Premox

[MLipton]

originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
+1 on experiencing premoxed bottles with ample bottle age, which would inevitably bring on retorts like, "Well, you can't call it PREM-ox anymore, the wine was just too old!" So it seems now we have the perfect pair of excuses - if oxidized, premox is a myth, it was just too old; if not oxidized, premox was just a phase, all is good now!

I will have to defer to the chemists but I'm not sure how a wine can go from oxidized to not-oxidized without violating the second law of thermodynamics.

There used to be an old chestnut that white Rhones go through a phase of tasting oxidized and then emerging fresh and non-oxidized. I have certainly had nasty oxidized white Rhones but can't say I've ever experienced the same wine years later magically free of it. In retrospect it seems far more likely that the Rhone and not Burgundy was actually Patient Zero for premox, and that the chestnut originated with wine writers tasting a slew of oxidized bottles of wines whose older vintages they knew were still in good shape. So they assumed it was a phase instead of supposing that a new problem had emerged.

Bottom line: Premox is a real thing with no solution evidenced to date other than Diams/screwcaps, and with way too much public speculation on possible causes from producers who manifestly don't understand it well enough to fix it (and aren't putting their money where their mouths are, either, since it's still almost exclusively consumers who have been footing the bill for this for the last 20-odd years)

Ok, chemist here: it’s not a matter of entropy but rather chemical potential, so not a second law issue. It’s important to recognize that it’s an organoleptic perception of oxidation that we’re talking about. Certain oxidative odors (sherry, browned apple) are almost certainly volatile (that’s why we smell them), so they could dissipate with time. Also, certain oxidation products ( sukfoxides and.disulfides) could be reduced by oxidizing tannins, many of which are oxidatively cross linked during polymerization.

Mark Lipton
Oenochenist at large

 

[Jayson Cohen]

Claude,

White wines these days tend to be fresher young and have less clear aging trajectories. Not all but many. It’s not clear what the overlap integral is with premox.

 

[Keith Levenberg]

originally posted by Claude Kolm:

originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
+1 on experiencing premoxed bottles with ample bottle age, which would inevitably bring on retorts like, "Well, you can't call it PREM-ox anymore, the wine was just too old!"

I disagree. I and many other people find premox to be different from standard oxidation in its aromas and flavors.

Yes, that's the point. The people who claim you can't call premox on an older wine don't know what they're talking about.

 

[Keith Levenberg]

originally posted by Claude Kolm:

There used to be an old chestnut that white Rhones go through a phase of tasting oxidized and then emerging fresh and non-oxidized. I have certainly had nasty oxidized white Rhones but can't say I've ever experienced the same wine years later magically free of it.

Being substantially older than you, I can testify that the dumb period used to be the case, but no longer is. White Rhônes are much fresher these days -- altogether different wines from what we drank in the 1970s and 1980s. Clearly there have been changes in viniculture (and possibly vitculture) over the years.

But we're not talking about a mere dumb period, we're talking about a period of tasting oxidized. Is that how you would have described that dumb period? Can you recall any examples that tasted fresh on release, then oxidized, then fresh again? (And if so, is the sample size large enough to rule out cork-induced random oxidation where the fresh-again bottles can't just be fluke survivors that never oxidized?)

 

[Keith Levenberg]

originally posted by MLipton:

originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
+1 on experiencing premoxed bottles with ample bottle age, which would inevitably bring on retorts like, "Well, you can't call it PREM-ox anymore, the wine was just too old!" So it seems now we have the perfect pair of excuses - if oxidized, premox is a myth, it was just too old; if not oxidized, premox was just a phase, all is good now!

I will have to defer to the chemists but I'm not sure how a wine can go from oxidized to not-oxidized without violating the second law of thermodynamics.

There used to be an old chestnut that white Rhones go through a phase of tasting oxidized and then emerging fresh and non-oxidized. I have certainly had nasty oxidized white Rhones but can't say I've ever experienced the same wine years later magically free of it. In retrospect it seems far more likely that the Rhone and not Burgundy was actually Patient Zero for premox, and that the chestnut originated with wine writers tasting a slew of oxidized bottles of wines whose older vintages they knew were still in good shape. So they assumed it was a phase instead of supposing that a new problem had emerged.

