Experimental Margaux: Red Wine Aged Under Different Closures
Surely the most obvious subject for experimentation, and perhaps also the most keenly awaited by the gathered crowd of tasters, closure experiments began with Pavillon Rouge in 2002, and from 2003 the experiments continued with the third wine. The three wines selected for the tasting featured natural cork and two screwcaps, one permeable and one impermeable. Pontallier revealed that they had also tried synthetic closures but the results had been “disastrous” and there was no point in showing the wines. Like many wines under synthetic, within a few years of going into bottles the wines were lost to rampant oxidation.
The vintage selected for the tasting was 2003, the first year the third wine was bottled under different closures; these are thus some of the oldest wines subjected to this experiment. A little background on the third wine was provided by Pontallier; this wine has been selected out to improve the quality of Pavillon Rouge in every vintage since 1997, whereas before then it was produced only in selected vintages, such as 1992 and 1987. Until very recently it was always sold off in bulk to a négociant for inclusion in a generic Margaux blend, Pontallier at pains to ensure it is blended rather than sold unadulterated in order to avoid surreptitious marketing further down the retail chain as “Margaux’s secret third wine”. With the 2009 vintage, however, the third wine will be bottled and commercialised by Margaux for the first time; although this is now old news – it is a development I reported on in my Margaux 2010 report – the name of this new cuvée remains a closely-guarded secret at present.
The wine tasted had 13.7% alcohol, a pH of 3.7 and an IPT reading of 71. Each was bottled with the same quantity of sulphur. Paul Pontallier tastes these wines regularly, and indicated that early on he and his team felt that the wine under impermeable screwcap was fresher than that under cork, but that no longer seems to be the case.
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