2008 Vintage Assessment and Premox Check Dinner No. 1

2008 White Burgundy Vintage Assessment Dinner No 1 @ Valentino February 9, 2016

As many of you already know, each year in February and March I host a series of white burgundy vintage appraisal and oxidation check dinners in Los Angeles. We taste the vintage which is then 7.5 years from the date of harvest, and we usually taste 60 to 75 of the top wines from the vintage over the course of three nights. This was our eleventh consecutive year of holding these dinners and this year the vintage was 2008.

Fourteen of us gathered in the Gold Room at Valentino to taste twenty-nine of the top 2008 Chablis, Meursault and Corton Charlemagnes. We also had one surprise old Leroy white. With 420 stems required for the burgundies, we once again taxed the limits of the restaurant, but Valentino’s wine director, Paul Sherman, handled it flawlessly. The wine service was the smoothest I’ve ever seen yet.

Valentino, which is owned by Pierro Selvaggio, has been a fixture of the Los Angeles fine dining scene for decades. It is well known for its Wine Spectator Grand Award winning wine cellar as well as its Italian regional cuisine. The dinner arrangements were well planned by Giuseppe Mollica, Valentino’s director of special events, and the service was top notch as always.

The wines and food courses are set forth below. All of the wines were served blind and none of the attendees knew the identity of our one ringer for night one. All of the voting was completely blind with the attendees ranking their top five wines identified by the number on the glass.

From Left: Ron Movich, Don Cornwell, Amanda Crawford and Valentino Wine Director Paul Sherman (facing away) checking out the third flight of Meursaults
My thanks to Andy Gavin for all of the great photographs he took at the dinner.

Appetizer Course
Oysters, Crab Cakes, Frico, Grilled Flat Bed Pizza
Bruschetta With Wild Arugula And Parmiggiano Schegge

1969 Leroy Meursault Charmes

Some of the early arrivers decided to purchase this wine from Valentino’s extensive wine list. Deep yellow-gold color. Faintly floral, mature fruit and hazelnut aromas. There was great richness here – definitely Meursault Charmes — and some nice complex mature fruit/earth/mineral tones on the finish. Very nice wine and really amazing considering that we drank this more than 46 years after the vintage. 93

2005 Pierre Peters “Les Mesnil - Chetillons” Champagne (two 750 ml)
Brilliant color, the bubbles were a bit larger in size than expected; very attractive bright citrus aromas with a minerality that you can smell (typical Les Mesnil); bright but open lemon and key lime fruit and prominent minerality. Lingering finish. Seems to be at its peak now. 94

Flight One – Grand Cru Chablis (and one 1er)

Maine Lobster Salad with Farro (Spelt) And Red Blood Orange Infused E.V. Olive Oll

#1 [2008 Dauvissat Chablis Preuses]
Color between light and medium gold; floral, citrus and oyster shell aromas; a lighter style Chablis with bright acidity; the acid shows prominently in the finish with some minerality. This one needs more time to uncoil, but will never compare in weight with the others. Group Rank: Tied for 18th (last), 0 points (0/0/0/0/0) 92+

#2 [2008 Fevre Chablis Valmur]
Color between light and medium gold; aromas are a bit musty (rot?) and toasted; the flavors are better than the aromas, honey and green apple; much later the aromas were more green apple like. We all agreed that this wine was advanced and two tasters thought it was outright oxidized. Group Rank: Tied for 18th (last), 0 points (0/0/0/0/0) 89 - Advanced

#3 [2008 Raveneau Chablis Valmur]
Light yellow gold color; very clean, green melon aromas with a fresh herb component; rich sweet green fruit flavors and quite long on the palate with a minerally finish. Tastes like a really nice Preuses. Group Rank: Group Rank: Fourth place, 13 points (0/3/0/0/1) 93

#4 [2008 Dauvissat Chablis Clos]
Relatively light gold color; lemon rind and a sweet white flowers aromas; on the palate this showed melba toast and strong lemon flavors with an almost bitter finish. There was an overwhelming consensus that this wine was advanced and two people thought it was showing signs of outright oxidation. Group Rank: Tied for 18th (last), 0 points (0/0/0/0/0) 87 - Advanced