Bottom line: Premox is a real thing with no solution evidenced to date other than Diams/screwcaps, and with way too much public speculation on possible causes from producers who manifestly don't understand it well enough to fix it (and aren't putting their money where their mouths are, either, since it's still almost exclusively consumers who have been footing the bill for this for the last 20-odd years)

Ok, chemist here: it’s not a matter of entropy but rather chemical potential, so not a second law issue. It’s important to recognize that it’s an organoleptic perception of oxidation that we’re talking about. Certain oxidative odors (sherry, browned apple) are almost certainly volatile (that’s why we smell them), so they could dissipate with time. Also, certain oxidation products ( sukfoxides and.disulfides) could be reduced by oxidizing tannins, many of which are oxidatively cross linked during polymerization.

Mark Lipton
Oenochenist at large

OK, this is great, now we're getting somewhere! You might need to dumb it down a bit further for us non-chemists though. I'm not sure what actually happens as wine oxidizes but surely it's more than turning X into X+Y? Like, the oxidation alters the X, it doesn't just throw a couple things like brown apple aromas on top of it?

 

[MLipton]

originally posted by Keith Levenberg:

originally posted by MLipton:

originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
+1 on experiencing premoxed bottles with ample bottle age, which would inevitably bring on retorts like, "Well, you can't call it PREM-ox anymore, the wine was just too old!" So it seems now we have the perfect pair of excuses - if oxidized, premox is a myth, it was just too old; if not oxidized, premox was just a phase, all is good now!

I will have to defer to the chemists but I'm not sure how a wine can go from oxidized to not-oxidized without violating the second law of thermodynamics.

There used to be an old chestnut that white Rhones go through a phase of tasting oxidized and then emerging fresh and non-oxidized. I have certainly had nasty oxidized white Rhones but can't say I've ever experienced the same wine years later magically free of it. In retrospect it seems far more likely that the Rhone and not Burgundy was actually Patient Zero for premox, and that the chestnut originated with wine writers tasting a slew of oxidized bottles of wines whose older vintages they knew were still in good shape. So they assumed it was a phase instead of supposing that a new problem had emerged.

Bottom line: Premox is a real thing with no solution evidenced to date other than Diams/screwcaps, and with way too much public speculation on possible causes from producers who manifestly don't understand it well enough to fix it (and aren't putting their money where their mouths are, either, since it's still almost exclusively consumers who have been footing the bill for this for the last 20-odd years)

Ok, chemist here: it’s not a matter of entropy but rather chemical potential, so not a second law issue. It’s important to recognize that it’s an organoleptic perception of oxidation that we’re talking about. Certain oxidative odors (sherry, browned apple) are almost certainly volatile (that’s why we smell them), so they could dissipate with time. Also, certain oxidation products ( sukfoxides and.disulfides) could be reduced by oxidizing tannins, many of which are oxidatively cross linked during polymerization.

Mark Lipton
Oenochenist at large

OK, this is great, now we're getting somewhere! You might need to dumb it down a bit further for us non-chemists though. I'm not sure what actually happens as wine oxidizes but surely it's more than turning X into X+Y? Like, the oxidation alters the X, it doesn't just throw a couple things like brown apple aromas on top of it?

What happens during oxidation is likely very complex. Many components of the wine can oxidize, but it won’t be uniform: some will oxidize faster than others. Tannins oxidize, ethanol oxidizes, isoflavones oxidize.

