2010 Huet Premox?

[MLipton]

I am starting this thread as a companion to the now-hoary 2002 Huet wiki thread. Last night, I opened a bottle of 2010 Huet Clos du Bourg Demi-Sec. The color was off, shading into the brown, and there was a hint of cider in the nose. There were also noticeable oxidative flavors, though it was well short of Sherry. Still, this was far more than the honey and beeswax that I would expect at this stage of its development. On CellarTracker, I see others who have experienced this and worse with this bottling, though the problem appears to be sporadic. Have any of you had problems with this vintage of Huet?

Mark Lipton

 

[Pavel Tchichikov]

Ouch. No, mine have been perfect although I mostly dabble in Sec from 2010 so far.

 

[Michael Lewis]

I have had the same experience with the same cuvee, Mark. I've also had good bottles (including one in May of this year). Maybe it is time to open another...

 

[Yule Kim]

Drat. I bought of 3-pack of these a couple of months ago.

Here's hoping the bottles I got are sound.

 

[Ken Schramm]

OK, I’m going to geek a little heavily here.

I have experienced this situation in Huets in various sweetness levels from different vintages, and it has occurred in random bottles, meaning that I have pulled subsequent bottles of the same wine and not experienced the same compromised state.

I have been suspicious of the causes of bottle variation, and I am willing to posit one potential source.

We use a GAI bottle rinser, a GAI 1308 filler/corker, and a GAI encapsulator/labeler. The filler/corker has a deaerator, which replaces the room air with nitrogen before filling, along with a leveler/injector, which adjusts the fill level to meet the cork size, and also re-fills the head space with nitrogen right before cork insertion. You can see video of this process here (this video was shot before the bottle rinser was added to the line).

The bottles between the deaerator and the filler heads, between the filler carousel and the injector, and between the injector head and the corker are exposed to room air. When the line is running at speed, that exposure is very short. During any bottling run, however, there will be occasional line stoppages, sometimes to clear a jam, and when necessary, to change label rolls. During those stoppages, those bottles can sit in place, with their aperture exposed to room air. Oxygen being heavier than nitrogen, there is the opportunity for gas exchange. If you are dealing with a mechanical fault, that exposure can be protracted.

This would not account for this happening on a large scale, but it could account for more than a few bottles per packaging session, and potentially consecutive bottles in a given case. We have changed our SOP to fully clear the filler/corker and set the corked bottles aside during all stoppages anywhere else on the line, to minimize this risk.

 

[Ken Schramm]

The video here is of a line with no deaerator. You can see that during the filling process, there is considerable gas/liquid admixture. That could, potentially, be the source of consistent premoxxed (Sp?) bottles.

 

[robert ames]

originally posted by Ken Schramm:
OK, I’m going to geek a little heavily here.

I have experienced this situation in Huets in various sweetness levels from different vintages, and it has occurred in random bottles, meaning that I have pulled subsequent bottles of the same wine and not experienced the same compromised state.

I have been suspicious of the causes of bottle variation, and I am willing to posit one potential source.

We use a GAI bottle rinser, a GAI 1308 filler/corker, and a GAI encapsulator/labeler. The filler/corker has a deaerator, which replaces the room air with nitrogen before filling, along with a leveler/injector, which adjusts the fill level to meet the cork size, and also re-fills the head space with nitrogen right before cork insertion. You can see video of this process here (this video was shot before the bottle rinser was added to the line).

The bottles between the deaerator and the filler heads, between the filler carousel and the injector, and between the injector head and the corker are exposed to room air. When the line is running at speed, that exposure is very short. During any bottling run, however, there will be occasional line stoppages, sometimes to clear a jam, and when necessary, to change label rolls. During those stoppages, those bottles can sit in place, with their aperture exposed to room air. Oxygen being heavier than nitrogen, there is the opportunity for gas exchange. If you are dealing with a mechanical fault, that exposure can be protracted.

This would not account for this happening on a large scale, but it could account for more than a few bottles per packaging session, and potentially consecutive bottles in a given case. We have changed our SOP to fully clear the filler/corker and set the corked bottles aside during all stoppages anywhere else on the line, to minimize this risk.

how about use argon? it is totally inert and heavier than air.

 

[Jayson Cohen]

originally posted by Ken Schramm:
OK, I’m going to geek a little heavily here.

I have experienced this situation in Huets in various sweetness levels from different vintages, and it has occurred in random bottles, meaning that I have pulled subsequent bottles of the same wine and not experienced the same compromised state.

I have been suspicious of the causes of bottle variation, and I am willing to posit one potential source.

We use a GAI bottle rinser, a GAI 1308 filler/corker, and a GAI encapsulator/labeler. The filler/corker has a deaerator, which replaces the room air with nitrogen before filling, along with a leveler/injector, which adjusts the fill level to meet the cork size, and also re-fills the head space with nitrogen right before cork insertion. You can see video of this process here (this video was shot before the bottle rinser was added to the line).

