Alan,
I just might buy that theory …
Oh my … I found info on another hard drive , forgotten I had studied this once before , getting old , yikes …
The compounds responsible contributing certain sensory characters to wine are;
4-ethylphenol: Band-aids, barnyard, horse stable, antiseptic
4-ethylguaiacol: Bacon, spice, cloves, smoky
isovaleric acid: Sweaty saddle, cheese, rancidity
Some also think its extended lees contact with Syrah or petite Syrah … IDK … It has to do with some specific grape genetics , or all wines would have bacon fat …
Rhone hoarder?? I thought the boy wonder hoarded EVERYthing?! ![[highfive.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/d/db21b9263a9105e51f6f8b11e61dd4de095611f9.gif "highfive"){kind=small}
And Jeff, it sounds like some of the Rhones you drink have always been infused with oak. I think it is also going out of fashion now after a decade or two of trying, and there are more traditionally styled syrahs than ever before, sometimes the problem is money (which doesn’t seem like a problem for you) and availability.
Jeff,
I think your issue may stem from producer selection. I would agree that the group you listed aren’t making wines they way the did 15+ years ago, but I would say that sample doesn’t represent the greater whole of producers and what they are doing. In fact, I would argue that there is a lot more producers today making wines more like 20 years ago, it’s just not the ones you are listing. Here’s a bunch of things to try…
Monier- Imported by Kermit. Try the base St. Joe. HELLLLLOOOOO bacon!
Vincent Paris- A little big when you first open them, but brilliant when they get a good decant. This is the old Robert Michel property.
Franck Balthazar- Lots of bacon. These wines are still showing baby fat, but are extremely well priced and beautiful.
Marcel Juge- Holy old school Batman! He channeled his inner Gentaz perfectly.
Bernard Levet- OLD SCHOOL, and tremendous value for Cote Rotie.
Bernard Faurie- Apparently he’s retiring soon. Wines are NOT cheap, but are fantastic expression of Hermitage.
Etienne Becheras- Awesome little producer that Rosenthal brings in.
Gilles Robin- Lots of bacon, but a juicer style for sure.
Ian,
Shhh! 
If bacon fat is from brett, and brett likes new oak (more non-fermentable sugars to eat) barrels, then go for producers who have brett taint and use new French oak…
A couple of quick comments:
1/skunky and coffee notes are caused by sulfides…skunkiness is a mercaptan
2/some chardonnays manifest a kind of smoked ham/bacon quality…winemakers seem to either love or hate it
3/in cabernet one sometimes notes a smoky character from the barrel.
4/as we say in the barrel business, the wine you put in the barrel can impact the flavor of the barrel. Another way to say it would be that each variety/wine combines with the oak in a different way. It does seem that syrah and oak can combine to give that bacon quality in spades.
I ll try to post some stuff on barrels from my website this afternoon. I gave a talk at Davis two years ago about how air drying impacts the toastiness and I will see if i can post that.
It has always seemed to be that the secondary aromas and flavors that make the North Rhone exciting to me personally come from two things- how oak is used or not used, and how ripe the grapes get.
I would tend to agree with Ian that the larger problem with not finding those aromas in the wines Jeff C. is drinking has a lot to do with drinking a certain subset of North Rhone All-Stars. Many of them have seemed, to my tastes, to have pushed the ripeness envelope past where you get North Rhone flavors and into where you get much more generic Syrah/Shiraz flavors - I don’t mean generic as a perjorative, but it is my experience that high ripeness in Syrah grown anywhere tends to emphasize the grape and de-emphasize the terroir.
I LOVE this…
2/some chardonnays manifest a kind of smoked ham/bacon quality…winemakers seem to either love or hate it
Who who who???
Chapoutier, St Cosme, and a good chunk of Guigal do not make really evocative wines for my palate. In fact, some of these guys have simply bought up land from traditional style producers who used to, which to me is even more disheartening. That is not to say that Lalas or old Pavillion cant be good, but the replacement factor of the style of wines over what has been made there traditionally to me has been a net negative trend.
Rostaing gets a lot of heat from AFWE Syraheads, but others have told me we’re not giving him time/a fair shake. Will have to revisit.
Do those who drink the traditional style Rhones not want to share who is making the old bones juice? Probably true…Look what happened to the prices of Gentaz-Dervieux and Verset.
I agree, tentatively, that Rostaing takes too much flak - I think this is in part that his wines simply are not those of the relatives whose properties he took over.
Chapoutier crozes has loads of bacon & meats.
Not expensive enough. ![[wink.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/04707e6a7bbb03e0153e349d8a9270d30e1e9525.gif "wink"){kind=small}
Exactly, Don.
Thanks Ian!
Part of my problem is the market that I’m in…I have never seen any of those wines in West Michigan. The second is that with a full cellar, I drink mature wines, so there’s not a lot of experimentation. I know what I like, buy it and age it appropriately. My version of killing babies is when a wine gets to be 10+ years from vintage, so now that I’m testing my '99’s-03’s, I’m finding wines that are not like the ones made in '91 and before. Hence, why I came here for help.
Here is something I wrote on this issue.
Re bacon in Chardonnay: As I have a barrel pimp/winemaker rule of confidentiality I cannot say anything here. I don’t think this is as common as it used to be, but it happens.
This is something from the Oxford Companion to Wine, an article on oak flavor written by Larry Brooks, a well-known California winemaker. It is printed without permission. Every home should have a copy of this book.
Carbohydrate degradation products
This is a large and complex group that includes furfurals, which are produced from toasting wood sugars and have a bitter almond flavour. Maltol and cyclotene are also produced from the toasting process and not only have caramel-like flavours of their own, but also act as flavour potentiators. Like monosodium glutamate with food, these potentiators increase the perception of other flavours.
Tannins and other phenolics
tannins and other phenolics give colour and astringency but more importantly act as a reservoir to balance the oxidative/reductive reactions of the wine, protecting it from oxidation and lessening the chance of unpleasant reductive aromas. Hydrolysable tannins derived from oak lignin are known as ellagitannins. Their concentration decreases with heavy toasting. It is worth noting that wine in the barrel is biologically active. The yeasts that effect the fermentation of sugars to alcohol also transform some of these directly extracted oak compounds into other compounds with flavours different from the original. The furfurals, for instance, which have a bitter flavour when originally extracted and are derived from hemicellulose, are transformed by the yeasts into compounds which have a range of flavours from smoked meat to leather. Furfural levels increase with the duration of the toasting. bacteria are also active in wine and, in the case of white wines, the barrel contributes compounds which bacteria can transform from relatively flavourless to highly aromatic ones reminiscent of smoke, cloves, and coffee.
Thanks for posting that, Mel!
Mel,
Many thanks for taking the time to address this issue, many of us really appreciate this, especially me…
OCW yea I have to break it out and bring it home to study -what I apparently had known and forgotten - well the fog lifted a bit and its registering… So many rabbit holes to dive into … I am afraid that when I open the book my dearest jancis will bitch at me again and lock the book the book on me… As it is when in type in her website I hear her voice saying no more facts for you … how dare you ever correct me again…!!!.. Yikes… Wonder if its a lifetime ban ??? Lol…
Anyway with the new science and history I have learned … its good to do the academic exercise again…
Great learning thread …
Cheers !!!
In vino veritas …