Winemaker Notes
The tasting of the 2019 vintage brings out Coutet's signature nose, marked by notes of pear, ginger and exotic fruits. The palate is particularly fresh this year, offering a very modern Coutet.
Blend: 75% Semillon, 23% Sauvignon Blanc, 2% Muscadelle
The Barrel Sample for this wine is under 14% ABV.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The pale lemon-gold colored 2019 Coutet is a thrill ride from the get-go, exploding from the glass with fantastically intense scents of tangerine peel, lime blossoms and lemon marmalade over a core of pineapple upside-down cake, candied ginger, ripe apricots and clover honey plus suggestions of chanterelles and musk perfume. The palate is equally electric and exhilarating, prancing around the palate with a whole myriad of candied citrus, stone fruit and citrus flavors, charged by a racy backbone of acidity, finishing beautifully textured and with an epically long firework display of minerals. Apart from all that, it is pretty darn delicious. Range: (95-97)+
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Jeb Dunnuck
Lots of pure honeycomb, candied orange, quince, and white flower notes all emerge from the 2019 Château Coutet, another balanced, sweetly fruited dessert wine from 2019 with lots to love. I don't think it's going to match the 2016, but it's certainly in the same class as the 2017. It's going to shine right out of the gate yet keep for 15-20 years in cold cellars.
Barrel Sample:93-95 -
James Suckling
A sweet, dense and rich white with oily character. Full and layered. Extremely long. Spicy. Very dense.
Barrel Sample:94-95 -
Wine Spectator
A soft-edged and forward-styled version, with lemon meringue, warmed peach and fresh pineapple and mango notes all mixing together. Features a pie crust accent that holds sway on the finish. Sémillon, Sauvignon Blanc and Muscadelle. 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.
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.