Mark Lipton

 

[Claude Kolm]

From "The Wines of the Rhône" by John Livingstone-Learmonth and Melvyn C. H. McMaster (2nd ed., 1983) at p. 183:

François Perrin of Beaucastel pointed out a phenomenon observable in his white wines that is also sometimes apparent with the best white wines at Hermitage from growers such as Gérard Chave: ‘You can taste my white wines when a year or two old, and you’ll see that they have a balanced acidity and that their aromas and general weight indicate a long life ahead. But suddenly I give you a 3- or 4-year-old bottle, and you say ‘What is this resin taste in the wine? And the bouquet’s aromas, as opposed to flourishing, are very suppressed.’ Your analysis is correct — the wine has a form of oxidation passing through it, carrying it from its youth into a state of honourable old age. This often occurs with my whites when they are between 3 and 7 years old.' And to prove the point he pulls out a bottle 11 years old, followed by one that is dated 1956. The first wine, packed with rich straw-gold colours and an intense concentration of almost flower-like aromas on bouquet and palate, improves with about twenty minutes’ aerationand is notable for its lovely clean aftertaste. The 1956, all gold, its flavours reminiscent of old Burgundy, at 26 still possess remarquable richness but begins to dry out towards a Ch“teau Chalon style of wine after twenty minutes.

The same passage is in the 3rd ed. (1992) at pp. 355-356. Perrin and Chave, among others, have said the same thing to me.

It takes a lot of chutzpah to say that Perrin and Chave were making this up or otherwise didn't know what they were talking about and that Livingstone-Learmonth willingly went along with them.

 

[fatboy]

originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
Can you recall any examples that tasted fresh on release, then oxidized, then fresh again? (And if so, is the sample size large enough to rule out cork-induced random oxidation where the fresh-again bottles can't just be fluke survivors that never oxidized?)

[/quote]

is a red, but 1995 rollin hcdb offers one example of the general concept -- in it's youth it was delicious: fresh, crunchy and red fruited and an amazingly versatile wine at the table. because it was cheap and i was fat, i bought 3 cases and quite a few odd bottles of that shit.

around age 4-5, the fruit began to shut down, and by age 7-8, it tasted like rusty oxidized trash. in the period 2002 - 2003, i think i fed the best part of a case to teh fatsink, convinced that the last shitty bottle was somehow an aberration.

sometime around 2005 it woke up again, and the last dozen or so bottles tasted like the mature projections one would have made from the first dozen or so.

assuming cork sampling is something like urn sampling, the odds of this aging pattern being chance are pretty low.

fb.

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

originally posted by Keith Levenberg:

originally posted by Claude Kolm:

There used to be an old chestnut that white Rhones go through a phase of tasting oxidized and then emerging fresh and non-oxidized. I have certainly had nasty oxidized white Rhones but can't say I've ever experienced the same wine years later magically free of it.

Being substantially older than you, I can testify that the dumb period used to be the case, but no longer is. White Rhônes are much fresher these days -- altogether different wines from what we drank in the 1970s and 1980s. Clearly there have been changes in viniculture (and possibly vitculture) over the years.

But we're not talking about a mere dumb period, we're talking about a period of tasting oxidized. Is that how you would have described that dumb period? Can you recall any examples that tasted fresh on release, then oxidized, then fresh again? (And if so, is the sample size large enough to rule out cork-induced random oxidation where the fresh-again bottles can't just be fluke survivors that never oxidized?)

Even I have seen this happen sufficiently with white CdPs: Beaucastel, Clos des Papes, Vieux Donjon, also one white Hermitage in my cellar. It really is not merely urban myth. Now, they don't taste young again. But they lose the taste of being oxidized, and trade it in for a palate that is pointedly different from what they taste like when they are young. Clos des Papes is even weirder. It can start to taste oxidized, go through an interim period of tasting like a flinty Chablis, go through a second dumb phase and then taste like an older Rhone.

Do you drink white Rhone of any kind?

 

[Keith Levenberg]

originally posted by Claude Kolm:
From "The Wines of the Rhône" by John Livingstone-Learmonth and Melvyn C. H. McMaster (2nd ed., 1983) at p. 183:

