Bordeaux Wine Enthusiasts

Been drinking well lately. But also spent some holiday time with sister in law who is a cardiologist and she sold me on a new diet that may crimp my style a bit. We'll see.

2008 Pichon Baron -- had great memories of this from soon after I bought it on futures, and boy did it live up to them at the ten year mark! Has that lifted, pure fruit quality that made it a sheer pleasure to drink despite the fact that there are still quite noticeable tannins left on the end. The fruit is so exuberant it almost has a touch of grapey-ness to it, but is in no way heavy or cloying, and the wine has a very solid left bank backbone. This is excellent to drink now but still clearly has plenty of runway left to improve. Very happy to have six more bottles left of this and wish I'd scrounged up the money for a case when I bought it for like $50 a bottle -- what a deal! This wine is the real thing and for some might give more and more reliable pleasure than "bigger" vintages.

1995 Grand Puy Lacoste -- off the secondary market but in *perfect* condition. Another home run, a wonderful wine that gives me hope for the future of my 2000, 2005, 2009, 2010 Grand Puy Lacoste and helps inure me against the steady stream of anti-GPL propaganda around here. This is like a perfect prototype of "high-level Paulliac just beginning its peak drinking window". Fresh, tangy cassis fruit, a shovelful of dirt underneath it, and secondary flavors emerging nicely. I think the 2008 PB may outdo this over the long run, but for drinking today this wine is more poised, elegant, and nuanced while still having all the fruit pleasure you would want. Just one more bottle of this -- wish I had gotten more!

2008 William Fevre Chablis Les Clos Grand Cru -- All kinds of power in this wine, tremendous cut and citric/mineral intensity. But it feels unbalanced at this point, almost sour, with the acidity and citrus qualities not properly balanced by sweetness or a softening depth. I know people romanticize this idea that Chablis should be like crushed limestone with a squeeze of lemon juice on it, and this had some of that quality to it, but it felt unharmonious and a bit jarring. Have a few more bottles of this and I am going to leave them to age for at least five years longer in the hope that it relaxes some and gets more of that aged mellow sweetness as a counterpoint.

2015 Bouchard Pere & Fils Vosne Romanee -- really lived up to the 2015 reputation with terrific fruit depth for a village wine, just in terms of the weight and intensity it felt like a premier cru. Unfortunately it's priced like one too -- I got it for $50 but the market price now is over $70 (for a village wine!). I really love Bouchard reds because I find them to have a reliable depth of fruit (not always true for Burgundy!), a good mix of red and black fruits, to be drinkable at a wide variety of ages, and also to be well polished and slick in a way I like while still retaining character and complexity. This lived up to that description except perhaps that it is not yet expressing much if any complexity -- the fruit is solid but the detail is submerged at this point so it's hard to judge where it will go.

2005 Suduiraut Sauternes -- from Thanksgiving. Too sweet and cloying, lacked balancing acidity.

I think it was the '95 GPL (or was it the '96) Jim poured when my wife and I visited his fastness/redoubt in the great Maine Fatherland back in the late oughts. While it did not make the Holy Trinity among the other many great bottles he shared that evening it was preferable to the "100-point" '96 Lafite--to this "man in the street" at least. So there's that to consider in this ongoing albeit lopsided debate.

nice stuff there

Nice notes. I had a couple of bottles of that 08 Fevre Les Clos and drank them before age 8 due to fear of premox. They weren’t particularly developed but I chickened out.

I think premox is overrated honestly. I'm sitting on the Fevre 08 for a while, at least judging by this bottle it was a long long way from being ready.

If you're not going to age your whites there is no point buying the grand crus and the like.

Very good selection marcs.

Happy to read that the 2008 Chateau Pichon Longueville Baron is starting to drinks well. I don't have the Baron, but some other interesting 2008.

I think you will have very good result in 5 years with the Chablis Grand Cru.

I need to buy more Bourgognes.

Nic

marcs wrote:I think premox is overrated honestly. I'm sitting on the Fevre 08 for a while, at least judging by this bottle it was a long long way from being ready.

If you're not going to age your whites there is no point buying the grand crus and the like.

Aged white Burgundy was one of my favorites and used to make up almost all of the still white wines in my cellar. Having seen a quarter of my late-90s white Burgs turn brown and die, I’ll never be convinced it was a figment of my imagination.

