At what point/age/{whatever} is a white Burg. (or any wine, for that matter) considered prematurely oxidized rather than aged (oxidized, but not prematurely, I suppose?)?
I’m more interested in the cases that define the boundaries than the ones that clearly fall into one group or the other, so let’s focus on those.
A very good question Brian, and thus no easy answer.
I don’t accept the 6 year borderline myself - ignoring the scourge of premox, I would expect good white Burgundy to last a lot longer. I quite often drink grand crus of 25 or 35 years age, and for me they all “ought” to last this long. So, to add to the confusion - for me it depends on the wine.
Bourgogne Blanc and village wines - I would go with a 5 year line
Most 1er crus - 8 years
Good 1er crus (from good growers) 15 years
Grand crus (from good growers) 25 years
Another borderline is - if they’re all gone they’re oxed, if there are random good ones and bad ones then its premox
Six years is placing the bar so low that it is at the ankle. Before premox, we would start to drink a few 1er crus by age six, and continue with them much longer, not to mention the grands crus. Our expectation when we bought the 1996’s was that they would be glorious now in 2012. We should be able to expect these wines to age 10 to 20+ years, depending on the level of wine and on the vintage, IMO. (There have always been random instances of oxidized wines early, but at a very low percentage rate.)
Excellent post, much better than mine, but I do disagree with that last sentence. If I have a case of a good 1er cru, and at age 6 years I have random good and bad bottles, yes that is premox. But that same case at age 8 or 10 will be all bad ones, and that to me is classic premox.
I pretty much agree with Peter- for me the 6 years rule is drink before 6 years (on average) to avoid premox - nothing more.
Even villages can last an age - gorgeous 59 and 64 villages Meursault drunk last week only serve to amplify that point…
This is a really good question and I’m not sure I can offer a definition. However, for me “premoxed” wines are far more locked in dead than naturally oxed. For example, I had a '82 Montrachet Laguiche a couple of years ago that was heading over the ox edge with some sherry-like notes - but was still very drinkable and enjoyable (and not too dark). In contrast, Ramonet 1ers from '96 have been dull dull dull. Perhaps “normal ox” is gentler and slower moving whereas the onset of “premox” kills the wine very rapidly?
Premox isn’t merely when a wine start to show oxidation, but also the character of that oxidation and the rapidity of its onset. A well-stored white Burg will slowly mature and some of that is probably very slight oxidation. I recently had a '96 Mikulski Meursault Charmes that was lovely. More gold than yellow-green as it was when young and showing rounded, nuttier flavors, but it IS 16 years on. 1996 premoxed wines went dark in color quickly and took on bitter, bad sherry notes because they weren’t maturing, they were young wines that were oxidizing. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that mature whites are mature due to oxidation. That might be part of it, but it’s a small part.
There is also the issue of random oxidation due to things like a faulty cork. This can happen to a young wine but isn’t premox… it’s a flawed cork that’s let in far more air than a cork should. Aside from bottling line issues, that should be a fairly small percentage of a wine’s production. If it happens but other bottles are just fine and very young, then it’s probably a cork fault (sometimes this is very obvious from just looking at the cork).
To recap:
Mature wines take on subtle, complex non-fruit flavors as they age. Some of this might be very slow oxidation but oxidation and maturity aren’t the same thing.
Premoxed wines are young wines that are ruined by oxidation before they can mature.
Random oxidation can show like premox but is almost always something defective with THAT bottle specifically, usually a poor seal on the closure.
The expected rate of early oxidation mentioned by others and attributable to a faulty cork or bad luck is real but low enough so that if you have several bottles, or more, from a case oxidized before their time, then it’s premature oxidation.
I posed this question to Don Cornwell once, buried in some long thread about premox, and this was his response. For those who may not know this, Don is quite an authority on White Burgundy and specifically on the issue of premox, and he has been the leading figure in documenting and raising awareness of the premox issue.
On your last question, as I state in the material on the wiki site, I think its important to distinguish normal oxidation from premature oxidation. While there seems to be an accepted standard among burgundy collectors that a typical well-made grand cru white burgundy from a decent vintage should last an absolute minimum of 10 years without any signs of oxidation (and longer in the case of high acid vintages like 1993 and 1996), it’s simply not reasonable to apply this same type of expectation for vintages recognized as poor (such as 1997 and 1998) or seriously rot-affected vintages. Thus, I’ve been troubled when I would sometimes hear someone complaining that their eight to ten year old 1997 or 1998 burgundy was “prematurely” oxidized. My view is that while the wine was oxidized, it wasn’t “premature” for the wine to fail at eight to ten years of age given the lousy quality of the vintage to start with; or, stated alternatively, it simply wasn’t reasonable to expect the wine to be exhibiting no oxidation when it was eight-plus years old. For similar reasons, I’m troubled when someone occasionally claims that a 1989 or 1990 white burgundy that the person recently tasted was “prematurely” oxidized. While 1996 might theoretically be an exception to this rule, I think it’s pointless to talk about “premature” oxidation of wines older than 15 years.
