It definitely happens elsewhere. Bordeaux blanc, Rhône blancs, California Chardonnay is littered with premox. Just less people are aging and consuming. Mid 90s kistler were filled with premox btls a decade ago
3 Likes
That is a slightly abridged summary, Alan!
For those short on time, the thesis is as follows:
Premature oxidation occurs when more fragile wines throw into relief the heterogeneity in oxygen transmission rate of natural cork closures, resulting in seemingly random differences in evolution between bottles where the only variable is the cork (e.g. consecutive bottles off the bottling line in the heart of the bottling). While the quality of corks did deteriorate, for a variety of reasons, in the 1990s, this itself isn’t enough to explain the phenomenon. So why did the wines become more fragile?
-
A warmer, sunnier climate resulting in higher pHs and higher concentrations of polyphenol oxidase enzymes.
-
Viticultural choices that exacerbate those problems (e.g. potassium fertilizers, deleafing, late season cultivations and hedging).
-
Gentler pressing techniques resulting in less dry extract and less gross lees.
-
Oxidative élevage practices (oak choices, battonage*, racking with air).
-
Lower doses of sulfites **
-
Bottling practices (too much dissolved oxygen at bottling).
All of this gets us back to the closure… I come down on the side of alternative closures, while cautioning that even if they’re a “silver bullet”, it’s likely that some of the choices that made the wines more fragile also make them less interesting at age 30, so solving the problem of oxidation doesn’t absolve us of the need to think critically about what we changed.
- A note on battongage: this can be performed oxidatively, aerating the wine without really pulling the lees into suspension (especially if there are very little lees) while degassing it of protecting CO2; but it can also be performed in a way that favors reduction, quickly bringing the lees into suspension without much aerating the wine (think of a gesture that’s more golf swing than whipping meringues). So it is wrong to demonize battonage per se, it’s about how and when it’s performed.
** A note on sulfites: the evolution of some wines from the late 2000s/early 2010s suggests that even doses of sulfites around 50 ppm at bottling are not enough to prevent rapid evolution of some bottles at around the 10 year mark. And that’s a very high dose. I find the combination of alternative closure + more moderate doses of sulfites a more compelling option, which should deliver a broader and longer drinking window, than very high doses of sulfites to compensate for the inadequacies of the closure. But it seems to me these are pretty much the two options at our disposal if we want to drink white Burgundy at 20+ years old.
Anyway, Merry Christmas everyone, I’m signing off for the rest of the day!
32 Likes
Found it to be a pretty big issue in Jura (for the ouillé wines). I wish a lot of producers would reconsider their closure.
4 Likes
Not really on the content but the choice of terminology - isn’t thr term “batonnage”, not “battonage”?
I’ve always thought “battonage” is just a misnomer like Reidel or Pre-mox or Produtorri, but seeing a wine critic living in France who supposedly is very familiar with the term bâtonnage using “battonage” in its place in English makes me question everything.
I’ve just thought “battonage” doesn’t make any sense because “batton” doesn’t mean anything in any language.
4 Likes
Which producers in burgundy are still suffering from premox, or still produce wines in the fashion that they used to, when their older vintages suffered from premox.
The level of denial 12 years ago was striking (Jadot for example poured premixed wine and claimed it was fine at the domaine).
How does dry extract help prevent premox?
Is it like an antibiotic for people?
Does it counteract polyphenol oxidase enzymes?
Merry Christmas!
1 Like
I feel that since it is so unique to Burgundy that climate change and the resulting change in pHs have to be a big part of the problem.
Yes I have seen premox in all other wine areas but not as widespread and from top producers.
Adding more SO2 seems like it might be a way to counteract rather correct the problem.
1 Like
At least by including, among other things, grape tannins, which have antioxidant qualities, thus protecting the wines from oxidation.
4 Likes
why not just roll the barrels?
3 Likes
Good question
I’ve seen some producers do this. It, however, requires a special rolling stand for each barrel.