You are right that there’s no point in buying if you’re not going to age them. They can be excellent young as an intellectual exercise. But like drinking a Bordeaux under 10 years of age it misses the point of spending that kind of money, at least for me. I turned to Chablis as a lower cost, lower risk alternative but quit them too after my favorites went up in price and my first bottle of Fevre turned brown. I had a couple of bottles of Beaucastel VV blanc premox on me too, so I stopped buying those as well.

The response of the producers, denying the existence of the problem, was less than admirable. The numbers appear to be much better now but I’ll never go back.

What's the new diet?

Premox is always a fun subject. Like David stopped buying after a few Grand Crus went brown. The white Grand Crus were the only wine that aged as beautifully as Bordeaux but risk reward was too great for me. I have read that the problem is not as common but fact the cause of the Pox is clouded in mystery irritates me. So no more white burgs.

Bill

There used to be a guy who went by the mysterious name "Whuzzup__" who, if my memory serves me, was adamant that the problem of premox was greatly overrated and i believe he felt it was actually quite rare.

Fortunately for the Burgundians the market for white Burgundy is quite bouyant despite the many disappointments all of us have had.

Must be on new markets (China, etc.).

It seems to me that I hear less talk of premox in recent vintages.

It seems to me that they still haven't found the surefire cause and cure for it.

Alex R.

Is premox the fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrom of wine maladies, i.e., does it really exist?

It really exists, Jim. Now I drink white Burgundy young. That saves me $$ since there is no point in buying Grand Cru white Burgundy if you will drink it young. There is unfortunately no substitute for white Burgundy even if there are other Chardonnays that I like. That is why "the market for white Burgundy is quite bouyant despite the many disappointments all of us have had".

BTW, we drank a lovely 2011 Jadot Puligny Garrene last night with friends. I risked premox keeping it so long. I am not willing to make the same bet with a Grand Cru (Garrene is a premier cru).

I don't drink white burg often, but a very high percentage (30-40%?) has been premoxed. I recall one pool party at Jacques and Jill's where something like 6 out of 12 white burgs opened were badly premoxed.

Glad I don't like Burgundy, red or white.
When I was a kid my mom used it for cooking.

I have never spent three figures on a white Burgundy which perhaps accounts for my equanimity. However I have bought at least a case of high level Fevre and Dauvissat Chablis over the years, have aged them 10-12 years, and only run into premox one time (I think). I have also observed how much these wines improve with age.

I also liked what I believe was the premoxed bottle. It was somewhat sherried but people voluntarily pay good money for sherry. And this was better than any sherry I had ever had

I'd give Dauvissat another shot at under 3 figures.

Jim, ask Ben how often they have to reject offerings due to premox. They sent back a couple bottles of Beaucastel VV that went bad between my sending it and the auction. Jacques and I tried it. It was horrible.

These comments make me happy that in general I like my white wines on the crisp youthful side.

At any given point I maybe have a case in total of still whites in total.

We just buy them and drink them.

What is the cause of premox?
What is "premox"?

JimHow wrote:What is "premox"?

Premature Oxidation.


What is the cause? The industry refuses to tell us.

What is premature oxidation?

Jim, premature oxidation is used to describe a bottle of properly stored wine that is oxidized before the time that a wine of its type generally shows oxidation from normal aging. It is very common that in a case of white Burgundy several of the bottles are outstanding, several show signs of moderate oxidation, and several are badly oxidized. Because the wines were bottled at the same time and stored together since release, that is premox. All of us who used to drink a lot of white Burgundy have experienced this.

So is that what happens to a wine when it gets past its prime, it becomes “oxidized”?

I am no expert on premox and others on this forum are far more experienced. But I have had few bottles of premoxed bottles. I sense nutty flavors and off putting in a bad way for me... I can’t stand them and everytime the bottles ended up in the sink...

Chateau Vin wrote:I am no expert on premox and others on this forum are far more experienced. But I have had few bottles of premoxed bottles. I sense nutty flavors and off putting in a bad way for me... I can’t stand them and everytime the bottles ended up in the sink...

Nutty flavors = for me, Sherried, and by any name unpalatable.

JimHow wrote:So is that what happens to a wine when it gets past its prime, it becomes “oxidized”?

While I don’t know one way or another if that term is correct chemically, "oxidized" is fairly common usage. In reds often perceived as faded or dead fruit, dead dried leaves, day old tea with loss of color. In whites often nutty, caramel, sherry notes and an increasingly brown color.

Stefan gave a great succinct description of premature oxidation.

For me oxidized reds smell and taste like stewed prunes
Oxidized whites smell and taste of bad apple cider.

