Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
Rich sunflower yellow in colour. This is excellent; it has a swish of stone and bright lime, real intensity of flavour, and good persistency.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2015 Doisy-Vedrines has quite an intense nose, perhaps less fat and honeyed than recent vintages, more finesse if not quite capturing the same level of details as the Doisy-Daëne this year. The palate is very promising with layers of honeyed fruit tinged with white chocolate and almond, a lovely swagger about this Doisy-Vedrines that reminds me of great vintages such as 1989. Always well priced, you won't harm your cellar with a case of Olivier Castèja's sumptuous Barsac. Barrel Sample: 93-95 Points
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Wine Spectator
Richer in style than the typical Barsac, with notes of almond cream and orange curd along with honeysuckle, white peach and toasted pineapple flavors. The long, unctuous finish lets the almond hint linger longest. Best from 2020 through 2040.
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Wine Enthusiast
This luscious wine from Olivier Casteja is full of ripe fruit, apricots and honey. It comes from vineyards on the highest plateau in Barsac. Cut with lively acidity, and showing a light touch, it has both elegance and richness, and will age well over many years. Drink this wine from 2023.
Cellar Selection -
James Suckling
A prototypical Sauternes with tons of marzipan and candied-orange character. A great balance of that with full sweetness, well-judged oak and enough acidity to give a clean, long finish.
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.