Wood, Fermentation temperature & other make-up in Burgundy - who's who?

WINE TALK
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I popped a 2000 Bernard Ambroise Corton Le Rognot this evening that had been taking up space in my cellar for quite spell. I’d been trying to give it sufficient time as I had once, in my impetuous and poorly informed wine drinking days, brought a better regarded vintage of the same producer and vineyard to a wine dinner only to be rather ashamed of bringing it after tasting said wine. Though I know it had at least 15 or 20 years on it and the bottle was “correct”, the oak was unpleasant, even down right disgusting, and some wiser Burg-ophile told me it was the mark of the producer.

Well, tonight, the 2000 - which I just confirmed was given a 92 by Burghound, a 91 by IWC and a whopping 93 from TWA - opened with a lovely inviting nose. A bit oaky-influenced, but the nose is OK. On tasting, and then on tasting over the following four hours, I can only say that this wine is…gross.

It is a “correct” bottle, meaning…as intended.

To my tastes - and tastes do differ - this is an ungodly mess of a wine. Oaky, syrupy and sickly sweet. The wood treatment dumbs down anything that once lived and yearned to please under this make-up.

I would like a refund, but the reinforcement of the lesson learned is payment enough.

Now, I am not trying to pick on the producer or its wine-maker, as everyone has a mother that loves them. But I would like to have the benefit of the board’s experience and wisdom so I can avoid similar experiences in the future, and forever more. I never want to experience this again if I can help it.

So, what red Burgundy producers do you find have what sorts of oak treatments?

Any perspectives are welcome, including from those who like this sort of wood treatment. To each to his or her own - I just want to avoid this without pulling the cork to find out so I can sell along any mistakes that may linger in my cellar to better homes and I can avoid making any new mistakes.

Let’s be polite, but please be direct in your thinking and preferences.

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To ask the question more succinctly, what is your oak preference, and who do you favor and avoid because of their oak treatment?

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Oak is a difficult question.
It depends on the quality of the oak, the type, the concentration of the fruit.

I am an oakaphobe but I do like DRC which is 100% new oak. Likewise Dujac which sees a fair bit of new oak.

As you say though there are some producers where the oak pokes out.
I see a bit more oak influence in Bertagna, Mongeard-Mugneret, some Gros wines, Girardin.

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Thanks, Kent.

Yes, I’ve certainly had older Laurent burgs (known for heavy oak) that were delicious when the oak had integrated enough and I found them really enjoyable. Whether they taste like Burgundy is up for debate, but they can be great. While I’ve certainly formed some opinions of my own, I’d really like a list to know who produces with lots of make-up (well and poorly) and who leans more toward letting the underlying wine shine.

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Victim of its times, perhaps? Oaky Burgundy was super-popular fin de siecle but the producers still abusing the noble tree are fewer and further between these days and can’t have failed to notice their neighbors are making a lot more money.

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I don’t think you can really look at Burgundy that way - a lot of what people think of as “oaky” is down to toasting choices, or other oak choices. As someone in the industry once told me, how oaky a wine tastes isn’t necessary correlated to how much oak the producer uses. Some of the most esteemed wines in Burgundy use a lot of oak, but aren’t necessarily thought of in the same way as Dominique Laurent’s output circa 2000 - DRC, Rousseau, Bizot, Mugneret-Gibourg, Cathiard, Liger-Belair, Grivot, Meo - and that’s just Vosne. These all have varying expressions of oak, too - Gibourg oak, CLB oak and Bizot oak confer very different effects on the wine. I also think many of these producers would quite strongly reject the notion that their use of oak means the underlying wine doesn’t shine - though Charles Lachaux might agree with you.

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To be fair, also a Corton - those buggers do tend to show their oak more

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For me, the Ambroise style is a function of more specific choices than just the percentage of new wood. I have never visited, but I would assume based on how the wines taste that you’re looking at a combination of a long slufitic cold soak on destemmed fruit, following by quite hot vinification, and then aging with a percentage of new very high toast oak barrels. The combination of these approaches delivers a somewhat confectionary crème de cassis profile that is, to me, quite unpleasant, especially if it is not what you are expecting.

