I’m four bottles into 12 and all four are carbonic messes. I stand by my above statements. ![]()
For one, I vaguely recall an interview where he said he uses more sulfur for the higher cuvées since they are intended for longer aging than the Bourgogne and Marsannay. I believe the interview was on YouTube but can’t remember which one.
There’s a lot of barrel variation in wines made in this style. My guess is he selects the strongest barrels for the higher end wines and then protects them better.
I’ve never had the bourgogne but across probably 30-40 Patailles, the worst one I had was ironically the first which I think was a 2017 Le Chapitre and did seem quite natural - put me off for months. Overall though, i’ve never had a spritzy one and i’ve had some fantastic bottles that really put the notion out that there is value in Burgundy, a 2019 Les Longeroies the other day was fantastic
I popped a 2022 Bourgogne Rouge prompted by this thread. Not overly fizzy for me and expected for a young wine that isn’t jostled much, some effervescence but not like OP. Pretty enjoyable and if being fair I liked this more than other Patailles I have had in the past few years. I will say I am at the point where I seek these out less and less. VA is what seems to me the part I like least and just the overall turbid feel to the wines. I don’t mean unfiltered I mean lacking in focus with a volatile edge. Just screams trendy/natty to me and just not my jam. Maybe they will improve with future vintages, he clearly has chops though too may wine shops/restaurants looking for these more obscure examples at the moment to change the call of the sirens. For the price point, these days I look towards Pierre Guillemot, Francois Gay, and Felettig for some more classically styled red burgundy.
I thought the 2022 Marsannay Rouge I had recently was worlds better than the 2022 Bourgogne rouge I had earlier in the year. More specifically, I felt like it walked much more closely to the norm of red-fruited, “clearer” Burgundy. Nonetheless, it definitely still followed a stylistic Pataille-pattern as far as I can tell.
Weird that your screen grab looks more like a beer with that cage & flip cover there in the photo.
I find his low end cuvees are much worse, esp the straight burg. Best wine IMO is his rose, the pinots are nice at the higher end, but I only buy them below US retail, otherwise I find they are too expensive.
That’s just the 375ml sealer bottle I decanted half the bottle into. But have you seen the actual video??!
Has anyone seen problems like this in Pataille white wines or are we just talking reds here?
I’ve bought and happily drank a lot of his aligoté at up to 7 years past vintage and never run across any off bottles.
Nobody has brought up any issues with the whites, but the general consensus among people I’ve spoken to is more ‘care’ is given to the wines above Village level….![]()
We drank a 21 Chardonnay Rose recently that was very good
I strongly disliked Le Chapitre 2020 (possibly a flawed bottle?)
One or two recent whites were legit.
A data point. I know that some producers believe (mistakenly imo) that CO2 acts as a “preservative” and protection against premox and bacterial spoilage. I don’t know if Pataille subscribes to that theory, but it would explain how this bottle started out. Nothing like the OP bottle, but clearly some extra acidity to start that dissipated quickly with air.
2022 Domaine Sylvain Pataille Marsannay - France, Burgundy, Côte de Nuits, Marsannay (4/2/2026)
Dark garnet, light on the nose, palate is lively, starts out with some tingly acidity, but calms down with air, a touch of excess CO2 no doubt; darker fruit flavors, marionberry, dark raspberry, with air some nice light spice notes appear; flavorful, balanced, uncomplicated but tasty and enjoyable wine. (89 points)
I suspect there are a lot of producers who think that CO2 acts as a preservative and would protect against premox, but I think the more important reason is that dissolved CO2 prevents oxygen dissolution prior to bottling. After bottled, the CO2 does not really prevent oxidation, although it might slow down oxygen dissolution and delay any premox. However, to my understanding, by bottling a wine with dissolved CO2 helps in controlling how much O2 gets into the bottled as dissolved oxygen.
I have no idea if people believe CO2 would help in preventing against microbiological spoilage, or how CO2 could even do that!
I don’t think this is right. I’ll admit my chemistry if rusty, but both gases are going to reach equilibrium with respect to their partial pressures in the air/liquid medium. I THINK what you are getting at if a layer of UNDISSOLVED CO2 is used over the surface of the wine to prevent oxidation, where the unmixed gasses just need more time to reach equilibrium, so you buy yourself some time in the bottling process. I’m guessing some of this CO2 later dissolves in the wine.
I’ll admit my last meaningful chemistry was 20+yrs ago…and the flaw in my logic may be that neither gas is truly inert, so that throws off all kinds of mixing gas assumptions.
Edit: Yup, my simple chemistry mind failed to grasp the complexity of the situation. Nice study, though it’s not “real” wine but a reasonable approximation:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/287696578_The_protective_role_of_dissolved_carbon_dioxide_against_wine_oxidation_a_simple_and_rational_approach
–what is interesting is in this study you are had to be continuously “creating” CO2 to get a protective effect. Essentially, fermentation would be a time where there is “protection” but not necessarily after bottling.
All the fancy science aside, all I know is that I’m 4 bottles into that 6-pack and two have been completely undrinkable effervescent soda pop and two have been ‘fine’. Not great, but OK…they’re still way too ‘bright’ for my taste and possibly that’ll change if I was to let the silly things sit for a few years, but frankly, after opening the first one and seeing all those bubbles, I just wanna see them gone and free up space in my racks! The second one I opened didn’t show any CO2, but the third was as bad as the first. And I opened the fourth a couple of weeks back and it was like the second. My wife said it tasted like recent vintages of Enderle & Moll Liaison…quite acidic, slightly underripe and with a bit too much VA. Now my wife ain’t no geek, but she ain’t wrong!
I wasn’t discounting your experience, just providing a data point on another wine. I didn’t buy any of the Bourgogne, but did buy several of the Marsannay bottlings, so was concerned enough to try one.
Did you ever hear back?
I got the most high-handed & snotty reply EVER from Paul…I sat on my GFY reply for weeks and finally nuked it. That guy has serious bedside manner issues!!!
