Has a splendid bottle of 2007 A.C yesterday. Fresh and invigorating with piercing acidity, loads of citrus and saline minerality.
Love the 07’s, and I didn’t have much premox with them. that was also the last time I was able to source an entire case of the AC.
I’ve never had a problem with premox in Dauvissat wines including Camus. I purchased quite a few from France while on vacation. I think part of the problem is storage at home and during transport. Just my opinion. 
Generally I’ve had good experience with Dauvissat. But in October 2019 we opened a new case of 2006 La Forest, and dumped the first two bottles. They were exactly as John S described above - very dark and with weird flavors. I assumed they were premoxed. Then a couple months later we opened another bottle, and while it had the same characteristics, we set it aside and with air it improved and was decent if not great. Last week (a year later), with John’s comment in mind after reading this thread, I opened another. Again it was very dark, weird smell, etc. I let it decant for three to four hours, and even with an open mind couldn’t drink more than half a small glass. So I have an open mind, but I’m not sure what this phenomenon is.
Some are oxidized and are therefore, dead. Some are so reduced they are weird, but will come to life with aeration. I fear the two get confused pretty often. Dauvissat has had a long history of both. Ironically, the reduced winemaking method probably prevents oxidation, though it simulates it to some of us…I had one of the reduced ones this Xmastime. I suspected that was what was going on, but aeration confirmed it. I wonder how many I’ve thrown out unnecessarily over the years.
And, FWIW, I think both of these problems have nothing to do with storage conditions. I am convinced that the closure is the issue, with bad closures resulting in the introduction of oxidation and good closures resulting in good wines or reduced wines. All Dauvissat wines I’ve ever had benefit from long aeration, unless they are oxidized. In fact, I will never “pop and pour” a Dauvissat wine. If I don’t have enough aeration time, and try, it will show its best the next morning in my experience.
Brad–sounds like you’ll have plenty of opportunity to study this phenomenon. I’m not much of a fan of 2006 Dauvissat, or 06 Chablis in general, but more so just because of the vintage, and not any tendency toward premox or this other phenomenon. As I said, I’ve unfortunately learned to tell fairly early on which way a Dauvissat wine will go. the premoxed ones all have a baked or browned cooked apple character, generally evident at the outset, but get steadily worse. These other things we’re calling reductive can had a dark color (but not brown), generally much less on the nose initially, off nutty, stale notes one the nose and palate, but on close inspection no notes of actual oxidation–and everything gets better with 1-2 or more hours of air (including the color, for some reason).
I should add that I haven’t had much of any of these “reductive” wines beginning with the 2007’s, which is about when the premoxed wines became more frequent for me. I’m wondering if they changed their sulfuring regimen around that time, but have never seen any information relating to that.
I’ve worked my way through a number of vintages of Foret recently and had a surprising number of premoxed or off bottles. 2008, where I bought two cases (over time from multiple sources) has been a real disappointment (with full-on brown/orange color). One data point is that all of the premoxed bottles have been with foil capsules and the wax capsuled bottles have been fine. Perhaps this is a correlation with the storage/shipment of the foil capsuled bottle, but worth noting. But I would note that my relatively small sample of various bottles from 07, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14 - had premoxed or “off” bottles from 07, 08 (as discussed), 09 and 11. The 09 and 11 were seriously reduced and did not present well the next day, leading me to view it as pre-prepox. I had a 2013 Foret last night and it was fantastic. Also looking at my CT notes, of two recent bottles of 08 Les Clos, one was poxed.
Obviously a real shame as I have always enjoyed this producer. Like others, I have yet to have any poxed Raveneau, but with current prices, it just doesn’t seem worth it anymore.
I echo the sad sentiment of having to tip out a lot of Oxidized 08’s, notably Forest. Strangely enough some great success with 08 (and 09) Chablis AC though.
I always leave the bottle out for some time to check. Have not experienced this reversal myself, but then my oxidized Chablis have been from Fevre, not Dauvissat…
Have you had any oxidized Fevre since they switched to Diam?
Fevre first started experimenting with the Diam closure in 2003 and then began bottling its Petit Chablis and Chablis with Diam 5 from the 2005 vintage.
Fèvre began using Diam 5 for its premier cru Chablis from the 2007 vintage.
From the 2010 vintage all the Grand Crus have been bottled with the Diam 10 closure, and these closures are now also used for the Chablis 1er crus.
http://www.gdeschamps.net/wiki/doku.php?id=dauvissat_vincent
this is a reference for oxidation in R&V Dauvissat and other white burgundies
No, none. I did a recent test of many of my remaining bottles from 2007 and 2008:
Fevre Grand Cru (no Diam): All (100%) oxidized
Fevre Premier Cru (Diam 5): All in excellent shape, with a couple like the 2008 Fevre MdT being really stellar.