#5 [2008 Fevre Chablis Clos]
Light gold color; very subdued floral notes followed by some sweet leechee fruit aromas; very bright, sweet fruit, good structure and minerality on the finish. Three tasters thought this bottle was advanced. While I wasn’t inclined to agree at the outset, at the very end of the night, as I was making my final pass, I was inclined to agree. Group Rank: Tied for 18th (last), 0 points (0/0/0/0/0) 92? (last impression advanced)

#6 [2008 Raveneau Chablis Clos]
Lightest gold color of the first flight; sweet white flowers with almost botrytis hints; on the palate this was concentrated lemon oil and minerals; a lot of depth and grip on the palate. Needs some time to round out I think. Group Rank: Fifteenth place, 4 points (0/1/0/0/0) 94

#7 [2008 Raveneau Chablis Blanchots]
Light yellow color; light citrus and white flowers aromas; light citrusy flavors with laser beam focus and a good deal of minerality—a really awesome finish. But on my second pass at the end of the night, didn’t seem quite as impressive.
Group Rank: Third place, 21 points (1/0/5/0/1) 94|93+

#8 [2008 Raveneau Montee du Tonnerre]
Light gold color; aromas of sweet citrus and hint of vanilla (oak); almost thick lemon pie filling flavors; this wine had very good density and great acidity; another awesome Chablis. My favorite of this flight today. Group Rank: Tied for 9th place, 8 points (0/0/0/3/2) 95

Flight Two – Meursault Charmes and friends

Pan Seared Scallops With Wild Mushrooms And A Crustacean Reduction

#9 [2008 Roulot Meursault Boucheres]
Medium yellow gold color; sweet green apple aromas and a lactic acid note; on the palate this was bright green apple flavors with good minerality. Group Rank: Fourteenth place, 6 points (0/0/1/1/1) 92

#10 [2008 Roulot Meursault Porusots]
Light yellow gold color; sweet white flowers aromas with a hint of vanilla (oak); rich, ripe pear and hazelnut flavors with good acidity to frame it; nice minerality on the finish too. Group Rank: 16th place, 3 points (0/0/1/0/0) 93+

#11 [2008 H Boillot Meursault Charmes]
Between light and medium gold color; very rich, fat green apple and hazelnut aromas and flavors but with brilliant acidity that keeps the wine from being ponderous. On the first pass this seemed a bit short on the finish, it was viscous but the flavor disappeared. After about 45 minutes this really opened up into a very attractive wine. Group Rank: 7th place, 10 points (1/0/1/1/0) 94

#12 [2008 Colin-Morey Meursault Charmes]
Between light and medium yellow gold color; a sweet confectionery aroma along with citrus and hazelnut; bright lemon creme flavor with a very long minerally finish. Impressive. Group Rank: Tied for 11th , 7 points (0/0/1/1/2) 95

#13 [2008 Lafon Meursault Charmes]
Medium gold color; very sweet white flowers, vanilla bean (oak) and botrytis aromas; very ripe apricot/orange fruit and hazelnut on the palate but with very lemony acidity in the finish. As Amanda Crawford noted, this wine seemed to be a blend of both overripe and almost under-ripe fruit There was unanimous agreement that this wine was advanced. Group Rank: Tied for 18th (last), 0 points (0/0/0/0/0) 87 - Advanced

#14 [2008 Roulot Meursault Charmes]
Medium gold color; another wine with rich white flowers and hazelnut aromas; very ripe fruit, quite viscous on the mid-palate but then the finish evaporates. Group Rank: Tied for 18th (last), 0 points (0/0/0/0/0) 91?

Flight Three: Meursault Perrieres and other 1ers

Risotto Ai Frutti Di Mare

#15 [2008 Coche-Dury Meursault Rougeots]
Light gold color; white flowers, lemon and key lime aromas – very attractive; this wine has very intense citrus and mineral flavors with a very minerally finish. Needs time but should be super. Group Rank: Tied for 11th , 7 points (0/1/0/1/1) 93+

#16 [2008 Colin-Morey Meursault Genevrieres Hospice de Beaune Cuvee Baudots]
Medium gold color; aromas of lemon oil and minerals that you could smell; very intense citrus and pear flavors with very bright acidity and a long sweet fruit finish with plenty of acidity and minerality. A very tightly compacted Meursault. Group Rank: 1st place, 55 points (9/1/2/0/0). 95

