A California wine maker, David Ramey, was in town on Friday and at
dinner we were discussing the issue of premature oxidation in white
burgundy. He proposed a theory that in the mid 90's the French were
pushing the envelope on lowering SO2 in their Chardonnay's and at the
same time were beginning to use hydrogen peroxide solutions to clean
their corks as opposed to chlorine based cleaners. The combination
could be the perfect storm for creating premature oxidation on a
random basis since some makers used less SO2 than others and the corks
had differing amounts of hydrogen peroxide and were rinsed in a less
than scientific manner. Just a theory and I'm not a chemist but it
sounds plausible.