The bottles between the deaerator and the filler heads, between the filler carousel and the injector, and between the injector head and the corker are exposed to room air. When the line is running at speed, that exposure is very short. During any bottling run, however, there will be occasional line stoppages, sometimes to clear a jam, and when necessary, to change label rolls. During those stoppages, those bottles can sit in place, with their aperture exposed to room air. Oxygen being heavier than nitrogen, there is the opportunity for gas exchange. If you are dealing with a mechanical fault, that exposure can be protracted.

This would not account for this happening on a large scale, but it could account for more than a few bottles per packaging session, and potentially consecutive bottles in a given case. We have changed our SOP to fully clear the filler/corker and set the corked bottles aside during all stoppages anywhere else on the line, to minimize this risk.

This is fascinating. Now I want to know. It’s an empirical question.

 

[MLipton]

originally posted by robert ames:

originally posted by Ken Schramm:
OK, I’m going to geek a little heavily here.

I have experienced this situation in Huets in various sweetness levels from different vintages, and it has occurred in random bottles, meaning that I have pulled subsequent bottles of the same wine and not experienced the same compromised state.

I have been suspicious of the causes of bottle variation, and I am willing to posit one potential source.

We use a GAI bottle rinser, a GAI 1308 filler/corker, and a GAI encapsulator/labeler. The filler/corker has a deaerator, which replaces the room air with nitrogen before filling, along with a leveler/injector, which adjusts the fill level to meet the cork size, and also re-fills the head space with nitrogen right before cork insertion. You can see video of this process here (this video was shot before the bottle rinser was added to the line).

The bottles between the deaerator and the filler heads, between the filler carousel and the injector, and between the injector head and the corker are exposed to room air. When the line is running at speed, that exposure is very short. During any bottling run, however, there will be occasional line stoppages, sometimes to clear a jam, and when necessary, to change label rolls. During those stoppages, those bottles can sit in place, with their aperture exposed to room air. Oxygen being heavier than nitrogen, there is the opportunity for gas exchange. If you are dealing with a mechanical fault, that exposure can be protracted.

This would not account for this happening on a large scale, but it could account for more than a few bottles per packaging session, and potentially consecutive bottles in a given case. We have changed our SOP to fully clear the filler/corker and set the corked bottles aside during all stoppages anywhere else on the line, to minimize this risk.

how about use argon? it is totally inert and heavier than air.

It’s also about 1000x more expensive in my extensive experience.

Mark Lipton

 

[robert ames]

originally posted by MLipton:

originally posted by robert ames:

originally posted by Ken Schramm:
OK, I’m going to geek a little heavily here.

I have experienced this situation in Huets in various sweetness levels from different vintages, and it has occurred in random bottles, meaning that I have pulled subsequent bottles of the same wine and not experienced the same compromised state.

I have been suspicious of the causes of bottle variation, and I am willing to posit one potential source.

We use a GAI bottle rinser, a GAI 1308 filler/corker, and a GAI encapsulator/labeler. The filler/corker has a deaerator, which replaces the room air with nitrogen before filling, along with a leveler/injector, which adjusts the fill level to meet the cork size, and also re-fills the head space with nitrogen right before cork insertion. You can see video of this process here (this video was shot before the bottle rinser was added to the line).

The bottles between the deaerator and the filler heads, between the filler carousel and the injector, and between the injector head and the corker are exposed to room air. When the line is running at speed, that exposure is very short. During any bottling run, however, there will be occasional line stoppages, sometimes to clear a jam, and when necessary, to change label rolls. During those stoppages, those bottles can sit in place, with their aperture exposed to room air. Oxygen being heavier than nitrogen, there is the opportunity for gas exchange. If you are dealing with a mechanical fault, that exposure can be protracted.

This would not account for this happening on a large scale, but it could account for more than a few bottles per packaging session, and potentially consecutive bottles in a given case. We have changed our SOP to fully clear the filler/corker and set the corked bottles aside during all stoppages anywhere else on the line, to minimize this risk.

how about use argon? it is totally inert and heavier than air.

It’s also about 1000x more expensive in my extensive experience.

Mark Lipton

at the restaurant i work at we use argon to gas our glass pour bottles at the end of the shift and i am certain that we don't pay 1000x more than we would for a tank of nitrogen. culinary grade argon may be more than nitrogen--it should be as air is what, 70% nitrogen? i will call the gas guys in the morning and give you real numbers. i understand that there are local wineries that use argon at bottling.

 

[Ken Schramm]

In our market, argon is ~3.5 X as expensive as nitrogen. I am not sure if it requires different regulators. It is an option we can consider. In spite of some substantial price increases throughout our COGS, though, we have not implemented any price increases to our basic lineup during the pandemic period. I have never been a fan of lowering the cost of production as a panacea, but not raising it is also something we have to consider.

In any case, even though argon may be be a better solution, it will not ensure that there will be no admixture. CO2 is also heavier than air, but the blanket either lays down is not impervious.

This is an interesting academic exercise, which would be very much more informed if we knew what the bottling practices were - and the gasses used at Huet were - when these wines were bottled.

