Elevage, Sulphur, and Closures

While some think that making wine is a simple operation, I can assure you this is not the case, particularly as regards modern-day, top-end winemaking in Burgundy.

Olivier Lamy is one of the true forerunners in testing new methods to help optimise his wines, and also in helping other vignerons by sharing his knowledge.

After a session with Olivier tasting some selected wines, from 2021 back to 2009, I emerged with a clearer picture of elevage and the use of Diam corks as the bottle closure.

Some of these findings are a bit surprising. In combination, they are quite complex, even when excluding the randomness of natural cork.

My gut feeling before the tasting

I accept the Diam cork as a fact of life. It is not perfect, and there are varying opinions as to whether the closure can ensure a natural aging process of the wine.

That said, I want the possibility of a mature white Burgundy. This is quite a moving target, as the variability of white Burgundy means it may not age within a foreseeable future – or ever!

The complexity and co-variability

The choice of closure cannot be seen independently from the use of sulphur, the vessels used for elevage, or its length.

One can easily understand the different choices – and their ramifications – when looking at one variable individually. But if we put all the factors into the big melting pot, then it becomes extremely complex due to the co-variance among the different elements. By laying out some Winehog axioms, I will try to explain this a bit.

It’s axiomatic – at least for the Winehog

Diam closures will reduce oxidation of a wine, and thus slow the aging process, as their permeability is much less, and more uniform, than that of a natural cork.

Higher levels of sulphur will slow the aging of a wine and make it feel edgier and more structured. They will also protect the wine against oxidation. Very little – or no – sulphur will make the wine feel markedly less structured, and give a perceived loss of terroir expression. This is complex.

The size of the elevage vessel (barrel or amphora) will influence a wine’s perception, with larger barrels giving it more space, making it feel more effortless or relaxed than one matured in a standard 228-litre oak.

Finally, longer elevage will result in more precision, and also a more durable wine that will require longer aging if you want it to mature. Shorter elevage will give a fruitier experience when a wine is young, yet it will mature more quickly in bottle, all other things being equal.

The Lamy experiments

Olivier Lamy is doing a range experiments, and their results are being transformed from theory to practice. He consequently changes his vinification when he finds that the change suits his purpose; i.e., making the wines taste like Olivier thinks they should.

This is important: It is not a one-method-fits-all process. These are reflections by Olivier in Saint Aubin based on experimentation. And let me add: Few, if any, do as many tests and reflect as much as he does.

Answering my question

Entering the cellar at Lamy, I was under the impression that these were mainly elevage questions, and to some degree they are. But they are questions that arose following the introduction of the Diam closure.

Important Findings

I tasted two Hubert Lamy Saint-Aubin 1er cru Frionnes from 2015 with different elevage lengths; one with the usual 24 months, and one with 18 months, both under Diam. This answered one question relatively clearly: Aging under a Diam cork is possible.

The 18-month elevage showed as quite a mature wine, with the youthful fruit beginning to retract. It was clearly more mature than the 24-month-elevage version (the usual maturation at Lamy). This leaves the 24-month elevage as preferable to me, but 2015 as a vintage is also a soft, quite ripe one for whites.

So I can say definitively that in this case, shorter elevage led to a clearly more rapid maturing of the wine, even under Diam.

This is for me a very, very important result, as it shows that we can – or could have – maturing or even fully mature wines in a world with Diam.

But this requires that elevage and sulphur are managed to ensure the possibility of maturing. And this is not always the case.

Sulphur under Diam

It has long been clear that less sulphur is needed to ensure that a wine matures under Diam. This was the result of the Bouchard Pere et Fils tests, and Olivier Lamy has reduced his sulphur usage by 50% since adopting Diam.

So far, so good. This axiom does (to some degree) hold. However, to fully understand, we need to determine whether lower-sulphur maturation under Diam follows the same time scale as a bottle under natural cork.

This is where it gets even more complex. The variability of natural cork is huge, and therefore the development of a 10-year-old wine is, if not random, at least variable. Some will be maturing, some fully mature, and some perhaps over the hill.

What’s more, this is also a question of palate. In reality, only a few people (the vigneron) have a clear idea of this variability, and of how they want a 10-year-old white to taste.

For example, I would prefer a bit more maturity than Olivier Lamy after 10 years. But his taste is just as valid as mine, and I can always keep a wine in my cellar a bit longer. Enjoying a Lamy wine with oysters does confirm his priorities … rich turbot with lobster based sauce counts more in my preferences.

Adjusting the aging

Adjusting aging and its speed highly complex, as the different parameters are not 100% correlated. Introducing Diam is a binary choice, but the impact of adjusting sulphur and/or elevage length and vessel size could well have a different time scale, meaning bigger, or even accelerating, effects in the longer run. This means also taking into account different elevage and/or sulphur levels depending on the expected lifespan of the wine, which can be vintage-dependant (for example, 2014 whites, with their near-perfect acidity levels, should live longer than the lower-acid 2015s).

Then there’s the choice among the various Diams: The difference in permeability between the 5 and 10 does have meaning in this situation.

There is without doubt a lot more is to be said on this topic. But I am going to stop here; my brain is overloaded!

Thanks to Olivier Lamy

Olivier Lamy has been an inspiration for many years, and still is. We don’t agree about everything, as we are different personalities. Yet Olivier is highly efficient and apparently tireless in his work. He has amazing energy.

I am more laid back, although I wrote this article between 3:00 and 07:00 a.m. Maybe Olivier’s energy is contagious! One can only hope.

I like my wines a bit less strict and earlier developing than Olivier. But these are geeks splitting hairs. And this simple tip could actually be quite useful: Give more volume to white wines and let them unfold more. The Bordeaux glass from Zalto actually works very well with the Lamy wines.

Thanks a lot, Olivier!

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Food for thought…

Elevage in a larger-format vessels results in a more effortless, relaxed presentation of a wine, thus diminishing the effects of Diam!