Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
A big, decadent beauty in the making, the 2019 Clos Haut-Peyraguey is loaded with spiced peach, honeyed pineapple, orange zest, and brioche-scented aromas and flavors. It packs a punch on the palate and is beautifully concentrated yet stays nicely balanced, has good acidity, and a great finish.Range:93-95+
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Decanter
This is liquid silk, extremely luscious in this vintage, with orange zest on the finish adding a welcome point of bitterness. Harvest September 30 to October 23. Michel Rolland consultant. Tasted three times. Bernard Magrez has owned this classified Sauternes property since 2012, with 35% of the vines going into this 1st wine.
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James Suckling
Expressive nose of ginseng, marmalade, dried tangerines, apricot conserve and lemon curd. Some toast and caramel. Creamy with spicy, balanced and almost savory layers.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Pale lemon-gold colored, the 2019 Clos Haut-Peyraguey prances out of the glass with notes of candied orange peel, shaved ginger, allspice and honeycomb plus suggestions of lemon marmalade and lime cordial. The palate is already beautifully poised with loads of perfumed citrus layers and just enough freshness to lift the sweet, seductive honeyed characters through the long finish.Range: (91 - 93)+
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Wine Spectator
Open and expressive, delivering warm pie crust, glazed peach and apricot fruit flavors, with an unctuous finish accented by marzipan and ginger. Has decent zip for the vintage, too. Sémillon and Sauvignon Blanc. Drink now.
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.
Sweet and unctuous but delightfully charming, the finest Sauternes typically express flavors of exotic dried tropical fruit, candied apricot, dried citrus peel, honey or ginger and a zesty beam of acidity.
Sémillon, Sauvignon Blanc, Sauvignon Gris and Muscadelle are the grapes of Sauternes. But Sémillon's susceptibility to the requisite noble rot makes it the main variety and contributor to what makes Sauternes so unique. As a result, most Sauternes estates are planted to about 80% Sémillon. Sauvignon is prized for its balancing acidity and Muscadelle adds aromatic complexity to the blend with Sémillon.
Botrytis cinerea or “noble rot” is a fungus that grows on grapes only in specific conditions and its onset is crucial to the development of the most stunning of sweet wines.
In the fall, evening mists develop along the Garonne River, and settle into the small Sauternes district, creeping into the vineyards and sitting low until late morning. The next day, the sun has a chance to burn the moisture away, drying the grapes and concentrating their sugars and phenolic qualities. What distinguishes a fine Sauternes from a normal one is the producer’s willingness to wait and tend to the delicate botrytis-infected grapes through the end of the season.