But, it is not the presence of oak in itself that is responsible for the style, but rather the set of choices, of which the particular type of oak is one (and of course, a prominent one!).

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Fermentation temperature is such an important variable that is not discussed very often. I talk about all the time with 100% stem inclusion wines - if my fermentation temperatures get too high, the ‘stemminess’ of the wine becomes a more prominent feature as temperature leads to greater extraction.

Thanks for talking about the other variables, @William_Kelley - though I think it is difficult to integrate a high percentage of new heavily toasted oak regardless of other variables.

Cheers

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OK - that all sounds fair enough. But circling back to the soul of the original question…who uses a combination of oak and other (in my palate’s view) malign influences and who focuses on the purity of the fruit and less make-up in their wine-making to each participants tastes?

Obviously, I think Ambroise - despite that bottle having received praise from no less than three reviewers - is a sickly mess to my own tastes. Who do you think is the opposite in style?

Come on Burg-drinkers, name names to your own palate.

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OK - I changed the topic title to be more accurate from just wood to “Wood, Fermentation temperature & other make-up in Burgundy - who’s who?”

Is there a reticence to share thoughts on producer’s use of these types of make-up, for good or ill?

Also, Laurent wines with enough age have been very successful to my tastes, though I usually do not consider them traditional burgundies when I taste them, even if enjoyed. They were known for their use of the poorly described “200% oak”, but what else do they do?

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Was the Ambroise a Robert Kacher Selections import? IIRC they were in his stable of producers, and he had a hand in creating Burgundies to his tastes, which were particularly woody from what I recall.

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Matt, that’s a big “yes.”

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Next time if your thread bombs, might I suggest taking the young kids’ tact and starting a new one. I mean you even got WK to respond and this place is dead… :sleeping: :sleeping: :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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It would be fun to see the Rousseau family’s facial expressions when Greg explains their wines are actually from Vosne!
:grin:

cheers

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Touché, you’re quite correct, an obvious error on my part.

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What is the fermentation temperature that doesn’t constitute “makeup”? :sweat_smile:

Your peak fermentation temperature for a 1-3 ton wooden vat of Pinot Noir in Burgundy, as a rule of thumb used by old timers, will be twice your starting temperature in centigrade plus three degrees. So e.g. if you start at 15C, you will peak at 33—unless you intervene.

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Laurent back in the day didn’t vinifiy his wines, he just did élevage - so all you can play with there are oak, lees, racking, cellar temp, sulfites… Lots of levers, but still fewer than if you’re conducting the fermentation.

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Thanks, all.

Well, Wiliam, perhaps that’s why I don’t find Ambroise and Laurent to be similar to the extent I enjoy the latter but not the former. As for Laurent, I certainly do not put them in the camp of Burgundies of purity, but can till be tasty in whatever camp they fall into, at least with enough time to absorb more of the makeup.

We can set aside the negatives if you wish, but who are the board’s favorites in the “less is more” make-up camp? Particularly in the mid-tier and up-and-comers categories?

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Maybe people are disinclined to guess what you would consider to be an “ungodly mess of a wine”?

More to the point, you are ignoring the feedback you are getting, particularly William’s. You are framing your question in an out-of-fashion way, a framing that hearkens back to the simpler dividing line of Parkerized wines vs. non-Parkerized wines, where ripeness and new oak were the lines establishing the fields. William’s point is that from fieldwork to fermentation to elevage the finished wine is a product of numerous choices. Even use of 100% new oak (itself a choice) involves choices of barrel maker, toast levels and tightness of wood grain. To use your terms, it’s all make-up.

An unfortunate effect of the new wine criticism practiced by William is that, while it is more informative and accurate than older criticism, it leaves consumers at a bit of a loss. Not only do we the ordinary consumers not have good information on many of those choices (fermentation temperatures, really?), the effects of the choices in combination with all of the other choices is a bit of a mystery. It’s become more difficult to sort wines into easily comprehensible buckets.

Which is to say, it’s harder than in the past to try to give you a good steer.