Winemaker Notes
90% Sémillon, 8% Sauvignon, 2% Muscadelle
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Classic Sauternes, treading the fine line between sweetness and elegance. Initially, it seems to be dominated by the botrytis, but then sweet fruits also show, with ripe yellow fruits, honey and almonds, touched with citrus. As it develops, the wine will become richer and more intense.
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Wine Spectator
There's beautiful ripe fruit in this, with pineapple, mango and papaya and hints of vanilla and honey. Full-bodied and medium sweet. Rich and round, with loads of cooked apple, citrus peel and spices. Long and flavorful. Dense and rich. Best after 2012. 6,250 cases made.
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Wine & Spirits
This is rich in color and in its scents of beeswax and macerated peaches. Clean, light and gently honeyed, this is a balanced, lovely Sauternes that should age well.
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.