2010 Huet Premox?

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).
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Agreed. Somehow, all of sudden around 2002, Huet's cork issues arose, resulting in huge numbers of compromised bottles. I don't know as that passes Occam's Razor, either. I appears to me that something else is afoot here.

originally posted by 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.
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I have been bottling our top meads by hand with a gravity filler for the life of those labels, without serious issues like this, too. If it is practical for Huet go back to old iron cast, open air, bottle fillers (and hand corking), empirical evidence might indicate that perhaps they should.

Anybody can laugh at anything they want (in rebus cavillatio nulla disputandum esse potest). Sadly, I am not laughing about my nasty bottles of Huet. I have had bad bottles from vintages back to 2002 and up to 2008. Makes them hard to open in situations where they should be ideal. I hate opening a bad bottle in front of the wrong people, and I know I am not alone in that.

If it was/is bad corks, I would love to see the references on that. None of the cork O2 permeability studies I have seen account for the effect that encapsulization - ether tin or polylam - will have on permeability. I also have not seen or heard any dialogue on which producer and which cork lots were affected, and how. Which also does not mean it is not the cause. Or, if there could be a compound cause resulting from a combination of materials and process. The relative isolation to certain wines and certain producers has to be a clue. It's all as clear as mud to me.

Main thrust: a good physician who has a problem and does not have a readily apparent diagnosis looks and any and all possibilities without prejudice, and rules them out only when they can be disproved with hard evidence.
 
This is actually the first time I'm hearing about loose corks at Huet in 2002. I've never experienced that, afaik. My understanding has been that they backed off on sulphur a bit too much that year.
 
originally posted by Brad Kane:
This is actually the first time I'm hearing about loose corks at Huet in 2002. I've never experienced that, afaik. My understanding has been that they backed off on sulphur a bit too much that year.
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That is what I always thought, yet I have never removed corks from a bottle with so little effort.
 
originally posted by Ben Hunting:
From the Burgundy buyer for the Wine Society regarding premox
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Interesting. So, the assertion is that "premox" is a collision between wine just barely under-sulfured and corks just barely under-performing. Hence, some bottles go off and some bottles don't; which ones is just random luck (...if this bottle got a couple fewer or extra grains of sulfur, or a cork that was slightly slimmer or fatter...).

We can test that assertion by checking the sulfuring done at various houses, right? Those who sulfured more should see less premox.

In theory, we could check bottles based on the sourcing for their corks, too, but that's probably harder to trace at this date.
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
originally posted by Ben Hunting:
From the Burgundy buyer for the Wine Society regarding premox
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We can test that assertion by checking the sulfuring done at various houses, right? Those who sulfured more should see less premox.
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Maybe. Winemaking practices probably play a role, as well. As an example, I have never had a premoxed Vouvray from Foreau. And though it was quite a while ago, many of the wines I tasted in the cellar there had detectable levels of free SO2.
 
The 2004s were probably the first vintage made with a full conscious effort to avoid premox and many of them were absolutely tattooed with sulfur, which was apparently the most logical band-aid at the time. They still premoxed.
 
originally posted by 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...
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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.
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My first thought too, particularly in the Loire and particularly for wines with some RS.
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
originally posted by Ben Hunting:
From the Burgundy buyer for the Wine Society regarding premox
Click to expand...
Interesting. So, the assertion is that "premox" is a collision between wine just barely under-sulfured and corks just barely under-performing. Hence, some bottles go off and some bottles don't; which ones is just random luck (...if this bottle got a couple fewer or extra grains of sulfur, or a cork that was slightly slimmer or fatter...).
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Generally speaking, SO2 levels are uniform within a tank of wine assembled for bottling, no? So variance by bottle in a single bottling run would require the bottling line to introduce some variance in the free SO2 levels between bottles. That, or the SO2 levels are constant, but at the hypothetical borderline where a small variation in cork permeability quickly uses up the free SO2.
 
I recall a small torrent of affected white burgundy, too. The geographic clustering of the problem is a fascinating component.

Is anyone aware of significant problems with German Riesling (trocken or sweet) between, say 1995 and 2010?
 
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