Opened a 2000 Raveneau Vaillons tonight and it’s been an odd experience. My first glass was badly oxidized…Summer and I couldn’t really drink it. Instead of pitching it, I just stuck the bottle into my kitchen’s fridge. About an hour later it seemed like someone had turned the volume down on the oxidized notes. Thought it could have to do with the temperature of the wine, but even as it’s warmed up, it’s still showing a whole lot better than before. The more oxygen it gets, the less oxidized it tastes.
yeah, i guess that’s a possibility. that said, i’ve rarely run into wines with butterscotch, and almond tones that turned out being reduced. first time for everything, though.
I’ve seen the same thing happen many times. I’ve been out to dinner with my white Burgundy fanatic friends, and they’ll roll the dice with a '96 or a 2000 Grand Cru. When it’s first poured, it’s dark in color and smells over the hill. An hour later, after sitting in a decanter, many of those wines start to make a comeback. They don’t necessarily lose their dark color, but they do start to reveal more youthful aromas, and don’t show as much oxidized bitterness in the mouth. My friends haven’t been as forgiving as I have to these wines, and I guess for the money, my friends are right, they should drink perfectly for 15 to 20 years, not just 8 to 10.
Seems to jive a bit with what Bill Klapp was talking about over in the Barolo discussion… old, seemingly dead Baroli coming back to life with more oxygen.
Could also just be weird bottle funk that needs to blow off?
I agree with Chuck that it’s reduction. I’ve had this happen numerous times. Usually the wine also changes color and lightens as the wine improves. when I go back and think about why I thought the wine was oxidized, often I realize it really didn’t truly have classic oxidative notes, just a whole bunch of other weird stuff.
Mature/old/not quite dead white wines can be weird like this. Sometimes the wine is just shot - other times it will come back to life with time. Sometimes it will actually roar back. I’ve smelled and tasted enough wines where I have called the comeback that I feel like I know when it will happen, even if I can’t describe the exact wine characteristics that suggest it will.
SO2 can bind with acetaldehyde (sherry smell) so I wonder if somehow opening the wine kicks off a free-so2/acetaldehyde bonding process that takes a while to really take off.
Im a bit skeptical of reduction theory. Reductive aromas can be quite varied but none of them are acetaldehyde-like in nature that I know of.
The OP didn’t originally note butterscotch and almond notes in the first post, and never mentioned sherry-like notes. Both of those could be signs of premox, but premox, like TCA in my opinion, doesn’t get better with more air. Personally, I don’t associated sherry-like aromas with premox, more with full blown oxidation/cork failure. Premox to me is more subtle.
Chilling the wine could certainly make wines seem less oxidised.
I think the theory of a wine somehow “blowing off” premox or showing much less of it with aeration is largely due to the fact that upon opening, wines that show any sort of premox generally show those aromas and not much else (just opened, obviously tight). With time in the decanter the positive attributes of the wine begin to show, and the wine naturally becomes more expressive as it opens up, thus making the oxidative notes seem less pronounced as there’s other things going on besides just the oxidative notes.
I have had oxidized wines revived with extended air. Like coming back from the dead. Color changed from brown to lighter gold. Fruit came out. Here is a note:
[*]1996 Foreau Domaine du Clos Naudin Vouvray Moelleux- France, Loire Valley, Touraine, Vouvray
Dark golden in color. Sadly, this came out oxidized. The nose has a “sherried” quality. On the palate, this is a bit sickly sweet. But wait, I left it in my glass and noticed two hours later that it was now golden in color. The nose was orange peel, slightly candied, with some sea air. On the palate, this is delicious. Candied orange peel, slightly salty, sweet but not cloying. WTF? Back from the dead! I pour some from the bottle and its as before - oxidized. I left all the bottles for the staff, but I hope by the time they get to this it has recovered. Really interesting. NR (flawed)
My own experience is that for truly prematurely oxidized wines, the oxidation only gets worse. Funk on the nose, which may be some combination of reduction (sulfur) and oxidized compounds, could be different.
Just had a 2000 Raveneau MdT and there were zero oxidative notes there, so maybe this was an advanced bottle. Of course, bottles following a “normal” aging profile will gradually oxidize, with nutty (not sherry) notes emerging gradually, so maybe the Vaillons was just in a good place…
I, too, have had wines that smelled markedly madeirized at first but it blew off. I’ve experienced iw with both reds and whites. Indeed, I started a thread on that a year or two ago because I found it baffling. Reduction was one explanations offered.
I agree. I think that’s kind of definitional. I have no idea of the chemistry, but if it blows off, I don’t think you can say the wine was oxidized even if it smelled at first like it was shot.
I had a similar experience last summer with a bottle of 2007 Domaine Marc Kreydenweiss Pinot Gris Moenchberg Le Moine. On opening it seemed absolutely no-doubt-about-it oxidized, dominated by that sliced-yesterday apple, and dark in color. At around 90 minutes it was improving substantially, and I recall it eventually losing most if not all of the sherry character and gaining acidity and life.
Sorry I missed most of the discussion today. I personally have a little trouble telling if a wine is truly oxidized right out of the gate. There are an array of notes that can be highly suggestive, but the true test is how it responds to air. Sure, wines that smell “brown”, or have heavily oxidized baked apple notes rarely come around, but I have had so many experiences with wines that seem shot from the get-go, then blossom, that I rarely pour anything down the sink until the next day. The wines that I’m calling reduced generally are not showing classic “reduction” sulfurous compounds, which I think causes confusion for some people.
