by Wink Lorch » Sun Dec 07, 2008 12:44 pm
First off - I don't know the answer but will endeavour to find out, though it might not be for a few weeks ... However, here is my conjecture and a chance to ride on a hobby horse of mine:
Puffeney, like nearly all Jura and Savoie growers I know and many, many other growers in more famous regions of France too, bottles each of his regular wines (i.e. each separate grape variety/appellation/wine style that is produced in any quantity) in more than one 'hit' i.e. there will be two or three bottlings of that wine, so arguably each bottling will be slightly different because the later bottlings will have had longer time stored in bulk and will have changed slightly even if stored in neutral tank. It may be (and I have not yet asked) that Neal Rosenthal made an agreement with Jacques Puffeney that if he did a 2nd shipment that was a 2nd bottling of Poulsard from the excellent 05 vintage it should be labelled differently - good for him, I say!
The very common practice of 'several bottlings' is one that as a writer I have always felt uncomfortable about. The producers do it for a combination of reasons, mostly financial, sometimes market demands and sometimes purely practical. The reasons may be one of lacking space to store so many bottles, having to bottle some of a cuvée earlier than they really want to because good customers demand the wine and the previous vintage has been sold, or for the financial reason - it costs money to invest in bottles and corks long before you are going to sell the wine. But, if I as a writer, recommend a wine in a guide or an article, I am recommending the last bottling that I tasted (personally I choose never to write specifically about tank/barrel samples) and subsequent bottlings may be slightly different - the reader doesn't know this. In the French wine competitions (e.g. Paris, Mâcon, local ones like Jura or groupings like the Vignerons Indépendent) and in tastings for major guides, notably Hachette, a specific 'bottling' is submitted and it is - theoretically - only this bottling which may then sport the sticker saying it's won a prize or a mention. It's a very questionable practice.
I have had to learn to live with the fact that good producers - like Puffeney - will only have 'different' bottlings not 'better' or 'worse' whereas not such good producers, well, there the situation is different.
Thoughts anyone?