#17 [Ringer 1 – 2008 De Cherisey Meursault Blagny La Genelotte]
Between light and medium gold color. Really intense citrus with some matchstick reduction like Lefliaive – which blew off with about 45 minutes of air; a highly structured, lightly lemony wine almost layers of minerality. Seems to be MP; needs time. [N.B. An amazingly good wine in the context of this line up. This 1er vineyard is located above Meursault Perrieres. Defintely worth buying at about 10% of the cost of Roulot MP.] Group Rank: Tied for 11th , 7 points (0/1/0/1/1) 94

#18 [2008 H. Boillot Meursault Perrieres]
Medium gold color; strong lemon oil but a little too much oak here; intense lemon oil flavors. Lots of intensity, but will this improve with time? Group Rank: 17th place, 2 points (0/0/0/1/0) 93+?

#19 [2008 Colin-Morey Meursault Perrieres]
Medium gold color; meyer lemon and vanilla bean (oak) aromas; very bright citrus, and little chalk on the palate; highly structured, bony, citrus and minerals on the finish. This needs another five years of age. Group Rank: Tied for 18th (last), 0 points (0/0/0/0/0) 94+

#20 [2008 Mikulski Meursault Perrieres]
Medium plus gold color; the aromas are a very rich lemon crème and , as someone said, an aroma of rotting fruit; there were bright, lemony flavors with some apparent structure but an odd dry/toasty component at the end of the finish. Disappointing. There was a strong consensus that this wine was advanced and also off (rot) in the aromas. Group Rank: Tied for 18th (last), 0 points (0/0/0/0/0) 85 – advanced/off

#21 [2008 Roulot Meursault Perrieres]
Almost medium yellow gold color; lemon crème aromas, on the palate this had rich concentrated and layered lemon crème flavors with a lot of minerality on the mid-palate; a bright, minerally finish that was extremely long. By the end of the night, on my second pass, I thought this was easily the best wine of the night and probably one of the best Roulot MPs we’ve ever had these dinners. Group Rank: 6th, 11 points (1/1/0/0/1) 96

Flight Four – Corton Charlemagne

Pan Roasted Napa Quail Wrapped in Pancetta

#22 [2008 Louis Latour Corton Charlemagne]
Between light and medium gold color; white flowers and green apple aromas; light sweet green apple and citrus flavors; nice finish. Seemed a bit more attractive on the second pass. Group Rank: Tied for 18th (last), 0 points (0/0/0/0/0) 92|93

#23 [2008 Bonneau du Martray Corton Charlemagne]
Between light and medium gold color; green apple and white flowers aromas; bright, lightly astringent citrus flavors; tight, tart finsh. By the second pass the fruit on the mid-palate seemed very soft but nothing really opened up. Group Rank: Tied for 18th (last), 0 points (0/0/0/0/0) 92

#24 [2008 Drouhin Corton Charlemagne]
Between light and medium gold color; sweet green apple and white flowers aromas—very charming; bright green apple flavors with abundant minerality that slowly melt into a little bit of fat on the mid-palate; very minerally finish. Group Rank: 2nd place, 27 points (1/3/2/1/2) 94

#25 [2008 Bouchard Corton Charlemagne]
Closer to medium gold color; white flowers and green apples aromas; a rich fairly dense Corton – green apples and some lemony tones with a real intensity; highly structured minerals and citrus finish. Very impressive. Group Rank: Tied for 9th, 8 points (1/0/0/1/1) 95

#26 [2008 Jadot Corton Charlemagne]
Almost medium gold color; ripe fresh apricot aromas with some smoky tones; the flavors are way too ripe and advanced . We all agreed that this wine was very advanced. The smoky tones over strong apricot aromas and flavors was not pleasant. Well on its way to full blown oxidation. Group Rank: Tied for 18th (last), 0 points (0/0/0/0/0) 86 - advanced

#27 [2008 Faiveley Corton Charlemagne]
Medium gold color; aromas are very perfumed white flowers; ripe green apple fruit flavors with light but very persistent minerality; the minerality is quite long. I liked this and it improved over the course of the evening. Group Rank: Tied for 18th (last), 0 points (0/0/0/0/0) 93|94

#28 [2008 Henri Boillot Corton Charlemagne]
Medium gold color; sweet green apple and lemon pastry aromas; green apple and lemon flavors with an almost astringent finish, but quite long. Group Rank: Fifth place, 12 points (0/3/0/0/0) 93+

