I donāt know Howard- too soon to tell. I will tell you that the article was a surprise to me and left me completely dismayed because that was my first impulse when I read of the possibility of this becoming the next premox.
At this point I am about done buying burgundy. I turn 46 this year, and most of 2016s will not be ready until I am in my late 60s. And as infrequently as I drink wine, I already have a lifetime supply. I will do a few 2017s, but I cannot see buying much after.
I did do a very extensive review of the few producers I cellar and found no mention of brett at all- and after 20+ years of tasting the wines of those Domaines I have not seen anything through 2016 to worry about in my own TNs. So I feel reasonably comfortable in what I have in hand.
So for me, stopping is pretty easy because I am almost there anyway. But if I were 10 years younger, I would not be touching any Domaines where critics had reported brett, I would be tasting pretty much everything before buying like I used to in early times, and I would be keeping close watch on critical reviews in future vintages.
More broadly- Burgundy is just too expensive now for these kinds of things to be happening. It is never a good thing in any market, but at a time when many high end producer village level wines are selling for more than their grand crus did a decade ago- it is unthinkable to me to take such chances.
This time it appears that we have an early warning system of sorts, but when you take into account the full context of the article plus what is known of brett- there is nothing to say it will always be an evident problem when the wines are first released.
Look, Tom, I am where you are, even more so. I turn 64 this year and have cut way back on purchases of wines, esp. those needing lots of aging. I have plenty of Burgundy to drink and will do fine not buying anything other than whites and reds that I want to drink young - mostly less expensive wines. And, I have tasted most of what I buy these days - either at the Paulee in NY or when visiting Burgundy, which we have been doing every 2-3 years. I donāt subscribe to much in the way of wine newsletters anymore.
But, the trade and wine writers really have a choice right now. āHelpā producers or help consumers. If it picks the latter, a few producers might be hurt who are called out where the wines turn out not to have brett. That would be horrible, but if it is quiet and there is a problem that is widespread like in 2004 reds or premox and consumers get screwed, it will hurt everyone, producers, consumers, Burgundy wine writers, etc.
Wine writers, etc., have to decide who their primary loyalties are with, the producers whose wines they review or the wine consumers who pay them for advice. I hope they make the correct choice this time.
Only a few, served to me blindly, and I rather liked them, as did the Burgundy-loving friends who brought them. I suspect whatever it was that caused many people to find them so repulsive is one of those elements where there is wide variation in individualsā sensitivities.
John, I have liked relatively few 2004 reds I have tasted. There are a couple of producers where I have had good wines, but most I have had have been awful IMHO.
It would not only be horrible, it would be unethical, immoral and potentially illegal. Put yourself in the shoes of the critic- even on an issue like premox which is well known and widely accepted. Would you be prepared to go to court with sufficient science backing you to defend yourself against a libel claim or two if you made a list of producers that your readers should avoid? If you made that list in 2008 and included Pernot but left out Leflaive, and all your readers bought 2007 Leflaive but stopped buying Pernot- how would you account for yourself a decade later when your readers got screwed?
I understand what you want- it is what we all want, but will never have. Premox and brett have always been with us- but now, so far inexplicably, their presence has grown greatly. And there is no way to definitively prove which producers have a āproblemā, nor even does there seem to be agreement on the threshold for āproblemā. If you are one of those people who thinks no bottle should ever have premox or brett- not ever- then you are living in a fantasy land that does not now, and never did, exist.
Allen has written a detailed article on the issue for his subscribers, and he very clearly states in the tasting notes where he is detecting brett that could be problematic. The data is all there- and I have posted a way to, in less than 15 minutes, sort through that 200 pages of data to get right to all the TNs mentioning brett. What more do you want?
Then, you need not to give a review to the wines at all. Would you believe that it is ethical to give a 95 rating to a wine from a winery that has a history of premox and advise your readers to hold it for 15 years when it would be magnificent? How would you rate a Leflaive wine today if you were a wine writer? Screw your readers to prevent lawsuits by producers?
Tom, frankly, you have described why I have stopped subscribing to most wine newsletters. Why should I if they donāt give me the information that would help me buy wines that will be of high quality. Over the years, I just found that things like the Wine Advocate, Burghound, the Wine Spectator, etc., did not provide reviews that were predictive of my future experiences with wines. So, why pay for them.
Good question. I have an answer, but I am not going to pretend I think it is the best or most correct answer to all eyes.
