Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
Another beautiful wine from this estate, the 2019 La Tour Blanche has a medium-gold hue as well as a classic Sauternes bouquet of honeyed peach, white flowers, ginger, and tangerines. Rich and medium to full-bodied, it displays a terrific balance between its sweetness and acidity, a great mid-palate, and certainly no shortage of length on the finish.
Range: 94-96 -
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Pale lemon-yellow in color, the 2019 la Tour Blanche has the most tantalizing nose of candied lemon peel, pink grapefruit, fresh pineapple and green guava with suggestions of lime leaves, orange blossoms and honeycomb. The palate is electrically charged with vibrant citrus and tropical flavors and a racy backbone, giving way to a satiny texture and loads of tightly wound layers, finishing with a lingering zesty kick.
Range: (92-94)+ -
Decanter
Pink grapefruit and citrus hits you right off on the nose, a lovely mix of sweet and tart. The silkiness of the palate becomes clear from the mid palate onwards and the Sémillon is very much dominant in terms of texture and succulence.
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James Suckling
A tight, subtle new Sauternes with sliced apples, cooked pears and dried peaches. Lots of spices. It’s medium-to full-bodied, vivid and energetic. Not the most intense wine, but nicely crafted. A blend of 90% semillon, 9.5% sauvignon blanc and 0.5% muscadelle.
Range: 92-93 -
Wine Spectator
Juicy and direct, delivering a delightful burst of apricot, quince paste and glazed peach flavors, laced with honeycomb notes throughout. Features a flicker of ginger on the finish that adds some energy. Sémillon, Sauvignon Blanc and Muscadelle.
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.