 

[MLipton]

originally posted by Ken Schramm:
In our market, argon is ~3.5 X as expensive as nitrogen. I am not sure if it requires different regulators. It is an option we can consider. In spite of some substantial price increases throughout our COGS, though, we have not implemented any price increases to our basic lineup during the pandemic period. I have never been a fan of lowering the cost of production as a panacea, but not raising it is also something we have to consider.

In any case, even though argon may be be a better solution, it will not ensure that there will be no admixture. CO2 is also heavier than air, but the blanket either lays down is not impervious.

This is an interesting academic exercise, which would be very much more informed if we knew what the bottling practices were - and the gasses used at Huet were - when these wines were bottled.

It’s an interesting hypothesis, Ken, and one that merits examination, bur doesn’t Occam’s razor suggest that cork failure might be an easier explanation?

Mark Lipton

 

[mark e]

originally posted by MLipton:

originally posted by Ken Schramm:
In our market, argon is ~3.5 X as expensive as nitrogen. I am not sure if it requires different regulators. It is an option we can consider. In spite of some substantial price increases throughout our COGS, though, we have not implemented any price increases to our basic lineup during the pandemic period. I have never been a fan of lowering the cost of production as a panacea, but not raising it is also something we have to consider.

In any case, even though argon may be be a better solution, it will not ensure that there will be no admixture. CO2 is also heavier than air, but the blanket either lays down is not impervious.

This is an interesting academic exercise, which would be very much more informed if we knew what the bottling practices were - and the gasses used at Huet were - when these wines were bottled.

It’s an interesting hypothesis, Ken, and one that merits examination, bur doesn’t Occam’s razor suggest that cork failure might be an easier explanation?

Mark Lipton

In the case of 2002 Secs that is exactly what happened. Most of mine had loose corks which more easily explains the premox problem.

 

[MLipton]

Upon thinking about it, I also wonder if there’s enough oxygen present at bottling, both in the headspace and dissolved, to account for the amount of oxidation we’re talking about here. I don’t know the answer to that, but my gut instinct is that it would require orders of magnitude more. Someone so minded could meter the amount of oxygen delivered to a fresh bottle of wine to get this sort of premox.

Mark Lipton

 

[Keith Levenberg]

Cork failure is clearly part of the explanation (because screwcapped and diam wines don't premox) but very unlikely to be the whole explanation (because there is no hypothesis on why corks would start failing in large numbers suddenly in 1995, mostly in Burgundy, only on white wines, and almost never on any riesling besides Trimbach).

 

[Brézème]

I guess people like Overnoy who have been bottling by hand for decades without all the nitrogen and deaerator package, and without ANY premox problem are laughing out loud reading this !!!...
Sorry to be a bit sarcastic, but is there anyone here that seriously think that Huets pre '90s were bottled with all the high tech shit???
Thanks to SFJoe, I had quite few pre WWII Huet, that where bottle on old iron cast, open air, bottle feelers that were the standard everywhere in France before the '60s : none of them where premox...

BTW Comtes Lafon, like most high end burgundy producers, have been using vacuum and nitrogen bottling since the '80s, and were hit real bad by premox for years.

 

[mark e]

originally posted by Brézème:

. . . is there anyone here that seriously think that Huets pre '90s were bottled with all the high tech shit???
Thanks to SFJoe, I had quite few pre WWII Huet, that where bottle on old iron cast, open air, bottle feelers that were the standard everywhere in France before the '60s : none of them were premox...

No, I am sure they had no high-tech stuff, and that does not necessarily protect the wine from premox either, but I would bet that total and free SO2 levels were higher in the past.

 

[Pavel Tchichikov]

originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
Cork failure is clearly part of the explanation (because screwcapped and diam wines don't premox) but very unlikely to be the whole explanation (because there is no hypothesis on why corks would start failing in large numbers suddenly in 1995, mostly in Burgundy, only on white wines, and almost never on any riesling besides Trimbach).

right, screwcapped wines don't premox, they just die

not mostly in burgundy, lots of premox in white bordeaux even earlier (1992, empirically)

with respect to riesling, a disaster in austria, starting in late 1990s - as bad as any burgundy producer I am aware of

pardon me for being disagreeable this morning.

 

[mark e]

originally posted by Pavel Tchichikov:

originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
Cork failure is clearly part of the explanation (because screwcapped and diam wines don't premox) but very unlikely to be the whole explanation (because there is no hypothesis on why corks would start failing in large numbers suddenly in 1995, mostly in Burgundy, only on white wines, and almost never on any riesling besides Trimbach).

with respect to riesling, a disaster in austria, starting in late 1990s

Well, Austrian riesling does not seem to age nearly as well as veltliner, but I am not sure about premox. Just that a ten year old Wachau riesling sometimes tastes a bit tired.

 

[Pavel Tchichikov]

originally posted by mark e:

Well, Austrian riesling does not seem to age nearly as well as veltliner, but I am not sure about premox. Just that a ten year old Wachau riesling sometimes tastes a bit tired.

if this is the case, you must understand that it was easy to interpret as premox given that this was happening very much at the time when variability among 99-02 white burg was observed, while bottle-to-bottle variation was not entirely dissimilar.