Chateau Coutet (375ML half-bottle) 2014
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Wong
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Robert - Decanter
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Product Details
Your Rating
Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
Still aging in oak, the wine is of a pale color. The nose is full of lovely aromatic notes of grapefruit, lychee, mango and pineapple. In addition, flavors of lime, toasted almond, and acacia flower can be detected. The palate is fresh and mineral but an incredible density to the wine imparts a long finish. The vintage is already unusual for its power and freshness.
Blend: 75% Semillon, 23% Sauvignon Blanc and 2% Muscadelle
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Powered by intense botrytis, this wine is opulent and ripe, with spice, yellow fruit and honey flavors. It has just the right balance of acidity to maintain its shape and proportions. It's likely to age well over many years. Drink from 2024.
Cellar Selection -
Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
In my career of tasting, evaluating, and drinking wine, I have always found great pleasures in savoring top-level Sauternes. Over the years, Coutet has often found my sweet spot. The 2014 vintage is simply splendid. Showing excellent richness of fruit and enticing botrytis, this vintage appears to be one of the wines best efforts. (Tasted: January 27, 2017, San Francisco, CA)
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Wine Spectator
This shows the vivid, racy side of Barsac, with streaming flavors of pineapple, yellow apple, green plum and white ginger, displaying lovely energy from start to finish. Ends with enough honeysuckle and orange blossom notes to balance the richness. Best from 2020 through 2035.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
This Coutet '14 has a complex bouquet with razor-sharp, minerally, citrus fruit mixed with wild honey and a touch of Riesling-like petrol. The palate is totally convincing. There is a great thrust of rich botrytized fruit sliced through with Coutet’s trademark acidity, despite the spoonfuls of sugar, that lends this such vibrancy and tension. It possesses and almost clinical precision with long persistence on the finish. This is a divine Coutet that may warrant a higher score subject to how it evolves in barrel. Range: 93-95+
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Decanter
Ripe tropical fruit, vanilla and herbs intermingle with smoky botrytis. Dense, rich flavors of custard and toffee apples, saffron and a hint of noble rot bitterness on the long finish.
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James Suckling
This shows a lively density, intensity of fruit and spiciness. Pineapples as well. Full body, medium sweetness and a long finish. Range: 92-93
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Thomas Jefferson celebrated Chateau Coutet as the best Sauternes from Barsac during his ambassadorship to France. In 1855, recognized for its continued excellence, the estate was classified as a first growth. Today, Chateau Coutet stays true to its tradition of distinction and quality by producing the finest Barsac year after year. With an average age of 35 years, the vines of Semillon, Sauvignon Blanc and Muscadelle have developed a network of deep roots to extract elements from the limestone and clay-based terroir, giving the grapes freshness, richness and strength. For this reason, the wine carries the name "Coutet," derived from the Gascon's word for knife, to signify the fresh, lively and crisp palate taht is the estate's signature style.
Apart from the classics, we find many regional gems of different styles.
Late harvest wines are probably the easiest to understand. Grapes are picked so late that the sugars build up and residual sugar remains after the fermentation process. Ice wine, a style founded in Germany and there referred to as eiswein, is an extreme late harvest wine, produced from grapes frozen on the vine, and pressed while still frozen, resulting in a higher concentration of sugar. It is becoming a specialty of Canada as well, where it takes on the English name of ice wine.
Vin Santo, literally “holy wine,” is a Tuscan sweet wine made from drying the local white grapes Trebbiano Toscano and Malvasia in the winery and not pressing until somewhere between November and March.
Rutherglen is an historic wine region in northeast Victoria, Australia, famous for its fortified Topaque and Muscat with complex tawny characteristics.
Characterized by dried tropical fruit, candied apricot, citrus and honey, the sweet wines of Barsac are always balanced by a bright beam of acidity. While technically also part of the Sauternes region, Barsac’s sandy and limestone soils produce a lighter version in comparison. Its main grapes are the same: Sémillon, Sauvignon Blanc, Sauvignon Gris and Muscadelle.