While I agree with Don’s point about poor vintages, I don’t agree that its pointless to talk about premox for 15+ year old vintages (Note that 1996 is beyond this threshold now). The difference is NOT merely when it happens, it’s the nature of the beast. A wine that’s premoxed at 8 years old doesn’t taste like a wine that’s twice its age. It tastes like a young wine that’s oxidized. Likewise a 16 year old version of that wine doesn’t merely taste like an oxidized version of its 8 year old self. A wine that became premoxed at 8 will taste VASTLY different at age 20 than a wine which matured properly for 20 years.
As I said above, oxidation is not maturity nor is maturity simply slow oxidation. Frankly, if I got precisely the same flavors from premox and mature wine, I’d not be upset. I like older Burgundy and if I could achieve the flavors of a well-stored 25 year old grand cru in a 12 year old version of that wine I’d be fine with it. I might have to adjust how I buy and cellar, but the wines would be fine. Premoxed wines simply don’t taste like that though. They’re ruined. Not mature before their time.
Rick, I think you make a great distinction there. Same thing for red wines – there are “old and nicely mature” and then “very old, tired and over the hill” red wines, but both of those are different from oxidized. We should all keep that in mind.
I think Don’s response is to a slightly different point which focuses on the subjective notion of what is “premature.” Basically, we all know that the risk of oxidation increases over years, particularly for white wines. I think what I asked him, and he answered, was how long you have the right to expect that oxidization won’t have occurred, versus at what point you’re sort of taking a calculated risk and don’t have much right to complain if you crap out. To say the same thing another way, when is it their fault versus your fault?
If I opened a Premier Cru White Burg from the 1980s and it was oxidized, I’d be disappointed, but I probably wouldn’t shake a fist in the direction of Burgundy and curse them over it – I basically chose to roll the dice and I lost. When I open a Premier Cru White Burgundy from 2007 and it is oxidized, I definitely curse them – it shouldn’t be a coinflip to open those at 4-5 years from harvest. Thus, “ox” versus “premox.”
But again, that is a subjective notion, based on what we think should be.
THanks for that link, Chris. Sorry I missed that conversation and started this thread; I agree there’s lots of good discussion in that thread. I’m also appreciative of those who’ve posted in this thread, as I think this thread has (surprisingly) taken many different turns than the one started by Chris a year ago.
I agree on the timeline aspect but it’s also important to keep in mind that a wine at, say, 16 years old that has matured correctly will taste very different from one that was premoxed at age 7 and then opened nine years later. Sadly, I’ve had the experience of both, including the latter, recently.
In the first case, assuming a good or better vintage, the wine will be in some phase of maturity but not over the hill (again, assuming good storage, vineyard, etc). IN t he latter, it will be ruined and will have been ruined for years. Even over the hill wines are going to be different if they’re merely over the hill vs having been premoxed at age 7 and opened much later.
All that said, yes it’s important to correctly set our expectations. Almost no 1996 white should be showing youthfully as it did at age 5. They’ll be showing some level of mature flavors. But they should not be dead from oxidation nor should they have died years ago in the bottle and been a waste of cellar space until now.
But again, that is a subjective notion, based on what we think should be.
Could not disagree more strongly. Pre-1995 whites from Burgund DID age gracefully for 10-20 years and sometimes longer. They matured into lovely wines. They did NOT fall off a cliff and the flavors of mature wines were NOT similar to the oxidized crap we see now. For the 3rd or 4th time, the flavors from a premoxed bottle simply are not those of maturity.
This isn’t some wishful ‘what we think should be’ desire. It’s based on what Burgundy was able to deliver in the decades before the 1990s and even in the early years of that decade. We want it because we once had it. We feel cheated because we bought wines that had a track record of aging well well on the supposition that the producers were still making those wines and they aren’t nor did they tell us that they were changing from vineyard and cellar practices that had served them well for decades if not centuries.
Rick, I feel like I have already explicitly agreed with everything you wrote in this post, and in your post before this one, particularly on your excellent distinction between oxidization and age/maturity, so I must be doing a poor job of explaining myself (it wouldn’t be the first time). Anyways, rather than muddling things further, I’ll just throw a sincere +1 on your last two posts and not risk confusing things further.
Brian, no reproach whatsoever for starting a new thread on this topic; I just posted last year’s one to add to the new discussion.