Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Denis Dubourdieu has a created a fine Doisy-Daene, with attractive white peach and honeysuckle on the precise bouquet, which exudes wonderful transparency. The palate is very well-defined with fine acidity, the oak deftly integrated. It gradually builds in the mouth: harmonious and refined with great composure towards the long and satisfying finish. This is one of the finest Barsac wines of the vintage.
Barrel Sample: 93-95 -
Wine Spectator
Plump and forward, this delivers peach, nectarine and candied lemon peel notes gilded with lots of honeysuckle and heather. A flash of bitter almond helps streamline everything through the racy finish.
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James Suckling
A tight and compressed young Sauternes with masses of botrytis spice character of white pepper and mushroom dust. Dried apples and lemons. Full body, yet agile and lively. Sweet yet fresh finish. Structured young Sauternes.
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.