Gautier,
You may have a point that people overuse the term premox.It used to be if a wine was tannic etc people said it was vinegary. Then writers got obsessed with TCA and people started finding cork taint where there was none.On the other hand, local enologists in charge of quality control here told me they could not get below 3% taint, and eventually Diam came out of this.
My first experience with TCA was at a tasting I attended in 2002 where 6 out of 8 Montrachets from the 1996 vintage were oxidized. Needless to say, people were unhappy. Then I had more experience with the issue. White wines from the Cote de Beaune are not cheap.
Gautier,what do you think of the issue of glutathione-- or lack thereof-- as a cause of premox.
And who sells your wine in Northern California??
Andrew,
I donât know if diam is the answer either. Are technical corks âpreservingâ wine but not letting it develop??
If I knew the answer, I would have a 900 number.
One more thing: as pH goes up, the need for SO2 increases. It does not diminish.
If people like William, who drink more white Burgundy in a year than I do in a lifetime, have not tasted a wine bottled using DIAM that is premoxed, what is your objection to DIAM? Why isnât it the answer?
With not a lot of experience I still tend to agree. Wines under DIAM from 2010s seem way too young, almost perfectly so, suggesting what many others are saying that wines donât develop at all or very little over long periods of time.
Not sure about how precisely they can control oxygen penetration through DIAM, but they seem to have developed techniques for the screwtops. I wonder if weâre going to see a shift after 10-15 years when itâs obvious that DIAM isnât the answer for wines you want to age.
To me it sounds like you and perhaps Mel are trying to have it both ways. Get perfectly aged white Burgundy but do it in ten years. It took longer than that before the era of premox.
Funny enough I am just sipping the 2015 Clos des Briords (DIAM5) and it is most definitely not the same supremely youthful and tight wine it was when I opened my last bottle three years ago.
On the whole, I like technical corks. Having opened corked bottle of things like '83 Ch Margaux, I appreciate not worrying about TCA. Many friends who sold wines wholesale said they learned to open up and taste every sample bottle before hitting the road.
David,
So true.
The interest of the business side of winemaking is all about the process of getting money from somebody else and doing it faster.
People are bottling early, making smoother wines that are ready to drink sooner, etc. If Meursault is drunk at a restaurant in NYC 30 months after harvest, the bean counters are happy.
Look at Bordeaux. Winemaking is completely different from what is what it was fifty years ago. Will wines made in 2010 age the way the wines of our youth did?? On the other hand, there is no need to wait twenty years.
Unfortunately, there is. Bordeaux drinks younger nowadays but it still tastes like young Bordeaux, just more approachable. If you want that tertiary, savoury, balanced goodness, you still need to wait.
But youâre right that maybe it wonât be 20-30 years anymore. Maybe 15-25? 10-20? Time will tell.
We have to remember that wineries talk tradition but they are always changing.
Winemakers love new toys. Sometimes they throw the baby out with the bathwater and sometimes the results are great.
Such a fascinating thread - thanks for sharing all. The problem seems so complex and I understand where everyone is coming from with regards to possible causes and solutions.
@William_Kelley , since you are literally in the heart of it over there, have most producers you know changed how their wines are made - whether or not theyâve switched to DIAMs or not? Has the use of SO2 increased? What about pH adjustments if need be?
We tasted 48 2000 Bordeaux reds back in 2021, hardly any had much or any tertiary aromas yet. Same with a 16 1998 right bank reds tasting 6 months ago. Hardly any tertiary development yet. The 1990s are slowly getting there. I guess it still takes 30 years. From what I tasted I donât expect the top wines from 09/10/15/16/18/19/20 to get there faster.
A lot of producers did indeed respond to the problem by bumping free SO2 at bottling, in plenty of cases to >50 ppm.
There is generally speaking more attention to dissolved oxygen pick up during wine movements and bottling as well, though in some cases still not enough.
Obviously there has been a trend towards more reductive ĂŠlevage when the wines of today are compared with those of the 1990s.
And some producers are thinking about skin extraction, must oxidation etc quite hard too.
None of this, however, has been enough to stop premox, and there really arenât any producers who are immune to it once you get to 10 years after the vintage. Before anyone says thatâs just oxidation, not premox, tell that the the great white Burgundies from the '60s and '70s in my cellar that are still drinking just fine.
If youâre going to use DIAM, you may as well use the 30, and then reduce your SO2 to 20-25 ppm. It doesnât make much sense to use the 10 and then add more SO2 to compensate. And âDiam 20â doesnât exist.
That certainly isnât the case for producers such as Guffens-Heynen, Fèvre or Droin, to name just three in Burgundy.
What can happen is that in the first few years after producers transition to Diam, they use excessively high free SO2 levels and the winesâ evolution is somewhat arrested. They can even get quite reduced as was the case with Lafonâs 2013s.
It also appears to be important to keep your total SO2 below 100 to avoid a somewhat drying, sulfate-inflected finish.