Pox'd Chidaine

M

MLipton

Mark Lipton
Last night I opened my second bottle of the 2014 Francois Chidaine Montlouis Les Choisilles. In contrast to the brilliant bottle opened in June, this one came out a burnished gold in color and smelling strongly apple cider, well on its way to Sherry methinks. Looking at the posts on CT, it appears that my experience is far from an outlier with this wine and that there is indeed a premox problem with this particular bottling (if not more broadly, dunno yet). Now I'm worried about the two bottles that remain in my cellar...

Mark Lipton
 
goddammit.

2014 is just way too late in the game to still have a premox problem. If they can't have figured it out by now, it's time to move to screwcaps.
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
goddammit.

2014 is just way too late in the game to still have a premox problem. If they can't have figured it out by now, it's time to move to screwcaps.
Click to expand...

that'd be a nice solution, if random oxidation for Chidaine wasn't much more prevalent for '14, ditto Huet '02 (sec).

It is frustrating beyond words.
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
goddammit.

2014 is just way too late in the game to still have a premox problem. If they can't have figured it out by now, it's time to move to screwcaps.
Click to expand...
If it's a closure issue, sure. Suppose it's a vinification issue?
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
goddammit.

2014 is just way too late in the game to still have a premox problem. If they can't have figured it out by now, it's time to move to screwcaps.
Click to expand...
If it's a closure issue, sure. Suppose it's a vinification issue?
Click to expand...
I haven't been keeping up. Has there been progress in identifying the cause(s)?
 
originally posted by Christian Miller (CMM):
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
goddammit.

2014 is just way too late in the game to still have a premox problem. If they can't have figured it out by now, it's time to move to screwcaps.
Click to expand...
If it's a closure issue, sure. Suppose it's a vinification issue?
Click to expand...
I haven't been keeping up. Has there been progress in identifying the cause(s)?
Click to expand...

every so often burghound does an update on premox, and while they're whittling away at causes and preventions, it is still safe to say that they're not completely out of the woods regarding cause(s) and prevention(s).
 
It's never been a single cause. I haven't had an oxidized wine under screwcap yet, though, and corks are the only variable that accounts for some bottles being oxidized and others fine in the same case. So as far as I can tell the options seem to be: 1) reverse-engineer the last 25 years of winemaking and fix the problem nobody understands yet despite 20 years of study, or 2) switch to caps and sleep easier while waiting for someone else to do #1.

I bought some Benjamin Leroux whites recently under caps after steering clear of white burgundy for a long time. Jadot is using Diams on their whites now and so far, so good. I have Austrian and Australian riesling under caps some with 15+ years on them and they are in great shape. I also recently opened a red from Eyrie that had been under Diam for maybe 9 or 10 years and it was also pristine. Corkiness risk eliminated too, obviously. So this should be a no-brainer decision really.
 
Opened a 2014 Clos du Breuil and a 2014 Choisilles last September and both were fine. Will open another 2014 tonight to check.
 
Unless there are multiple reports from many different markets, which affect a great portion of the production, lets refrain from calling it premox. Most problems are related to issues along the distribution chain, or cork failures. Premox has come to mean something different than just oxidized and is a systemic problem that originates at the winery.

Now, all that said, for the most part and with a few exceptions, I generally don't find Chidaine's wines to age all that well, but this may be a simple case of heat along the chain.
 
Brad, according to my records both these bottles were purchased from the same lot of wines sold by Envoyer. Granted, there is no guarantee that they all were sourced from the same source, but Occam's razor...

Mark Lipton
 
Gold color, apple cider, and sherry = premox. That's not a toasty truck ride on the supply chain. And if it's 2014 vintage it's definitely premature oxidation as opposed to garden-variety regular oxidation.
 
I had the same problems with 2008 Les Choisilles. Not a big enough sample size to call premox, but I was certainly thinking along those lines.
 
originally posted by Michael Lewis:
I had the same problems with 2008 Les Choisilles. Not a big enough sample size to call premox, but I was certainly thinking along those lines.
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Me too - I got mine at Macarthers’s- is that where you bought yours, Michael?

My 02 Huets have been much fresher than my 2014 Chidaines. 😳
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
Gold color, apple cider, and sherry = premox. That's not a toasty truck ride on the supply chain. And if it's 2014 vintage it's definitely premature oxidation as opposed to garden-variety regular oxidation.
Click to expand...

Keith, there's come to be a more commonly used, specific definition for premox, one that is better applied to the problems white Burgundy has been facing, Trimbach and things like '02 Huet. Those are systemic problems that originate at the winery and affects a large part of production, the cause of which may be unknown, or known, like reduced sulfur usage, a specific screwup in the winemaking process, a batch of loose fitting corks, etc.

Oxidation along the distribution line due to exposed heat or cork failure is simply oxidized. There needs to be a distinction and more and more people, certainly within the trade, are using the distinction.
 
Yeah, obviously there is a distinction. What makes you think this had anything to do with the distribution line? The description is classic premox.
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
Yeah, obviously there is a distinction. What makes you think this had anything to do with the distribution line? The description is classic premox.
Click to expand...

Except that premox seems to be striking Burgundy, Trimbach and the '02 Huet all within the 7-9 years after vintage time frame. I just checked the '14s in Cellartracker and it seems the Vouvray are pretty much fine, but the spread of Montlouis are showing issues. To begin with, I tend to find Montlouis to show more oxidative character than Vouvray, but given the timing of the issues and how it's not affecting the Vouvray, it sounds more like a heat issue somewhere along the line to me.
 
Heat damage doesn't taste anything like premox, and why would heat discriminate between Vouvray and Mountlouis? The description here was classic premox.

Plenty of people have reported premox on white burgundies as young as a year or two past release. This is consistent with that.
 
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