Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2015 Doisy-Daene has a detailed bouquet, very correct, nothing showy or flamboyant as is typical of Denis Dubourdieu's Barsac. The palate is extremely well balanced and very pure: citrus fruit infusing the honeyed botrytis, veins of white peach and quince, leading to a very precise and sustained finish that leaves you with a smile on your face...and the wine ain't even finished yet! Just a wonderful wine - full of class and nascent joie-de-vivre. Chapeau Denis! Barrel Sample: 95-97 Points
-
Decanter
Very intense marmalade, lemon, grapefruit, apricot and honey nose. The palate is rich and complex with crisp balancing acidity and reverberating flavours of ginger, tropical fruit and exotic spice. Finishes long with a pleasant citrus fruit aftertaste. Entering peak drinking zone now.
-
Jeb Dunnuck
Another blockbuster Barsac is the 2015 Château Doisy Daëne from proprietor Denis Dubourdieu. This huge, opulent, awesome wine gives up layers of white peach, caramelized citrus, and white flowers, and stays shockingly pure, polished, and precise on the palate for a wine of this richness and scale. It’s an awesome wine to drink over the coming 2-3 decades.
-
Wine Enthusiast
This is opulent and rich, with wonderful gingery spice and layers of acidity and orange zest. The wine is full of pure, clean and ripe fruit flavors. Barrel Sample: 94-96 Points
-
James Suckling
A very fresh and elegant style, but this is no lightweight. Rather, it’s got a long, very focused finish with some minerality that’s really uplifting. I love the bright candied-lemon character on the nose. This is already beautifully balanced, but only just beginning to open up. Should keep for several decades if properly cellared.
-
Wine Spectator
This has nice intensity, with bright verbena, green plum and mirabelle plum notes streaking ahead, backed by more flattering persimmon and creamed yellow apple flavors. A bitter citrus thread gives the finish tension. Nicely done, in the fresher style. Best from 2020 through 2035.
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.