François Perrin of Beaucastel pointed out a phenomenon observable in his white wines that is also sometimes apparent with the best white wines at Hermitage from growers such as Gérard Chave: ‘You can taste my white wines when a year or two old, and you’ll see that they have a balanced acidity and that their aromas and general weight indicate a long life ahead. But suddenly I give you a 3- or 4-year-old bottle, and you say ‘What is this resin taste in the wine? And the bouquet’s aromas, as opposed to flourishing, are very suppressed.’ Your analysis is correct — the wine has a form of oxidation passing through it, carrying it from its youth into a state of honourable old age. This often occurs with my whites when they are between 3 and 7 years old.' And to prove the point he pulls out a bottle 11 years old, followed by one that is dated 1956. The first wine, packed with rich straw-gold colours and an intense concentration of almost flower-like aromas on bouquet and palate, improves with about twenty minutes’ aerationand is notable for its lovely clean aftertaste. The 1956, all gold, its flavours reminiscent of old Burgundy, at 26 still possess remarquable richness but begins to dry out towards a Ch“teau Chalon style of wine after twenty minutes.

The same passage is in the 3rd ed. (1992) at pp. 355-356. Perrin and Chave, among others, have said the same thing to me.

It takes a lot of chutzpah to say that Perrin and Chave were making this up or otherwise didn't know what they were talking about and that Livingstone-Learmonth willingly went along with them.

I didn't say they were making anything up. What I said was the exact opposite of chutzpah - it was a matter of epistemic humility. I would not submit myself as capable of concluding that a clean 11-year-old bottle establishes that premox is either a myth or a phase. And I don't think the exercise recounted above proves the point either. If you were to have conducted the same experiment on white Burgundies in 2004, you would very likely have experienced an oxidized 2000 and a clean 1993. That would prove absolutely nothing about the capability of the 2000 to develop into what the 1993 was, as we now know beyond any doubt. (If I wanted to go the chutzpah route I would add that someone comfortable releasing wines with thermonuclear levels of brett probably isn't the best authority on chemical flaws.)

Resin is a good description, though, for the way many of those white Rhones show when they've turned ugly, and maybe it's true that this is something different from premox and just a phase. But if I pour a 2015 white Rhone and it's oxidized and nasty I'm going to need a lot more data than the above anecdote and an ad verecundiam to have any justifiable confidence it'll taste great after 10 more years in the cellar, and even if the "just a phase" theory held true in the past, frankly Past Performance Is No Guarantee Of Future Results given that we're all in agreement that what's being made today ain't the same animal.

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

Denying accounts of others, anecdotal, but numerous, in favor of theoretical skepticism is not epistemic humility. It may be that white Rhones have changed. That won't change the fact of how they aged in the past. So, once again, have you tasted numbers of 20 year old white Rhones that you also tasted when they were 10 and found that, if they tasted oxidized at 10, they didn't change? Do you have counter anecdotal evidence?

 

[Jim Hanlon]

I think what we're really talking about in terms of past experience is wines that are very closed or "dumb." When wines are intensely closed, flavors that would often be minor and perhaps not even noted can jump forward, like a piccolo solo in an orchestra. Except often they're not so enjoyable. I've had red Burgundies that tasted heavily oaked at age 5 or 7 where a check reveals that the wine saw something like 10-20% new oak. The wine was so closed that the oak, which would be in the background were the wine open, jumped forward and seized the spotlight. I expect others have had the same experience.

Few wines close down quite so much as red Burgundy, but white Rhones are in the same league. I posit that what M. Chave was discussing, and what many of us have also experienced, is oxidative flavors stepping forward during the period on the aging curve when white Rhones are intensely closed. Those flavors may always be there, or perhaps they emerge during a particular time in the aging process, but I think they're so noticeable and generally unpleasant not because they've "taken over" the wine, but because so much of the rest of the nose and palate is sound asleep and inaccessible at that moment.

I agree with Keith, and I expect I'm not alone here, that premox flavors are different. I've never seen a premoxed wine recover, and (as a layperson unschooled in chemistry) am pretty skeptical of that happening. To me, premox isn't really even the same as accelerated aging -- it's spoliation of the wine in a relatively short time period. Many premox flavors just aren't present in a very aged, but well stored and sound bottle, whether we're talking white Burgundy, Chenin, or something else.

 

[Pavel Tchichikov]

originally posted by Jayson Cohen:
White wines these days tend to be fresher young and have less clear aging trajectories.

