The customer is not always right

Y

Yixin

Yixin
Please do not order the 2010 Nicolas Joly Les Vieux Clos at a restaurant and send it back, claiming heat damage. The grapes were harvested at above 15° potential alcohol, went through a fairly hot fermentation, and spent time in oak barrels. Do not order such a wine if that is not what you want. If you don't like the wine, just say so. Claiming it was heat damaged is ridiculous - the bottles in question were picked up from the estate in a reefer truck, flown in (covered by a thermal blanket to reduce temperature shock), transported to our temperature-controlled warehouse in a reefer truck, and from what I know, stored properly at the restaurant.

The 2010 does not have the freshness of the 2008 (and most likely never will), but it does have the exotic notes typical of the Joly parcels, and a fair measure of botrytis. Drink this wine with something strongly flavoured, and take time to savour it. Don't be foolish and disrespectful.
 
Sounds like it was born heat damaged, then treated respectfully after that.

Kidding aside, any inkling as to why is she doing this? This is not global warming, I don't think. Is she chaptalizing the musts (permitted under BD)? Her first vintages were fine (the 06 CdS lovely), but now, it's as if she's intent on becoming some kind of Deiss.
 
and be sure, if you sell it to restaurants, to make sure to educate the restaurants about the nature and characteristics of this wine so that they, in turn, may properly advise their customers - so that no one thinks it's heat damaged.
 
The sommelier knows the wine and agrees with me (he opened a second bottle just to show them that this is typical of the wine), but ultimately he's not there to piss off customers, no matter how wrong they may be.

So I'll end up eating the cost; I chose to import the wine, after all. But it's not the money, it's this foolish heat damage assertion which has my blood boiling. These are the same people who would happily drink heat-degraded crap because it conforms to their expectations of 'wine', or claim that they know what heat damage is because they have a WSET certificate (uh huh).

Find me another importer who unstuffs every container, unpacks every pallet, just to retain control of the supply chain. Find me another importer who would rather write off an entire shipment than take insurance money to prevent unrepresentative wines from being released onto the market.
 
The wines are polarizing. That's not new news and for the uninitiated, the oxidative style can be confused as being heat damaged, or, simply being bad. It's not unreasonable to expect someone who may have heard about how good Joly is, but never tried the wine, to be disappointed. Honestly, returns should not be unexpected.
 
originally posted by Yixin:
The sommelier knows the wine and agrees with me (he opened a second bottle just to show them that this is typical of the wine), but ultimately he's not there to piss off customers, no matter how wrong they may be.

So I'll end up eating the cost; I chose to import the wine, after all.
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That is nice of you, but this seems odd to me. Shouldn't the restaurant be the one eating the cost? After all, it is clear to all parties involved, other than the ignorant customer, that the wine was not heat damaged. The sommelier seems to agree with you.
 
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
Is she chaptalizing the musts (permitted under BD)? .
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Again, BD has NOTHING to do with wine and winemaking. BD is a set of agricultural techniques.
Therefore, why would BD say anything about chaptalization? Or RO or lysozyme???
 
Why open a second bottle? Wouldn't the whole case have been heat damaged?

Also, couldn't the restaurant just pour the rejected wine by the glass?

Furthermore, Kane's right!
 
originally posted by Brézème:
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
Is she chaptalizing the musts (permitted under BD)? .
Click to expand...

Again, BD has NOTHING to do with wine and winemaking. BD is a set of agricultural techniques.
Therefore, why would BD say anything about chaptalization? Or RO or lysozyme???
Click to expand...

Maybe Steiner didn't say stipulate indigenous yeasts, but I understand Demeter requires it, so BD doesn't just stop at agriculture, like organic certifications do. I also understand that Demeter has no problem with acid and sugar and SO2 as long as the substances are naturally derived (hence the use of volcanic sulfur, etc.). If this is wrong and Demeter says nothing, one way or another, about what happens after the grapes are picked, please correct me again.
 
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
originally posted by Brézème:
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
Is she chaptalizing the musts (permitted under BD)? .
Click to expand...

Again, BD has NOTHING to do with wine and winemaking. BD is a set of agricultural techniques.
Therefore, why would BD say anything about chaptalization? Or RO or lysozyme???
Click to expand...