I think the best a critic can do is evaluate what is in front of them at the time on its own merits, and report the findings in an objective tasting note. And ideally, when an issue like premox or brett becomes unusually prominent, the critic can and should address that risk on a broad basis to the extent the problem cannot be specifically attributed to a specific wine when it is tasted.
This is the trouble with premox- we have no way of knowing whether a given wine is going to premox. Even today, the randomness with which it strikes defies the logic of just about any solution attributed to the problem. Brett would seem to have similar vagaries, but if the critic is at least pointing out its presence in specific tasting notes- which is what is happening here- then the best practice I suggest above is being honored.
In short- a critic can, and should, discuss premox generally if that critic publishes TNs for white burgundies. But to make lists of specific producers or wines to avoid is an impossible exercise. It cannot possibly be accurate and reliable. And thus you run into the practical issue of potential libel suits and also the reality that such actions would pretty much end a career reviewing the wines of burgundy.
I subscribe to View from the Cellar and Burghound only at this point. And I rely most heavily on the initial vintage assessments to determine at a high level what I want to do about a vintage- for example buying small quantities of a big and tannic long term year, but loading up in what I call āluncheon wineā years like 2007 since my favorite way to enjoy a great wine is a glass or two over a light lunch.
The TNs are of interest and I usually read through them once, but I have gotten to a point where I rely on my own tasting history of certain wines to do almost all my buying.
I have found this to be pretty useful. start [Oxidized Burgundies] Any wine writer could have done something similar with respect to his experiences over the years.
I think you are portraying this as a binary situation, and I donāt think it is. There is no reason at all that a reviewer couldnāt say āthis wine seemed flawed to me and tasted of brett, although there might be other causes.ā If a reviewer is not willing to describe the wine that (s)he tastes, why subscribe? And it is not a viable alternative to use words like āwildā or āleathery,ā as those are ambiguous and to some positive descriptions.
I understand that saying a wine is (or seemed) flawed might make it hard or impossible to get an invitation to taste at the property again, but as I say, calling balls and strikes is the essence of the job.
Well, for a number of years Iāve been telling readers that āthe domaineā has been only the second best Leflaive in the village. DIAM was just a start to right the premox ship, 2016 brought some logistical improvenments but the wines were still second best - 2017 Iād say they are neck and neck - Pierre is doing good work and there is now definite progress. Given my written experience of old (more than 10 years old) DIAM sealed whites - I now have no qualms about oxidation, even if the domaine doesnāt want to discuss DIAM in that, or just about any, context!
Iām intruiged by the āmore brett nowā discussion. We certainly know more about it and measure it more easily now than 25 years ago, yet a significant number of older bottles show it to me and given that Iām hardly sensitised to it (in an Australian winemaker sense), unlike pyrazines, the āmore brett nowā discussion surprises me given how older bottles already show - does more mean that all will show it in the end? Brett for me is an absolute rarity in young wines - but maybe that reflects the palette of domaines that I visit. In old wines I think itās common but relatively few are the wines that hit my personal ātipping-pointā ie tipping the wine down the sink!
Letās call it a devilās advocate position - but I wonder if the brett call is simply a stab at differentiation between critics - I certainly think that wines are made in a cleaner, more detail-concious way and with more understanding now vs 25 years ago - largely with much less new oak too. So more brett?
Burghound IS noting brett in the TNs- hence the exercise I suggest. The argument is, I think, whether there should be a discussion in which producers or wines are singled out above and beyond the TNs.
Itās certainly possible that there is a problem at some addresses, or specific wines. OTOH, I canāt remember the last time I had an obviously bretty Burg. Itās never been something Iāve noticed in any wine at La Paulee, for example, where a lot of quality wines get poured. As for Meadows, given that almost every young wine he tastes is marked by āreductionā, Iām reluctant to trust his judgment on brett, at least in barrel samples or recently bottled wines.
The analog to premox is not a good one. If a particular domaine (or wine) has brett problems, that is very easily diagnosed - and cured in future wines. Whereas no one knows exactly what causes premox, and itās obviously still a problem in many, many wines.
There is such a trivially simple solution: have the wines you suspect of brett tested. Either bring it up with the producer, and collaborate before writing about it, or send some samples to a lab for testing. A high profile wine critic can certainly afford to do that.
Thanks for the input Bill - intrigued is the right word to describe how I felt when reading the article, as itās not my experience. For me the jury is still out, but itās an interesting debate as you point out.