#29 [2008 Colin-Morey Corton Charlemagne]
Light gold color; white flowers and green apple aromas; intensely concentrated green apple flavors with lots of acidity and minerality and a nearly astringent finish that improved slowly over the course of the night. Needs time. Group Rank: Eighth place, 9 points (0/0/1/3/0) 94+

Dessert Course

Pear Tart Tatin With Gelato

2005 Turley Roussanne LPH
Brown color like an old sauternes. aromas of brown sugar and sweet tropical fruit; a very viscous wine – thick texture; this wasn’t an amazing wine like the 2004 was two years ago, but it still showed reasonably well. 92

Postscript statistics and comments:

Corked - 0/29 0%
Oxidation - 0/30 0%
Advanced - 5/29 17.2%
Oxidized or advanced - 5/29 17.2%

Over the last five years, this was the second worst “night one” performance in terms of the number of either oxidized or advanced wines. 2004: 3 of 25 oxidized or advanced (12%). 2005: 4 of 26 oxidized or advanced (15.4%). 2006: 6 of 28 bottles or 21.4%. 2007: 3 of 30 oxidized or advanced (10%).

So, NO, the premox problem is not getting demonstrably better although there is a trend over the past five years for fewer bottles to be outright oxidized at 7.5 years, but there is also a corresponding increase in the number of bottles that are clearly advanced.

Some preliminary thoughts on the 2008 vintage at 7.5 years of age

The 2008 vintage is marked by both botrytis and very good acidity. A lot of the wine wines have sweet fruit and in some cases almost confectionery aromas. Almost every wine was bright and several had considerable acidity that needs to soften to really enjoy the wines. As confirmed by the BIVB harvest statistics, 2008 had both more acid and more sugar than 2007. The color on the 2008 whites was generally deeper than the 2007s, though there are always exceptions to the general rule. The 2008 wines have seem to have greater mid-palate density than the 2007s but they are not as aromatically complex or as ethereal as the 2007s at the same stage. For those who cannot tolerate any botrytis in white burgundy or who don’t like the sweet character that Stephen Tanzer describes as “sucrosite,” this will not be your favorite vintage. But if you are someone who liked the 1986 white burgundies, you will love the best 2008 Meursault and Corton Charlemagnes. The Chablis seemed to be the best vintage since 2002, but bear in mind that judgment is based upon four excellent Raveneau wines and one very good Dauvissat wine. The other three wines (two from Fevre and one Dauvissat) were advanced to varying degrees. Some of these 2008s, like the Colin-Morey whites and the Roulot MP seem like they will age very well. The Raveneau Chablis however seemed surprisingly drinkable now.

Cumulative Cheers and Jeers

Roulot in Abundance

• Colin-Morey – By my assessment, Pierre-Yves Colin went four for four. I had all four bottles rated 94+ or better. I thought this was easily the best overall producer performance on night one

• Raveneau – Four excellent Chablis really bolstered the overall impression of Chablis from this vintage. The most impressive showing for Raveneau since 2002.

• Herni Boillot – Three very good wines and none were advanced or oxidized (notable for that accomplishment), though one was a bit too oaky for my palate.

• Bonneau du Martray – I guess I’m counting small blessings here, but for the second year in a row BDM was not oxidized or advanced. For me that was a welcome development for what was once one of my favorite white burgundies. I have to put it all in perspective though, since two of the last five vintages of BDM have been either oxidized or advanced and I didn’t find either the 2007 or 2008 BDM Cortons to be wines I would buy based on the two dinners in question.

Jeers go to:

• Jadot – this Category I premox poster child stayed true to form

• Lafon – another very advanced Lafon Meursault reaffirms why I quit purchasing Lafon other than for library bottles for these dinners. Lafon remains high on the premox wall of shame, but has not yet sunk to the level of premox poster children Fontaine-Gagnard, Blain-Gagnard, Jadot and Matrot, but the trend line isn’t good here.

