on the run in the Cote d'Or

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I knew I was headed to the wrong region when SFJoe discovered me struggling in the cellar with my luggage, trying to fit all the gift bottles and my fancy dress shoes into the same bag, unsuccessfully. "In the Loire", he said, "you only need one pair of shoes".

Regardless, I am here, and even though it looks like I have once again missed Claude by just a few days, I am attempting to follow the trail of that other scientist, John Gilman.

As always, I shall do my best to represent the interests of disorderlies, particularly Oswaldo and fatboy.
 
May the force be with you, and make sure you get to the bottom of the chaptalization-not-just-for-minor corrections-but-to-generate-categorical-differences scam.
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
Are you going to visit Burguet?
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Alas, no. JBG is headed there while I am at the Paulee. But I have reprogrammed him.
 
originally posted by Ian Fitzsimmons:
"'bated" is "abated" trimmed to fit iambic pentameter.
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Usually spelled as bated (sometimes even as baited, but I think that's deplorable). As far as preserving the iamb goes, Shakespeare spells it without the apostrophe. Since the OED does not list any verb form of to bate meaning to hold or the like, though, and that verb is "abate," one could argue that we all should spell it with an apostrophe.
 
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
May the force be with you, and make sure you get to the bottom of the chaptalization-not-just-for-minor corrections-but-to-generate-categorical-differences scam.
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Indeed - the two places I visited on Tuesday, even before I dropped off my bags, took radically different approaches to this little dilemma presented by the vintage, with most grapes collected in the 11.7-12.4 range, with outstanding phenolic ripeness. At Hudelot, they made wonderfully pure wines, with at least three likely to find their way into my cellar, but found it necessary to bring the levels up to around 13 for the 1er cru, and closer to 13.5 for the grand cru. At Gouges, on the other hand, the only thing chaptalized to any extent were two parcels of the village NSG facing north. All the wines are under 13% and show no lack of complexity. You will find much more of the former, particularly in the cote de nuits, and while I can't say that I had a vast preference for one style over the other, the Gouges wines will probably earn considerably more disorderly points over time.
 
Most people I visited chaptalized very little (just a few tenths to half a degree to prolong fermentation) or not at all, deciding to leave the wines somewhat lower in alcohol than has been standard in the past. In part, I think this is responding to perceived changing market preferences for lighter wine, and it also preserves the freshness, which is one of the pleasing aspects of the vintage.

Interesting response, .sasha, to the Hudelot (presumably -Noëllat and not one of the other Hudelot addresses) wines. I think you'll find them somewhat atypical of the vintage and wonder if you'll wind up revising your view as you get more experience with the vintage under your belt.
 
It is quite possible that I will revise my opinion about Hudelot, although I was trying to be as objective as possible and wasn't necessarily expressing personal preferences. If I did, I'd have to admit that perhaps the most opulent, complex, or expressive wines would probably not make it onto my shopping list, which at the moment includes somewhat simpler and minerally precise petit vougeot, chambolle AC and clos vougeot. I did speak to another major winemaker yesterday whose wines I will taste next week (so I will withhold any speculation) who did chaptalize about 1 - 1.5 degrees, feeling that the wines had very good tannic structure and could easily and beneficially be brought up to the 13+ range. On the other hand, Francois Millet told me this morning that achieving the alleged magic number of 13 for the top 1er and grand cru was unnecessary, and certainly his wines, all in the very low 12% range, speak for themselves in that they are an excellent expression of what you would expect to find at the Domaine. Ironically, he did add that leaving them below 12% would be considered "dangerous".
 
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
Most people I visited chaptalized very little (just a few tenths to half a degree to prolong fermentation) [...]
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Is it right that this is the main purpose of chaptilization among thoughtful winemakers, that is, to prolong the fermentation, rather than achieve a certain abv? I'm thinking of the (tortured) analogy to sourdough bread-making, where cooling the dough is the common practice, in order to prolong fermentation, giving microbial activity time to build flavor depth and complexity. In this case, with wine, a nominal abv, like 13%, would serve as a kind of notional proxy for a certain level of flavor 'density,' rather than an end in itself. Is this how good winemakers think of abv?

We opened a simple Texier Cotes du Rhone last night, which, at 12.5% abv, reminded me how independent wine flavor intensity is of alcohol concentration.

Flakey tangent: could some flavor attributes, say, 'minerality,' could be caused by metabolic byproducts from local microbial strains that get into the must during fermentation, rather than, say, soil composition? Local microbial strain types could be related to soil types, so that soil would have an indirect effect on flavor elements; but, in this imagined process, microbes would be the vectors for introducing material into the wine that does not travel up the vine stems.
 
That's one path through the forest, but there are others.

Vine X grown in soil Y emphasizes certain metabolic pathways over others. This provides a more/less hospitable environment for Bugs ABC and D during fermentation, and subtly encourages them in turn to emphasize some metabolism of their own.

This could be as simple as--grape x grown in soil y gives a must with low protein and thus low available nitrogen. This encourages reductive characters by making the bugs use sulfur-containing amino acids more than they would otherwise. The winemaker can respond to this with aeration, or feeding the bugs DAP, or in other ways. All of these affect the final wine.
 
originally posted by .sasha:
It is quite possible that I will revise my opinion about Hudelot, although I was trying to be as objective as possible and wasn't necessarily expressing personal preferences. If I did, I'd have to admit that perhaps the most opulent, complex, or expressive wines would probably not make it onto my shopping list, which at the moment includes somewhat simpler and minerally precise petit vougeot, chambolle AC and clos vougeot. I did speak to another major winemaker yesterday whose wines I will taste next week (so I will withhold any speculation) who did chaptalize about 1 - 1.5 degrees, feeling that the wines had very good tannic structure and could easily and beneficially be brought up to the 13+ range. On the other hand, Francois Millet told me this morning that achieving the alleged magic number of 13 for the top 1er and grand cru was unnecessary, and certainly his wines, all in the very low 12% range, speak for themselves in that they are an excellent expression of what you would expect to find at the Domaine. Ironically, he did add that leaving them below 12% would be considered "dangerous".
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Fascinating stuff, please keep up the reports from the front. Claude too.
 
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