Oxidized white wines

In Denmark natural wines with little or no sulphur are getting more and more popular in the trendy restaurants. In a sense this also reflects the development of the New Nordic Kitchen, where these wines according to experts are a very good match to the rather delicate flavors of the mordern Nordic food.

I must say, I tend to agree as the best of the natural wines actually are a very good mach to the food, as they often have more delicate primary aromas when they are young. The new Nordic food are not well integrated with oaky and or powerfull wines, and require in my opinion delicate and balanced wines.

So far so good … the problem is however that quite a lot of these natural white wines are oxidized, some a little while others are heavily oxidized even when then are very young. By some this is not considered to be a problem, and in many cases it seems to be more or less deliberate oxidation, occuring in all the producers wines.

Deliberate Oxidation

I my view oxidation is a serious fault in the wine. In Burgundy premox (premature oxidation) has been one of the biggest problems and hottest topics since it began around 1995/1996.

So if premox is a problem in Burgundy, why is deliberate oxidized wines ok? Even if it’s not a Burgundy I still feel sad and disapointed when I get a wine with deliberate oxidation, as the oxidation in my view mostly ruins the match with allmost all food, and most certainly also the delicate New Nordic Kitchen.

Help me understand

Well since a lot of sommeliers serve these wines, and even say they like them, there must be something I have overlooked?

Please help me to appreciate this, and explain to me why oxidation, something wine producers in most regions have been trying to avoid for decades, now seem to be a popular thing in the restaurants of Copenhagen.

Probably I will never become a fan of deliberate oxidized wines, but maybe I could stop worrying about premox, as it’s apparently just a fashion statement from unnatural wines that want’s to be liberated!

Make no mistake, I really admire and love wines from producers like Philippe Pacalet, so i’m not a sulphur fanatic!