• Fevre – all I can say is thank heaven 2008 is the last vintage of Fevre under cork. DIAM closures (starting in 2009) have to be superior for this producer, because it can’t get much worse

• Mikulski – We’ve now had three bottles at three different dinners (two from the 2005 vintage). All three bottles had verified provenance and had shipped directly from the Domaine within a few months of the dinners. All three were premox disasters. I ironically included Mikulski at the recommendation of an English Master of Wine who highly recommended that we include some Mikulski Meursault 1ers in this dinner series and said he’d never encountered a premoxed bottle from Mikulski. So far, having had four bottles, I’ve yet to encounter one that wasn’t either advanced or oxidized.


Part II of this year’s dinner series, the grand crus from Criots Batard, Bienvenues Batard, Batard and Chevalier Montrachet will be held at the same restaurant on February 25, 2016.

Thank you for another great report. I am looking forward to next year when we’ll see if DIAM is helping at Fevre. I love their wines, but hate their oxidation rate.

I wonder if Jadot might change something/anything now that a new winemaker is at the helm. Obviously any effects won’t show up for a while, but as with Fevre, it can’t get worse.

Great work once again Don, very interesting and much appreciated…

I will be waiting to see the results from the follow up dinners with great interest.

FYI, I have had real issues with Boillot’s '08’s recently.

Three Montrachets in a row, 1 totally oxidized, 2 very advanced…

My sympathy goes to those who are still obsessed by white Burgundy, amid this preposterous crapshoot. Two days ago, an 08 Fevre Les Clos was tight upon opening and very good after 45 minutes of air, leaving us thinking that the wine will be even better in a few years.

Thanks for the report, Don.

Super notes , as always Don . And our experience on this side of the ocean is similar … Meursault Perrieres from Roulot is fantastic . The 2008 vintage is great with beautiful acidities .
In our tasting, the Coche wines stood out , as well as PY Colin Morey and a stunning Clos de la Mouchere from Boillot . Sauzet, Prieur and Chavy were premoxed .
I am looking forward to your next dinner results . Thanks

The answer to this is, yes. I was at a master class last fall and brought the issue up. From what I was told, they have been running experiments since the 01 vintage and think they have identified the problem as a poor cork source. We obviously won’t know for another few years, but from 2011 on, they have been using the new cork source and take the premox problems very seriously.

Summary, buy more PYCM. (credit card looks angrily at me)

Always a fascinating read. Thanks, Don.

hated to miss this first dinner but it whets my appetite for the next two. Hope you saved me some risotto.

Don puts in an annual yeoman’s effort to arrange these dinners, juggling wine and schedule changes, venues and menus, and always pulls it off with great aplomb. I am happy to be included.

A great job again, Don
I often wonder where you find the time for your valable contributions here.
I am chocked. A 2008 Dauvissat Clos promoxed!
Was this anticipated to be possible?

This is extraordinarily helpful Don. The bottles of 2008 Leflaive Pucelles that I possess also have this issue. My buys are leaning towards those with very few problems now Colin-Morey and Raveneau especially or wines I know I will drink in the near term. Good to see Bonneau du Martray on the good list and not the naughty. That is such a great wine and wonderful people too.

Thanks Don for the write up. This is definitely one of my favorite yearly events to keep track of…and the food at Valentino looked delicious, too.

Looking forward to night 2!

Wonderful notes Don. Much more detailed and descriptive than mine!

Thank you again for organizing these very useful and eye opening events.

The Chablis flights were really lovely. The quality of Raveneau was immediately apparent to all. The pleasant surprise was that many, including myself, had the MdT pegged as a grand cru.

We tasted the 2008 PYCM BBM last night and it fits your vintage character assessment perfectly. Lots of richness, darker yellow in color, but also plenty of acidity. With time it actually become more acidic and youthful.

Very much looking forward to night 2.

Almost everyone agreed that this was advanced to very advanced/oxidized.
Everyone just assumed it was the Fevre.
We were all shocked when the reveal was Dauvissat Clos.

Great report, thanks. But heck with the wines, I would have come for the food alone!

You’ll have to wait 2 years cuz Fevre began using Diam10 on their Grand Cru’s in 2010. They started using Diam5 on their 1er Crus in 2007 (and no premox reports on the 1ers in either cellartracker or the oxidized burg wiki).

Jadot started using Diam in 2011 I believe.

Brilliant. Great information and detail. The more that I taste the wines of PYCM the more I gain the impression that there is quite a distinctive house style. They have a tendency to show a high glycerol richness on the front coupled with quite a linear finish.
Notes are greatly appreciated.

Good work Don.

