Winemaker Notes
A deep golden yellow color, showing its great maturity, Château Suduiraut 2015 presents a subtle and very complex nose. First of all smoky and mineral aromas emerge combined with very ripe stone fruit. The nose reveal notes of honey, verbena and mild spices. The attack is smooth and echoes the aromas on the nose, in particular yellow peaches and spices. The palate is powerful while showing restraint and elegance. The very velvety and fresh finish lingers on notes of juicy orange and spices. This is an extremely generous and powerful vintage with great finesse.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
A huge success in the vintage is the 2015 Château Suduiraut and this gem goes a long way towards showing how successful the sweet wines were in 2015. Offering a massive array of orange peel, honey, marmalade, flowers, and toasted nuts, this incredible wine hits the palate with a thunderous display of opulence, richness, and length, all while staying fresh, elegant, and seamless. It has a huge mid-palate and is reminiscent of the 2003, only with more freshness and delineation.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
One of the most singular wines in this vertical tasting, the 2015 Suduiraut possesses a deep, complex bouquet of exotic fruits, pineapple, white flowers and ripe orchard fruits mingled with vanilla pod and menthol hints. Medium to full-bodied, rich and concentrated with an enveloping palate, it has a fleshy core of fruit, controlled power and a delicate, gourmand and penetrating finish. It elegantly combines finesse and power. One of my favorites, this blend of 94% Sémillon and 6% Sauvignon Blanc. Rating: 98+
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Wine Enthusiast
Barrel Sample. Naturally rich, but with fine acidity and a lift of freshness, this is a ripe and perfumed wine. The honey and orange marmalade flavors are there along with lemon jelly and a sense of structure. It is a balanced, poised wine from a fine vintage. Barrel Sample: 95-97 Points
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James Suckling
If you like creme brulee, then this could light your fire. Very lush and seriously concentrated, this has a lot of power. Needs some time to give its best, so better from 2020 but with several decades ahead of it.
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Wine Spectator
Quite a ripe, creamy, rounded and flattering style, with loads of toasted coconut, mango, papaya and apricot flavors, this nonetheless manages to stay defined and pure, with lovely honeysuckle and bitter almond hints on the finish. One for the cellar. Best from 2020 through 2040.
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Decanter
Brooding aromas and flavours of cedar, ginger and spring flowers. Very long, tactile and tannic finish. Will need a long time to develop fully.
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.