Maybe Steiner didn't say stipulate indigenous yeasts, but I understand Demeter requires it, so BD doesn't just stop at agriculture, like organic certifications do. I also understand that Demeter has no problem with acid and sugar and SO2 as long as the substances are naturally derived (hence the use of volcanic sulfur, etc.). If this is wrong and Demeter says nothing, one way or another, about what happens after the grapes are picked, please correct me again.
Click to expand...
Biodynamics is not Demeter.
 
Are we dealing with restaurants that simply do not know what to expect with Joly? This whole deal seems odd to me simply because letting the grapes hang forever isn't a real unusual thing at that estate. I mean the '96 Coulee can be supernal and all, but there have been a lot of crazy, overripe wines made there as well. You gotta be prepared for a lot of balls and a few strikes with Joly.
 
originally posted by Michael Lewis:
originally posted by Yixin:
The sommelier knows the wine and agrees with me (he opened a second bottle just to show them that this is typical of the wine), but ultimately he's not there to piss off customers, no matter how wrong they may be.

So I'll end up eating the cost; I chose to import the wine, after all.
Click to expand...

That is nice of you, but this seems odd to me. Shouldn't the restaurant be the one eating the cost? After all, it is clear to all parties involved, other than the ignorant customer, that the wine was not heat damaged. The sommelier seems to agree with you.
Click to expand...

There's a bit of give and take here, and I'm trying to help out the sommelier. We spoke about taking the wine off the list to prevent such incidents in future but he wants to keep it on, so we agreed that there will be no more returns except in the case of TCA.

Speaking of which, I looked through my notes and I have never had a corked wine from Joly (sample size is ~400). Variable, certainly, but no TCA. That's pretty astonishing.

2009 Les Vieux Clos is really nice now, as is the Bergerie (Roche-aux-Moines). I'm surprised at how open the 2009 Savennières are, including those vinified south of the river (Mosse, Baudouin, P-P). No discernible pattern either - they can be dry, malo, oaked monsters, and they're still drinking well (as well as can be hoped).
 
Yixin, I have nothing really to add here except that I feel your pain in light of your recent travails with heat damaged shipments (and the expert opinions on said damage). Best of luck with Scylla and Charybdis.

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by Brad Kane:
The wines are polarizing. That's not new news and for the uninitiated, the oxidative style can be confused as being heat damaged, or, simply being bad. It's not unreasonable to expect someone who may have heard about how good Joly is, but never tried the wine, to be disappointed. Honestly, returns should not be unexpected.
Click to expand...

That was me, and my girlfriend at La Régalade in 04. Coulée de Serrant, I can't remember the vintage. The disappointment was that it was a terrible pairing, and my ignorance of what that wine would likely be. We did not consider returning it, nor did I think it was damaged. Most inept selection I can recall.
 
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
Duh!
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Oswaldo,

Demeter is one of the numerous certification agencies whom standards are more or less based on biodynamic agricultural principles.
Believe me, hard core antroposophist biodynamists see Demeter as a huge commercial/marketing joke...

The fact that Demeter wrote a (hyper laxist) winemaking standard doesn't mean that there are any biodynamic consideration that apply to wine and winemaking.

After a few years of reading the Steiner and disciples material and studying the subject, my personal opinion is that a very very few thoughts coming from these writings has any substential link to wine and winemaking. And certainly nothing I could find in the poor Demeter paper.
 
Thank you for that, Eric, but I think that adhering to what Steiner said or didn't say is not helpful to understanding what BD represents in winemaking today. It's been years since I read Joly's book, so I don't recall what code he derived from Steiner, but it's this absence of specific directions that allowed him and other BD winemakers to come up with their own interpretations, whether Demeter certified or not. Joly will have a code, Augé will have another, Rateau another, and so on.

My original question was about the extremely high alcohol in this particular wine, and could it be natural. Maybe it can be explained by late picking (which would probably require acidification), but my point was that, unlike in "minimal intervention" winemaking, it could be chaptalization because BD doesn't forbid it. My bigger point was that, since winemaking corrections like acid and sugar and SO2 are not expressly forbidden by Steiner, BD winemakers can, through interpretation, allow themselves liberties that "natural" winemakers might not.
 
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