So I would recommend (if Dauvissat was asking me) to switch to Diam.
To the credit of Fevre, they recognized their problem and acted on it. Others keep hearing back from somebody that their Dauvissat are not premox and that the others are “unlucky”, or “stored their bottles improperly”, or had them shipped by a Big Bad Grey Market importer (this happened in the early days of the discussion about Fevre, delaying the unavoidable conclusion, but fortunately Fevre acted on it themselves).
Anyway, while it is generally agreed that the Dauvissat are less prone to premox (I had a gorgeous and very young 2007 Dauvissat Clos in 2017), they are not immune, so in my MltHO, they need to get past this business of blaming others for the premox that does occur (and thus avoiding the obvious switch to Diam).
That’s very interesting. I too had quite a few Fevre from the early “00s” that I had to dump. I stopped buying for a while and bought after they switched to Diam, but have not opened very many (the few were excellent). Spurred by this discussion, I just opened a 2014 Fourchaume - delicious and with a Diam 15-40?
In looking for info on when Fevre switched, I saw this other intersting tidbit:
William Fevre has now reduced the level of SO2 at bottling with 20% from 40 to 30 mg/l as a consequence of using the Diam closure. This is to get a balanced development of the wines – the Diam cork will give a slower development on bottle, but compensated with a lower level of SO2 this will ensure that the wine ages on bottle – at a fairly normal speed.
As I mentioned previously, all of the Dauvissat 08 Forest 1ers I’ve opened recently and which had wax capsules, were perfect. I realize that is not necessarily a correlation, but worth noting.
Yes, there has to be some tradeoff, with the reductive capacity of the wine (sulfur) balanced by the oxygen flux through the cork. So there is no unique case, since these two are part of the same coupled “reactive transport” system.
I wonder about this too in the context of some other white Burgs. I have had some recent H. Boillot Clos des Moucheres, which of course can and does produce some stellar wines. But I see they seem to have loaded up their recent wines with sulfur–maybe no problem if the drinker has some patience and leaves them alone for a while instead of drinking them too young. But still, one wonders if Boillot could get away with a sulfur dose if they switched to Diam…
I buy a cases of Dauvissat and at a pop. We do this for 4 other major Chablis producer as well. They hard usually cellared for 3-5 years, si over a 5 year period we have 150 bottles as some get pulled to taste earlier to make notes and assess the progress. We are looking for an any early signs of premox or any other degradation. The bottles are well cellared at steady 54º with 45-50% humidity in dark cellars. We pull random bottles at season change so pulling 4 bottles from different producers. We check the appearance of the wine, any off odors, any cloudiness or frizzante, then sniffy sniff then taste and spit.Then all the data is recorded. In a 10-year period we can easily go through 500 bottles. The data we are seeing is 1.5% incidence of premox over 10 years. We also see about 1/2-1% of corking though we di no know the cork origins.At least Chablis seems to be made with less chance of premox. No reduction has been seen as well. This is a better track record than other white Burgundies.
Do I understand that you are assessing these bottles at about 3-5 years of age?
Although I have experienced premoxed or unexpectedly advanced bottles of a number of wines at less than 5 years of age, I believe that there is a general opinion that premox is most likely to occur or be experienced with bottles that are at 5-6 years as of age or more.
I am wondering whether your sampling of the wines leading to the low number of premoxed bottles is a bit early…that is, if you are assessing them for the incidence of premox.
Also wondering if your sampling is of wines under cork, for example Dauvissat, and none under DIAM, such as Fevre, since I have not heard of any premoxed bottles under DIAM…yet.
Yes, my experience has been that it shows itself greater than 5 years, and maybe even 7.
The premox is not typically a gradual thing, except on a statistical basis. The reason is that the reductants (sulfur again mostly) provide a buffering capacity such that the oxygen that gets in is reduced apparently. So the the oxygen level inside the bottle stays low until that buffer capacity is exhausted, at which point the wine turns south over a relatively short period (6-12 months in the case of >12 bottles of Fevre Grand Cru in the early 2000s).
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I’ve had premox shop up at 5 years, most recently a 2015 H Boillot Genevrieres earlier this year. It was shot.
Dauvissat has been problematic for me, as others have stated. Don’t have the percentage but would guess 15% premox rate?
Damn, it seems my timing is off. I stopped buying Fevre years ago after several oxidized GC’s. I’ve had oxidized '06 Dauvissat Les Preuses, '07 and '11 Forest, and others I didn’t record. I’ve avoided the GC’s, but have been steadily buying some of the Dauvissat 1ers each year. This thread makes me worry about those but especially about all the 2017 and 2018 H. Boillot Mooches I’ve bought. Thread drift anxiety
Cheers,
Warren