With regard to pressing, I’d argue the issue is not so much about soilds (juice lees), because settling was common before, and now deciding how dirty your juice is to barrel is a winemaking choice.
Rather, it’s about whether the pressing is oxidative or not. The old Vaslin yellow submarine presses allowed a bit more oxygen and you end up with brown juice. The brown is because you’ve allowed the phenolics to oxidise, and this is largely enzymic (laccase, PPOs). With very low phenolics in the juice and thus the wine then oxidation is much less likely to happen - with no phenolics you’d have no oxidation (which in wine requires both phenolics and transition metal ions). It’s possible to use pneumatic presses to allow juice oxidation - it’s just that unless this is deliberately done, then the juice will naturally have more phenolics and the wine a shorter lifespan post-bottling.
Of course they were not the only producer to have had problems, far from it, but if Leflaive realised that they had made mistakes, leading to massive numbers of defective bottles, I find it really hard to understand why they did not recall all the bottles of all the vintages concerned.
Actually I’m grateful in a way, because the Baumard premox issues pushed me into trying other Loire chenins, which I preferred anyway. I did buy a couple of bottles of Clos du Papillon a few years ago, with screwcaps, but they were nothing like as good as the other wines I had got into, so I won’t be going back for more.
David Ramey has always claimed that by pressing the juice oxidatively pre-oxidizes the phenolics (that later fall out), in effect protecting the wine and making it longer lived. By not allowing oxygen or minimizing exposure to it during pressing, you might make a slightly fresher wine, but with no legs to age.
All true-but if one opened the hopelessly poxed 96 GCs from Ramonet along with the excellent and fresh St. Aubin Le Charmois as we did a few years ago it is quite clear that the corks that were used on the GCs were beyond ridiculous, as though lubricated with vaseline rather than paraffin; they oozed out with no effort whatever and I don’t believe that they weren’t a major part of the problem.
Interesting as we sold Leflaive in 2000’s and while 2003 was a solar scorcher, something at Leflaive went awry in 2004 where all the wines that arrived from Macon-Verze up had unusually high sulfur levels and/or reduction as if there were cellar issues and corrections made at the wrong time in the process, I can’t recall if this also coincided with Pierre Morey leaving the Domaine.
Many excellent producers cited in other threads, I’ve really liked wines from Alheit, Radford Dale, Mullineux, Sarah Raal, DeMorgenzen. Have not experienced or heard of PremOx (but my own cellar of this category isn’t quite in the danger zone yet, I’m needing to this category).
why would there be such variation in those corks and not any other corks at the same time?
The switch from traditional paraffin as the lubricant [making it very difficult to push the cork into the bottle], to, instead, nouveau vague silicone as the lubricant [making it very easy to push the cork into the bottle].
Paraffin as the lubricant keeps out most of the oxygen.
Silicone as the lubricant welcomes the oxygen right into the bottle.
You have brought back memories of a bottle of 2004 Leflaive Chevalier that was heavily sulfured, premoxed and corked ! Probably our groups Leflaive nadir !
I had heard that there was an issue with their sulfur usage in the 2004 vintage, ? In the vineyards and subsequently, and it led to some terminally reduced wines, and after that the sulfur regimen was cut way back by Anne-Claude, and that was the beginning of Leflaive’s “ Golden Era” of premature oxidation.
Not that I necessarily understand the underlying factors.
