Pulling a bottle at random out of my cellar, 2005 Filsell Old Vine is in screwcap. Older wines are not, and most are also bottled in cork; perhaps in your country the distributor is too lazy to import both? All the Burge that I've bought in the past year has been in screwcap as I buy directly from the winery. Since you don't believe me, read any of the reviews of Grant Burge wines, when closure is mentioned it is almost always screwcap and not cork these days. More interestingly Grant Burge himself is quoted in a Wine Enthusiast article that "down the road it will be100% screw cap". Grant has been well known as an advocate of cork for many years but that is not the case today ... he does make some very fine wine, using some daring techniques such as the extended maceration.

I buy from the winery too. But since I'm not in Oz at the moment, I sent Grant Burge an email.

From: Stimpy

Hi,

Quick question. Does Grant Burge produce any wines with screw top?

From: Maxine Chellew <[email protected]>
Many thanks for your concern.

Our wines of distinction which are filsell, Corryton park, balthasar and the holy trinity and Our icon wines which are shadrach, Abednego and Meshach are still under cork.
There has been no talk of putting them into stelvin.

Our vineyard and Barossa vines ranges are stelvin.

Kind regards
maxine

This is consistent with what I've heard from US winemakers to whom I've spoken. I'm fine with daily drinkers and early drinking whites to have screwcaps but when you start to mess with expensive wines with long pedigrees, I get nervous.

A worldwide shortage of cork has proliferated a surge in screw cap bottling. Tests have revealed that screw top bottling creates a tighter seal than cork. Most Aus/NZ wines are all screw top configuration. Whereas you can (often) get a piece of dry cork in the wine bottle, this can't happen with screw tops. As you can see, I am a screw top fan!

I have never heard of wines having nitrates added to them. Could you please provide examples?

A lot of white Burgundy connoisseurs would disagree with your pooh-poohing of the oxidation process.

i do not understand the point of this comment. I do know and do own a lot of white burgundy that turned to garbage within 5 years of arrival. this stuff was not mishandled.

i do not understand within the white burgundy subsets, the high end ones turned to garbage, and the "cheapies" held up pretty well. we can divided these two groups by louis latour under $25 and over $50.

i lost about 10 cases of various producer single vineyard Puligny and chassagne-Montrachet.

the corks look fine and do not smell bad.

I sure don't understand your comment. Your stuff must have been mishandled or poor to start with. I live in Burgundy and have never heard of such a thing. But I also never buy Louis Latour.

Number of spoiled bottles with screw caps - 0
Number with corks - 4 I can remember in the last 3-4 years

So, no complaints from me.

cheap LL is a nice everyday wine.

the 95-96-97-98 whites from jm boillot, henri boillot, morey,fevre,moreau,sauzet all had problems. i live in the dc area, and the problem was pretty well known and appeared in the wine press(even parker mentioned it somewhere along the line).

i agree it was mishandled or poor to start with. just that $50-80 wines are not supposed to be poor, or mishandled. since it was over so many years, and so many names. it was dead by 2000(tasted something like severely maderized, but different), and i have not purchased any white burgundy since. i bought it upon release to usa.

i don't think you can blame my storage area. i have over 200 cases, many of which date back to the early 80's. i loose very few.

First of all, you shouldn't have to pay more than �20 for really good white Burgundy, and I get it for even less sur place.

As for expensive wines being mishandled, I certainly don't think you can blame the entire Burgundy region if your wine is mishandled. Maybe come here and purchase it yourself and arrange your own shipping? That's much more fun anyways. And you can taste it yourself before you buy to be more certain of the quality. You can even watch the corks being put in the bottle if you like at most places here.

could you please mark a few whites that are available for �20 or less. i assure you that $25 does not buy much in the usa. can you tell me what i can get for less than 30 bucks here in usa?

i'm not saying that the corks went into the bottles incorrectly, i am saying that by four years after they made the wine, put in the cork, put on the label, and shipped it here to the usa, it was garbage, and it is pretty much all the 95-99 vintage of cru classe burgundy.

My point is that many people (not including me) believe that white Burgundy is best when it has a slight tinge of oxidation. To eliminate oxidation entirely might disappoint them.

When I last toured Burgundy (2008) the house Corton at the inn that I was staying at cost EUR 6 a glass and under 20 a bottle. But that was unlabeled (cleanskin). Their labeled "reserve" Corton from the same wineyard was EUR 50 and while better it was about 10% better. US prices are $100+ for anything interesting/worth drinking (sadly).

As for oxidation being part of the wine aging process, that is a myth or misunderstanding of the science which has now been corrected. Consider all the well aged bottles of wine from shipwrecks -- under water with little exposure to oxygen. Any competent winemaker now knows what oxidation is good for (plonk). It is useful for fixing some faults in a badly made wine (or wine made with poor grapes). I try to avoid wines like that

Screwtop all the way.

Quick, easy and tidy. Especially useful when you bring a bottle or two back to your hotel only to find out that there is no corkscrew in the rook. Once that happens to you a few times you start looking at bottles from the top down...

I'm saying it was likely the shipping that caused the problems somehow. There are no problems with the wines here.

Here are a few wines I am drinking these days...

http://www.hachette-vins.com/le-guid...-20082413.html

http://www.hachette-vins.com/le-guid...-20080455.html

http://www.hachette-vins.com/le-guid...-20086885.html

You can see the prices on these links. But I have no idea what they go for in the US. And there are countless others out there. Just driving around and randomly visiting a couple wineries on a nice Saturday afternoon is half the fun. Maybe more than half. Use your miles to get here!