Keith:

You are probably familiar with some of the stages of denial that they talk about in 12-step programs? Well, for premox and wine producers, there are stages too.

The first stage is simply denial – denial that any of your wines are oxidized or that you have an oxidiation problem. The second stage is simply silence. The problem doesn’t exist because you just refuse to ever discuss it or acknowledge that the problem exists. Most of the producers who are the absolute worst offenders remain permanently stuck in stages 1 or 2 (e.g. Fontaine-Gagnard, Blain-Gagnard, Matrot, Bonneau du Martray and Lafon).

The third stage is acknowledgment that there is an an oxidation issue, but claiming that the oxidation is totally unexpected and it is a mystery. The problem must have an external cause and it must be studied by experts to determine that cause. Many burgundy producers have been stuck in this stage for years and Jadot was one of them. The burgundy producers as a group commissioned their technical experts at BIVB to study it. When the BIVB technical team came out with a preliminary report about five years ago stating the primary causes of the problem appeared to be a combination of reduction in the quality of corks, reduction in phenols in winemaking due to equipment and process changes, and reduction in the level of utilization of SO2, many producers screamed and shouted that this was heresy and they simply prevented BIVB from issuing any further public reports about the issue.

The fourth stage, which Jadot seems to have finally arrived at, is to acknowledge that your wines have some level of oxidation problems, but to blame someone else for the problem, i.e. the cause is something completely unexpected and beyond the winemaker’s control. In this stage, the culprit is either a problem with a particular supplier of cork, the coating on the cork (the choices are paraffin, silicone, a combination of the two, or none), or the bleaching of the corks with peroxide. This buys you another few years before you have to acknowledge that yes, you still have a problem. At this point, some producers move on to stage five, which is to blame something else which is largely beyond their control, like diffused oxygen from the bottling line, the shape of the glass neck, glutathione levels in the wine, or some other cause besides changes that the producer made in the process or equipment used in wine-making over time.

It’s only after you get past stage five, and start looking at the changes you’ve made in equipment and techniques over time that real progress starts to be made.

Is there a cork problem out there? Absolutely there is, but that’s old news. That’s why oxidation is not uniform and why some bottles in a case may be oxidized while others are fine. The quality of the average cork has clearly dropped over the last twenty years and there is a much greater deviation in the oxygen transmission rates in cork and even in the weight of individual corks than there used to be – notwithstanding some of the propaganda to the contrary that came out of the cork industry for several years. But cork is used as the scapegoat by way too many producers when that’s clearly not the root cause of their problems. Some producers never had any premox problem, like Raveneau, Leroy and DRC, and now Colin-Morey. (And until they changed winemakers with the 2007 vintage, Domaine Leflaive.) So some universal fall-off in the performance of corks is not explanatory.

Whether the cause of the cork problem is global warming, much higher demand for wine corks, stripping the cork trees more frequently, irrigating them, or all of the above isn’t what’s important. The smart producers recognized the problem very quickly in the mid 1990s and bought better cork and higher grades of cork and hand sorted their corks to eliminate the underweight ones and ones with obvious defects and they were quickly past the cork problem. Some people like Philippe Prost from Bouchard even undertook the relatively low tech but extremely effective practice of weighing each cork and rejecting the underweight ones. (Low cork weight = lower cork density and higher cork porosity = higher oxygen transmission rates.)

Some producers felt that the only practical or economic solution to their cork problem was a technical one – to substitute DIAM closures for cork. The data I have seen suggests that there is a much more highly confined (and predictable) oxygen transmission rate for DIAM versus the “typical” grades of cork. Upon initial examination, such data implies that changing from cork to DIAM will substantially reduce premox even if no other changes in winemaking are made. But one has to question exactly what is DIAM being compared with? Is DIAM being compared with the corks utilized by the likes of Raveneau, Leroy, DRC, Roulot and Colin-Morey for their best wines in these studies? That’s very unlikely. Even if DIAM represents a simple solution for improving OTR rates versus “typical” corks, there remain two as yet unresolved issues about DIAM – (1) How does a wine sealed with DIAM age and perform over time? Will wines bottled under DIAM taste as good at 8, 10, 12 or 15 years old as the best examples of cork-finished wines? We just don’t know yet. (2) Does DIAM, with the food grade binder used to bond the bits of agglomerated cork, impart any chemicals or change the flavor of the wine over time? There are reports that wines sealed with DIAM tend to exhibit greater bitterness. But is this presently anecdotal evidence true or not?