Right. Or, at the opposite end of the spectrum, Rateau and Giboulot that have already recovered from premox prior to bottling :-)

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

I pretend to no chemical knowledge and I do not know if actual oxidation (whatever that is) can be reversed or not. I was objecting to Keith's denial of a known aging phenomenon in white Rhones. The phenomenon may well have some other cause, though the ones speculated about above strike me as just that, but that does not mean it doesn't exist. If it smells like oxidation and tastes like oxidation but has some other cause, it still smells and tastes like oxidation. We could quickly go down a rabbit hole of the kind of philosophical argument once current over whether or not the Greeks, who, not having our knowledge of chemical elements, identified as gold things we do not, had a different definition of gold than we do or the same one and were just making a mistake. I invite others to jump down first.

 

[Claude Kolm]

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Denying accounts of others, anecdotal, but numerous, in favor of theoretical skepticism is not epistemic humility. It may be that white Rhones have changed. That won't change the fact of how they aged in the past. So, once again, have you tasted numbers of 20 year old white Rhones that you also tasted when they were 10 and found that, if they tasted oxidized at 10, they didn't change? Do you have counter anecdotal evidence?

Thank you, Jonathan. You said it for me.

I guess one man's chutzpah is another man's humility.

I'm packing today and leaving tomorrow and will be on the road, tasting for much of the time, for the next four weeks or so, so I won't be able to contribute much, if at all, to this interesting discussion.

 

[Jeff Grossman]

originally posted by Claude Kolm:
I'm packing today and leaving tomorrow and will be on the road, tasting for much of the time, for the next four weeks or so, so I won't be able to contribute much, if at all, to this interesting discussion.

What region(s) are you visiting?

 

[Claude Kolm]

originally posted by Jeff Grossman:

originally posted by Claude Kolm:
I'm packing today and leaving tomorrow and will be on the road, tasting for much of the time, for the next four weeks or so, so I won't be able to contribute much, if at all, to this interesting discussion.

What region(s) are you visiting?

Germany, Austria.

 

[MLipton]

originally posted by Claude Kolm:

originally posted by Jeff Grossman:

originally posted by Claude Kolm:
I'm packing today and leaving tomorrow and will be on the road, tasting for much of the time, for the next four weeks or so, so I won't be able to contribute much, if at all, to this interesting discussion.

What region(s) are you visiting?

Germany, Austria.

Haben Sie eine Gute Reise, Claude.

Mark Lipton

 

[Jayson Cohen]

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
I pretend to no chemical knowledge and I do not know if actual oxidation (whatever that is) can be reversed or not. I was objecting to Keith's denial of a known aging phenomenon in white Rhones. The phenomenon may well have some other cause, though the ones speculated about above strike me as just that, but that does not mean it doesn't exist. If it smells like oxidation and tastes like oxidation but has some other cause, it still smells and tastes like oxidation. We could quickly go down a rabbit hole of the kind of philosophical argument once current over whether or not the Greeks, who, not having our knowledge of chemical elements, identified as gold things we do not, had a different definition of gold than we do or the same one and were just making a mistake. I invite others to jump down first.

Backing up, there’s two ships not quite passing in the night. Sort of side swiping. I think Keith (tell me if I’m wrong) and I and maybe now Jim were reacting to Claude’s supposition/hypothesis that what we have called premox doesn’t actually exist and is just a phase. Examples of whites that typically show some oxidative character in their aging trajectories, perhaps like white Rhônes and certainly in my experience Chenins destined to outlive me by decades and more, are largely irrelevant to that hypothesis. Instead what is concerning is whites (like Burgundy or Alsatian Riesling or white Boredraux) that have no tradition of going through such a phase consistently aging faster and without rebound to an oxidative state that we call premox.

(I don’t happen to like Rhône whites really at any phase, and I’ve tried, but that’s certainly an aside.)

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

With regard to Burgundy, you would be right, Jayson, except that I didn't and don't have a position on that. Keith also denied the aging trajectory of white Rhones and that was what I and, to an extent, Claude were arguing. If that issue is now laid to rest, you can all go on to discussing white Burgundies, about which I have insufficient experience to have a position.