalize as your potential abv will be low. You might even not crush your fruit initially and then use each breaking of the cake as a way to pick up some additional skin extract. Of course, in this scenario your most interesting gross lees (bourbs) unfortunately come at the end, with your highest pH juice; whereas with crushing you get your best lees along with your best juice at the beginning.
I am a bit of an extremist in applying the first approach with my white wines in Burgundy, and I just did my post-winter lab analysis. Pressing crushed fruit in a basket press without breaking the cake and re-pressing delivered Meursault Narvaux at pH 3.04 with 13.6% alcohol and fully completed malolactic. And that’s in a what is quite a high pH white vintage (I have seen analysis for whites as high as pH 3.6 in 2022).
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