As promised I will report about the Premox-rate in my tasting last Friday.
We tasted all white Grand Crus – from all 8 Chablis to 3 Corton
to 5 …–Montrachets (except one, Musigny blanc), all in all 28 Grand Crus 1973 to 2010 … + 4 sweet wines for dessert.
We had
8 bottles 2007-2010 (mostly Chablis)
6 bottles 2005-2000
9 bottels 1995-1999 (incl 1 Chablis)
5 bottles 1990 and older
We had – „only“ and fortunately – 2 corked bottles, one heavily, one slightly … and a third where some people suspected tiny cork taint, but not me.
Out of the 28 bottles NOT A SINGLE ONE could be called anywhere near to premox. There were two bottles with a developed advanced colour (a 1998 and a 1996), but nothing like apple-juice etc., only mature deep complex and minerally fruit – one simply beautiful, one only „good“ due to less respected terroir.
Regarding to Chuck Miller and his mold-theory: only few bottles had clear mold below the capsules, and the two “deep coloured ones” above were among them - another reason why I exclude any premox.
BTW: the younger bottles 2004-2010 have been slow-oxed for 11 hours (due to my working duties and a necessary cool temperature), the rest for 5-6 hours. All were decanted immediately befor serving.
Not a single wine was closed or hard, all showed very open and acessable, if sometimes certainly undeveloped.
Assuming that all of these wines were from producers with a known track record for premox, and assuming that all of these wines were sourced in Europe, then it would reinforce Steven Tanzer’s theory that folks are mistakenly identifying heat damage from poor handling in the USA 3-tier system as actual premox.
The Producers:
1 Vincent Dauvissat 6 Long-Depaquit (Bichot)
7 Louis Michel
3 Joseph Drouhin-Vaudon 8 Christian Moreau
4 William Fevre 9 Domaine Ravenau
5 Domaine Laroche 10 Gérard Tremblay
11 Dom. Roger Belland (Santenay) 21 Hospices de Beaune/Ambroise
12 Bouchard Pere & Fils (Beaune) 22 Maison Louis Jadot (Beaune)
13 Domaine Louis Carillon (Puligny-M.) 23 Dom. Gabriel Jouard (Chassagne-M.)
24 Maison Louis Latour (Beaune)
25 Olivier Leflaive (Puligny-M.)
16 Maison Dupard Ainé (Puligny-M.) 26 Pierre Marey (Pernand-Vergelesses)
17 Maison Faiveley (Nuits-St-Georges) 27 Domaine Rapet (Pernand-Vergelesses)
18 Dom. Fleurot-Larose (Santenay) 28 Domaine Ramonet (Chassagne-M.)
19 Dom. Fontaine-Gagnard (Chassagne-M.) 29 Maison Remoissenet (Beaune)
20 Vincent Girardin (Meursault) 30 Etienne Sauzet (Puligny-M.)
(the # are from the tabel in my list - and are irrelevant …)
Well, if we see “premox” in the USA, but they don’t see “premox” in Europe, then I can think of three major possibilities:
Different corks are being used for export to the USA [silicone coated for the USA market; wax coated for the European market].
Different wine is being bottled for export to the USA [the late harvest, thick, gooey, high fruit ester barrels are bottled for the USA market; the lean, mean, anti-oxidant fighting machine barrels are bottled for the European market].
The USA 3-Tier system manages to damage the wines in transport and/or in storage.
Can’t we just reach out to some European wine boards to see what they’re experiencing? Anecdotal, sure, but would be interesting to get a consumer perspective over there.
2008 Pierre Matrot Meursault Perrieres.
I have opened 5 out of a case. Only one drinkable without oxidative notes.
I have no hope of getting another good one.
No - that phenomenon definitely argues in favor of the corks being the culprit.
The only way that heat damage could be responsible for that would be if the heat distribution in transit and/or in storage were not uniform - if parts of the container or the warehouse were consistently at substantially higher temperatures than other parts.
Or within the case itself - if, say, one part of the case [the ten exterior bottles?] were subjected to substantially more heat than another part of the case, which stayed cooler [the two interior bottles?].
But that’s making a lot of excuses for blaming it all on heat damage.
Personally, I think that it’s probably a combination of silicone-coated corks [the most likely culprit], with some help from big thick late-harvest low-acid winemaking styles which had evolved to please the American critics.
With heat damage in the USA 3-tier system always playing a background role in everything.
