TN: Lapierre's new unsulphured Morgon - from where comes that note of matches being struck?

T

Tim York

Tim York
Morgon 2011 M.Lapierre Alc.12.5%, “without added sulphur or filtration, this wine must be kept at a temperature not exceeding 14°C” (my loose translation from back label).

The nose was exhilarating with fresh red fruit with a lot of sharp strawberry notes and very mineral with striking match hints, which I would attribute to added sulphur without that back label note (some 18 hours after opening the heeltaps’ aromas have become darker and more complex with no hint of oxidation and matches no longer perceptible).

The palate was medium/light, linear in shape and quite long, the texture was that of slightly matt silk, the red fruit was lively and again there were attractively burgeoning minerals with an element flint veering to striking match, lively/crisp non-astringent acidity and gentle grip on the finish. The overall effect was surprisingly elegant for Beaujolais.

My guess while drinking was that there was not a lot of ageing potential but the way that the bouquet has behaved in the nearly empty bottle suggests that may be wrong, provided that one has a cellar which guarantees less than 14°C (57°F), which mine does not. Delicious; 16/20+.
 
while others with far more knowledge and education will also reply with more specific answers, i'd say that:

1. all wine contains sulfur as a naturally occurring element.

2. this wine has been bottled in a reductive state where this natural sulfur is aromatically apparent. bottling the wine in a reductive state protects against oxidation, which is a function sulfur plays in wines that are sulfured.
 
regarding cellar temps, i've stored the 'nuits d'ivresse' bottling of breton bourgueil, which is also unsulfured. my wine room creeps up to 62 degrees each summer (and goes down to 54 each winter), and i didn't have any bottles go off over 3-5 years of storage.
 
There are chemists on the board who can answer this question intelligently. I'm certainly not one of them. But, its my understanding that aromas associated with reduction can be misperceived as sulphurous. I bet the wine was just reductive, which is why the impression of matchsticks blew off with air time.
 
Reduction, as I recently wrote elsewhere, is associated with smells of thiols and sulfides, but those generally take form of skunk, rubber, sewage, cabbage and like smells. Burnt matchstick to me is the hallmark of sulfur (or sulphur for you, Tim) dioxide, and that is distinctly NOT a reduction product. Perhaps Comrade Brezeme can weigh in here, but he's been vocal in the past about the amounts of SO2 he's found in sans souffre wines. It should be noted that there are natural sources of SO2 in any fermentation product, so one does not have to suspect skulduggery in the cellar to account for this seeming disparity between language and reality.

Mark Lipton
 
Not a chemist, but you would only be smelling free SO2, not bound SO2 that is busy neutralizing other funny smells in a wine. Any minor amounts of SO2 produced during fermentation (10ppm give or take?) would seem improbable to remain as free, even before the bottling process. I imagine it simply has to be an issue of taking one thing for another. One person's matchstick could be another's gun powder or who knows what, that tickles the nose and make you think of SO2.
 
11 out in europe already?
That young, and knowing that they do use the meche to clean their barrels, that might be where that smell is coming from...actual sulfur.
 
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