Tasting is believing? but try to understand

Tasting red Burgundies made without oak is a relatively new thing for me … at least in the top-end level – 1er cru and up!. I have tasted oak-based wines in 25 years and more so please bear with me here.

I need to learn and first and foremost taste more .., before I get my head around this as there definitely are some very good things in this experience with non-oaked red wines.

Please leave me some leniency here … this deserves my deepest sincerest thoughts (some would say that this does not say a lot) – but I will nevertheless try.

What is oak to a pinot?

To me oak on a pinot is many things – it’s something added. It can be called a facilitator to give the tannins and staying-power of the wine… and will always to some degree influence the taste – regardless of what some people say. Even 6 to 10-year-old barrels leave an impression…

It is therefore also a sort of makeup or perfume, that changes the wine’s bouquet and palate to a style hopefully preferred by the maker.

And to be honest, there is nothing wrong with this … hopefully, it will make the wine taste better and develop better during its full lifetime.

The wines without oak

The non-oaked wines appears very linear and transparent with a more pronounced acidity and a very nice expression of the mineral side of the terroir expression.

The fruit notes are precise but are somewhat on the discrete side – not perfumed or enhanced. On the lesser wines more discrete but expressed fuller on the bigger wines and more generous and expressive terroirs in Chambolle and Vosne …

It’s like the smaller terroirs are more in need of an oak hand … than the big and more exuberant terroirs of Vosne and Chambolle.

Some say they feel there is an ever-so-slight touch of dust or crushed stones from the bouquet of wines brought up in ceramic vessels.

Somehow I don’t see it as this … (it would defy my logic) I just think that the experience of tasting the fully naked wine can be as difficult to comprehend and fathom for the human brain as it has been used to taste oak-based wines.

Tasting non-oaked wines is like tasting without filters and without perfume and enhancements … hence also a bigger challenge when tasting young and smaller wines.

One is the wessel transparency…. the permeability … the flow of oak through the ceramic wessel. The permeability is often significantly lower – 1/2 or down to 1/4 – compared to a normal French oak.

So lower access to Oxygen could explain the slower evolution of the wine in the ceramic wessels … things are complex.

As I only have tasted a few wines made on ceramic Wessels I need to reserve my judgement on how the complexity of the fruit … how will the roses unfold, the lilacs and the violets … questions are many.

Vin d’emotion?

This is where the cookie crumbles, as I somehow feel the ceramic wines are a bit on the cool side and somehow the lack of oak « perfume » is leaving the wine with too little emotional depth and charm.

The ceramic wines I have tasted are correct and cool … but are they seductive or true top-end vin d’émotion … ? Do they tickle your senses … do they give you goosebumps?

If the terroir and the grapes deliver … yes perhaps, but somehow the emotional side is not the strongest point of the ceramic wines.

Perfume and makeup do just this … enhance the feel and the sensation … who said Bois d`Argent could be that seductive? – it can believe me. But so can the bouquet of a great Aux Reignots – your choice or mine.

This will no doubt be heavily debated … some will prefer ceramic wines as others love heavily toasted oak!

I will wait to see how they develop in bottle … but somehow I like the seductive perfumes … I love them a lot actually.

Time … give it time

All the red Burgundies I have tasted that were made without oak … not that many … have been recently or just bottled and mostly still in Wessel… i.e. 2021, 2022 and 2023.

One can not draw any conclusions on these tastings … but still I feel it is important to think and create an understanding … this is very important.

It will take years many years before we have the opportunity to taste … the 2021, 2022 and 2023s with some age and see how they unfold.

It is my job to follow these wines … but for private joy I like wines supported by oak, without a strongly toasted note … I have no issue with the perfume of oak and Pinot – but this is just me!

Oak or Ceramics … both!

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Please note my proofreader is on vacation …. and I just got the urge to print this … so bear with my language errors and misspellings!