Whether people are mistaking things, I have no idea. But…all of my WB was bought at the producers and shipped over in reefers…in winter…and has been in temp control since ie, no contact with the 3 tier system. I don’t feel that my incidence is any more or less than the usual. (Though, unfortunately, i’ve stopped relying on the WIKI because I read a few years ago that people were only reporting their bad experiences…I’ve reported all of them, but…) So…it doesn’t tell me much of anything I want to know at this point…about the incidence of the problem.
The closure system (cork and bottle neck) IMO can be the only explanation/variable for the random effect.
I am puzzled by Gerhard’s lack of experience with premox…if I’m remembering right, he’s rarely experienced it over the years???
Also…when I was there in 2007 I remember that two producers: Gerard Boudot of Sauzet and Christophe Roumier…among others…were swearing off the rigid, silicone coated corks for their wines. I assume that both never used them again from before my visit…but…I don’t see any meaningful stats from them, say on their 2005s…on…does anyone see any? The WIKI has scant little, which is probably consistent with people only reporting their problem bottles, but…I don’t know…does anyone have any sense of these producers’ whites in the last 9 years?
In terms of uneven heat distribution within a thingamabob which is being heated - if the thingamabob is of a highly uniform composition, then at any single point in time, the instantaneous temperatures at points within the thingamabob will tend to be wildly “out of phase” with one another.
That’s because the solutions of the heat equation tend to be highly “sinusoidal” in nature, so that at any particular point in time, all parts of the thingamabob are simultaneously heating and cooling in contrast with one another.
But something like a box of wine [or a poorly packed shipping container] is so highly non-uniform that you’d need to be getting into engineering methods and empiricism and actual data collection in order to figure out how the thing heats and cools.
And then there’s the really bizarre stuff, like thermoclines within a body of water.
If you’ve ever gone scuba diving, and been in some relatively warm water, and then reached down a few feet, with your hand or your foot, and touched some icy cold water, then you will quickly become a believer in that weirdness.
I have mentioned this before on other premox threads but never had anyone comment on it.
It had been my impression that Domaine Leflaive was one of the rare producers that was relatively spared the premox plague back in the 90’s…at least in my experience I never had a premoxed bottle from 96, 99, 00, so if not completely spared then at least very low incidence? Anyway, that changed, and the first premoxed Leflaive I had was in 2002, and then a friend who bought cases upon cases of Leflaives as a “safe bet” starting experiencing premoxed bottles, even just a few years after the vintage with the 2007’s, etc.
Why bring this up? Well, just thinking, if there was a change in winemaking or closures or whatever at Leflaive at some point that corresponded with their susceptibility, perhaps that would shed some light?
I do not know whether this corresponded with Pierre Morey leaving or not, and certainly I do not know any details about their specific techniques and whether these changed. And of course if anyone has been plagued by premoxed Leflaives from 96-00 and I was just lucky, then I would be interested in hearing that.
As to the silicone cork issue, didn’t Gilman or someone report that Lafon had switched back to Paraffin treated corks years ago was it with the 04 or was it the 07 vintage, among multiple other steps taken to try to avoid the pox, and haven’t they still been suffering the plague since then?
robert, i have to agree with you, but with my experience it started already with some bottles of '99s domaine leflaive. but it went really worse with 2004 and 2007, in this years leflaive has a very high premox-rate.
Robert, there were some late 90’s Leflaives at showed premox, but at a lower rate than all but Coche and Raveneau. That changed in about 2002 when the wines became softer and simply not very good, IMO. Definitely a change in winemaking.
Chuck,
So the change in winemaking resulting in softer wines also increased the premox rate as well, in your experience? So the style changes AND the premox rate increases.
I am sure we have some multifactorial thing going on with premox in general, where wines are more susceptible or vulnerable, and then cork variability (to a greater extent) and perhaps shipping and storage factors (to a lesser extent) may be playing a role in the variable expression from bottle to bottle.
To anyone’s knowledge, have any producers “gone back to the old ways”…not just tried this and that, but actually have gone back to doing things from vineyard to presses to elevage and SO2 and bottling, as they were done in pre-plague times, and then seen whether the premox problem persisted? Which, so many years after the problem became evident and this step or that step did not solve it, would be what I would think made the most sense…a complete “wholesale” reversal to how things were done in the times before 1995. And if the problem persisted past that, then I would think that would implicate environmental and biological factors in the vineyard as the cause. Or am I full of shit?
I don’t think anyone here…has an real “knowledge” about the issues about going “back to the old ways”…unfortunately…me, included. There still seems to be no real source of such information.
Re: lafon. Their wines, way before premox reports…were the likely candidates for early oxidation…as they were late-bottled and advanced at that time. So…Lafon would not be an estate that I’d use to evaluate the silicone/parrafin cork issue, even if they had switched back.