A California wine maker, David Ramey, was in town on Friday and at dinner we were discussing the issue of premature oxidation in white burgundy. He proposed a theory that in the mid 90's the French were pushing the envelope on lowering SO2 in their Chardonnay's and at the same time were beginning to use hydrogen peroxide solutions to clean their corks as opposed to chlorine based cleaners. The combination could be the perfect storm for creating premature oxidation on a random basis since some makers used less SO2 than others and the corks had differing amounts of hydrogen peroxide and were rinsed in a less than scientific manner. Just a theory and I'm not a chemist but it sounds plausible.
- posted
15 years ago