Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Aromas of honey, pineapple, orange peel and saffron follow through to a medium body, with medium sweetness and enticing dried fruits, apple tart and hints of spice. Clove and Chinese spices. 95% semillon, 3% sauvignon blanc, 1% sauvignon gris and 1% muscadelle.
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Decanter
Burnt amber colour. There is a lot of intensity to this wine, a ton of orange zest, powerful truffle and apricot purée flavours and spliced citrus. A yield of 7hl/ha. 1/3 new oak ageing for 12 months; then in stainless steel for nine months. Tasted three times.
Barrel Sample: 95 -
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2020 Lafaurie-Peyraguey has a pale gold color, prancing out of the glass with beguiling scents of candied citrus peel, pineapple upside-down cake, powdered ginger and honeycomb, over a core of dried apricots and apple pie, plus a waft of lime blossoms. The palate has impressive poise and grace, countering the sweet richness with a lively backbone and delivering loads of stone fruit and spiced apple flavors, finishing long and perfumed. Beautiful!
Barrel Sample: (93-95)+
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.