Editor's Note by Don Cornwell: Le Moine's winemaker Mounir Saouma takes a completely different approach from most in trying to avoid premature oxidation.
While Mounir is a negociant who receives the wines after the primary alcohlic fermentation is completed, he has a lot input/control on how the wines are handled prior to receipt by him. Mounir believes that many burgundies are suffering from premox because the producers very gently press their wines with their modern pneumatic presses, which results in much lower levels of phenols in the juice. There is good support in the literature that reduced phenol labels will reduce the oxidation buffer and render wines more readily subject to oxidation. Mounir believes in pressing his wines firmly enough to extract the proper levels of phenols. Mounir also pursues a completely reductive winemaking style. The wines are placed in barrel with a good quantity of fine lees. Mounir does not do any racking of the wines, which is virtually unheard of, and he engages in no pumping, no fining, no filtering and does gravity bottling. The wines are left on their fine lees and batonnage is usually accomplished by means of injecting CO2 gas rather than opening and stirring, in order to preserve the CO2 blanket undisturbed. A high level of CO2 is maintained in the barrel after the malo-lactic fermentation is completed. The wines are bottled with 1000 ml of CO2 gas, which is more than double the average concentration of CO2 (typically 400 m-500 ml). Mounir believes that adequate levels of phenols from the outset, along with the high level of CO2, reductive winemaking techniques and lack of exposure to oxygen during the elevage will make the wines more long-lived than those made with more traditional techniques.
On February 28, 2013 Mounir emailed me additional details about his winemaking, stating the following:
“here we work as following: a lot of lees, both alcoholic and malo in barrel WITHOUT RACKING for 24 months, no sulfur before 18 months of aging, bottling with more than 1000 mg of CO2 (Average for others is around 400 ) and Only 15/20 mg of SO2 (norm today is 50 ) Our wines are different. They are very deep colored at bottling….”
I've expressed to Mounir my opinions that CO2 is not a substitute chemically for SO2, that CO2 does nothing to prevent the oxidation of ethanol or phenols once the wine is in the bottle, and that by adding no sulfites until bottling and bottling with only 15 to 20 ppm of S02 his wines are virtually guaranteed to become prematurely oxidized.
[Alex Hunt] In November 2009 I had the good fortune to experience the result of one of Mounir's early experiments into the effects of presses on wines' evolution. We were given two white wines blind, both clearly with some age, one of which was fresh and vibrant, while the other was flat and broad. It turned out they were the same Monthelie blanc, 2003 vintage, bottled without SO2, sealed under screwcap, vinified identically except that one barrel was screw-pressed, the other bladder-pressed. In 2003, there was a domaine in Monthelie that was changing presses, and the enterprising Mounir took the opportunity to use both. The screw-pressed wine was without doubt the superior.