I can see stewed prunes as another indicator of an oxidized red.

Bad apple cider makes me think of some microbial problem.

It's interesting how differently we sometimes conceptualize the same descriptor.

I haven't had a problem with premox the last few years but I now drink the wines much younger and for me, they still are the best white wines in the world. One bottle of 2012 Niellon Chassagne Champgains was fading two years ago so I quickly drank the rest of them. In any case, here's the wiki: http://www.gdeschamps.net/wiki/doku.php?id=start

Jacques, that youngish Carillon you shared last winter makes a strong case for continuing to pursue white Burgs even if they need to be drunk young. That "extra" bottle is waiting in the cellar for a special occasion.

From my experience, premox is very real. When one starts their wine tasting life drinking beautiful, expressive 25 year old Grand Cru and and 15 year old Premier Cru white burgs, then proceeds to taste 7-10 year old GC and PC burgs produced after 1995 or so that are completely over the hill, that's premox. Whuzzup may have said it was rare, but any such comments on BWE were likely made before the 96's were even a decade old - Ben's been a BWE MIA for a long time.

The obvious explanation for fewer premox'd bottles recently is that consumers' behavior has changed - we don't hold the wines as long as we used to.

DavidG wrote:Jacques, that youngish Carillon you shared last winter makes a strong case for continuing to pursue white Burgs even if they need to be drunk young. That "extra" bottle is waiting in the cellar for a special occasion.

Don’t wait too long, David. I’d hate for you to be disappointed

Jim
No way is premox a fake problem.
From early 90's to very recently, premox was a disaster in Burgundy for whites.
There have been endless theories as to the cause (which I've written about in any case) and it put me off buying white Burgundy (with a very few exceptions) for years.
Can't tell you how many disasters I had, and some vintages such as 94, 95, 96, 98, 99 and 00 were complete disasters for some producers.
However, even the 2004 and 2008 vintages revealed a number of badly premoxed wines.
I don;t know if it has been entirely resolved now, others may offer an opinion which is more up to date than mine. I am drinking 2006 and 2007 WB's now without any failures (actually both have been very good).

Admittedly sometimes premox occurred in a few bottles and not in others, yet I have had several entire cases of white Burgs that were a complete trainwreck after only a few years.

One story about fibromyalgia.
A decade or so ago, the physiotherapist thought I had it. Yet he was confused that on some parts of my body, light pressure was painful, yet on others, I could hardly feel anything - that is atypical for fibromyalgia.
So the rheumatologist sent me off for various scans and tests.
The MRI revealed I had a nerve entrapment in my spine, probably due to spinal degeneration (Ankylosing Spondilitis).
The moral of the story is that fibromyalgia can be badly diagnosed and there may be an underlying issue that is not picked up.

As I just mentioned in another thread, I have put my money where my mouth is on premox skepticism, dropping a few hundred bucks on some assorted 15-30 year old white burg premier crus...1991 Amiot-Bonfils Puligny-Montrachet Demoiselles, 1992 Boillot P-M Truffiere, 1996 Verget Chablis Bougros, 1997 Jadot La Garenne, and three bottles of 2004 Bernard Morey P-M Truffiere. We'll see how it works out. Surprisingly, people still bid on this stuff...I got it for semi-reasonable prices of $35-65 a bottle all in, but there is definitely still stiff bidding competition for aged white burg. I guess it's a wine experience you can't get from anything else so people are still willing to roll the dice.

The 91's and 92's should be fine, as they are pre-premox vintages. Plus they're old enough that any oxidation is simply "ox".

I drank and loved a bunch of 92 Chassagne Montrachet courtesy of my dad. I forget the producer. We finished his last of a case in 2004 and it was mature but fresh and gorgeous.

So premox didn't used to be a problem.
Then it became a problem for 20 years or so.
And then it apparently may not be (or has become less of) a problem anymore.
Interesting....

And what were the changes/conditions that brought the problem in the first place, and (may have) relieved the problem more recently.

And what were the changes/conditions that brought the problem in the first place, and (may have) relieved the problem more recently.

I believe that has always been the $64,000 question. A lot of suspicion was put on something to do with corks, but to my knowledge there has never been a definitive explanation as to why it started and why it has seemed to largely go away.

We discussed this in detail in this site back in 2009:

http://www.bordeauxwineenthusiasts.com/ ... ture#p4825

Th post that Pappadoc RIP posted on that thread is the most comprehensible explanation.