Typically barrels are stacked on top of each other in a cramped barrel room. There’s no way to roll the barrels without any special equipment.
1 Like
3 Likes
We are really doing spelling police…battongage is obviously a spelling error as is thr vs. the.
Sorry for the typos, not writing at my desktop but instead with phone. Bound to make typos with this cursed device all the time.
However, battonage is not a spelling mistake, but a term many people use all the time. I was asking if it was regarded as an official term, because I’ve always considered as an incorrect spelling of batonnage.
3 Likes
I just want to know when it’s safe to age white burgundy again.
4 Likes
The more 2005 German wine I drink the more premox I am finding. Not all producers by any stretch, but some pretty good ones. And I am not the only one finding it.
3 Likes
Interesting you would say that because 05 was also a hot vintage that I am guessing messed with the pHs.
I am actually doing a big 05 GG study in the Mosel on Wed with Daniel from Markus Molitor will report back!
5 Likes
I don’t have near enough a good handle on the full array of practices William is talking about under the general umbrella of leading to ‘fragility,’ but I must color myself a bit skeptical. I am very likely putting too much weight on the umbrella term as opposed to those specific practices, but fragility as a concept has some trouble explaining how premox managed to plague Burgundy so much worse than many wines of far more apparent fragility (take your pick - qba’s, kabinetts, federspiels, vermentino, sauvignon blanc, California, etc.). I understand William’s point that perceptions may be skewed by white Burgundy being disproportionately cellared relative to others drunk young, but that explanation isn’t working for me because in my case the experience is the opposite - white Burgundy was both (1) a small minority of the whites I cellared and (2) a large majority of the whites that premoxed in my cellar. And surely a number of items on the list are equally descriptive of many regions not so plagued. I’m unaware of any premox pattern in sunny California, which isn’t to say California chardonnay ages like white Burgundy, but even when it ages badly the bad result is not the phenomenon we call premox. I also think the full array of practices under discussion has trouble emerging as satisfactory explanations because premox as a phenomenon was rapid onset circa 1995 and it is hard to believe such a wide array of producers (1) altered so many different winemaking practices so suddenly and so simultaneously, (2) each did so in the same way so as to create the requisite perfect storm, and (3) failed to put two and two together and undo whatever changes they made when they noticed their wines premoxing. But here we are about two decades out and I’m unaware of a single producer affected by premox who has managed to eliminate the problem through any method other than switching closures. If they still can’t figure out what cellar practice caused the problem, then it is plausible that cellar practices were never the cause or at least not the dispositive part of the cause.
All this leads me to suspect that the corks themselves ought to be investigated as an explanation beyond merely introducing hererogeneity in oxygen ingress - perhaps the explanation. If changing winemaking practices were capable of causing the problem, then changing cork-making practices were also capable of causing the problem. Early premox theories included changes to the cork coating. I don’t know if anything conclusive ever came out of that. I realize the cork explanation suffers from at least some of the same criticisms because Burgundy did not have its own dedicated cork suppliers. Perhaps we will never have an explanation! But perhaps we don’t need one, because abandoning cork does seem to be the silver bullet, so producers should do so and then consider themselves liberated to follow whatever practices in the cellar they think are consistent with making the best ageable wines they can.
6 Likes
So are folks saying that the winemakers are not checking pHs and adjusting things accordingly?
Yes, warmer vintages in general lead to lower acid levels, higher pHs and higher alcohol levels . . . Unless winemakers ‘adjust’ for these things, usually prior to harvest.
Higher pHs lead to the need for higher free SO2 levels to avoid oxidation faster than one would want, all things considered. And nearly all winemakers I know understand and either ‘abide’ by this or understand the risks.
I understand that it was a lot of experimentation with lower SO2 levels in burgundy during the late 90s and early 2000s. Are we to believe that this was the case across Europe?
Cheers
1 Like
‘07 seems to have issues as well.
1 Like