From my perspective, “fixing” the oxidation problem means looking beyond corks and closures and understanding the underlying chemical processes – at least to a significant degree. There are two types of oxidation that take place in wine – oxidation of phenols and oxidation of ethanol – and those two processes are “coupled” reactions, meaning that they are inter-dependent. Understanding wine oxidation means understanding these two processes and the two variables that the winemaker can really control – phenol levels and SO2 levels. Far too many producers in burgundy just don’t understand the chemistry behind oxidation. Many thought SO2 was used primarily for bacterial control in wine instead of as an oxidation preventative and the “cleaner juice” meant the need for less SO2 in the wine. That was a major pilot error that caused the premature failure of many wines. To some extent that’s not the winemaker’s fault because its my understanding that chemistry has never been a featured part of the curriculum in the wine making programs in France. A winemaker who was actually trying to be helpful once said to me that “It’s not a chemistry issue, it’s a wine-making issue.” He was both right and wrong. It IS a chemistry issue and if winemakers don’t understand the chemistry involved, then they can’t appreciate how making changes in equipment or the process of making wine can change the levels of phenols in the wine and thus change the levels of the primary oxidation buffer in the wine and thus change how the wine ages and oxidizes over time. But it is also a wine-making problem because for the producers who have had significant premox problems over time, their problem was caused by changes they made in the equipment and wine-making processes since the early 1990s without any understanding of the impact those changes would have upon the chemistry of wine oxidation in their wines.

It infuriates me when somebody like Jadot, who produces millions of bottles of wine a year, and clearly has the ability to devote significant scientific resources to the problem, takes 10+ years to “study” the premox problem and then tries to blame it all on cork suppliers. That’s just bullshit, but it is par for the course for too many producers in burgundy. Jadot has known the real cause of their problem for years – starting with the 2000 vintage they very deliberately changed the style of their wines, even for the top wines in the portfolio. Jadot presses very lightly and uses minimal SO2 and starting in 2000 began using more new wood. The science shows wine gets exposed to more oxygen in new wood and oxidizes faster. Jadot (Kobrand) made a very deliberate choice to have their house style – from top to bottom – favor early drinking. Olivier Masmondet acknowldged that in a letter to a good friend of mine, which is quoted on the Oxidized Burgs Wiki site. http://oxidised-burgs.wikispaces.com/Jadot About three or four years back I went through the exercise of reporting about 50 examples of how Jadot wines made in the years 1999 and previous had no oxidation problems but for the years 2000 on, the Jadot wines had the second worst premox track record (after Fontaine-Gagnard). Jadot was like Raveneau in 1995, 1996 and 1999 and was essentially premox-free and then was like Fontaine-Gagnard and Blain-Gagnard and Matrot from 2000 on. That is clearly not a mere coincidence.

If you understand the chemistry of wine oxidation (which sadly many Burgundy winemakers do not), this stuff is NOT rocket science. There are three primary controls you have to have in place. You have to control the variability of cork weight and porosity. You have to have adequate levels of phenols in the juice, which is the primary oxidation buffer. You have to have adequate SO2 to throughout the winemaking process and when the finished wine is bottled in order to assure that the ethanol is not oxidized into acetaldehyde. The rest of the stuff being talked about or looked at may be contributory to some degree, but that stuff is likely shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic. It’s the three primary controls that have to be in place.

The producers who are the most frustrating of all are the ones who have zero understanding of chemistry and promote “quack science” such putting large amounts of CO2 in the wine. CO2 prevents oxidation during the malolactic fermentation process because CO2 is heavier than oxygen and forms a physical barrier to oxidation in a sealed barrel which is constantly bubbling up CO2. But unlike SO2, which chemically interacts with peroxide to prevent the oxidation of ethanol, CO2 does not chemically prevent the oxidation of ethanol by peroxide and it has no real impact on oxidation of the finished wine in the bottle. Nevertheless there are about a half dozen proponents of high levels of CO2 in finished white wines. This is quack science at its worst.

If Jadot have been running “experiments” since 2001 trying to solve oxidation, then why have they (from the highest levels down) completely denied such a thing exists for years and years (and right up to recently)…