Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
With 163 grams per liter of residual sugar, the 2005 Suduiraut exhales a deep, complex bouquet of exotic fruits, pineapple, apricot and spices despite a slight touch of volatile acidity. Medium to full-bodied, rich and concentrated with a stunning "rôti"—the French term for the consequence of noble rot—it’s satiny and chiseled with racy acids and a long, mineral and saline finish underlined by gastronomic bitterness. This splendid Sauternes, a blend of 97% Sémillon and 3% Sauvignon. Blanc.
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Wine & Spirits
Bright gold. Perfectly balanced. Not sweet, and yet explosively sweet with flavors of fresh nectarine, scents of jasmine and honeysuckle. The sweetness pours out of the freshness, so it's impossible to taste them apart. The flavors last, perhaps because it's the kind of wine you'll want to roll around in your mouth over and over. Glorious.
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Connoisseurs' Guide
Ooh la la. From the generous aromas redolent of ripe peaches, sweet pears, honey, hints of caramel and blood oranges to its rich, oily, luxuriant texture and complex hints of botrytis that show up from first sniff to lasting aftertaste, this scrumptious bottling represents a first rate achievement by any measure. It is rich, genuinely layered and even a bit more advanced than the others, and while it is likely to last for two decades and more, it might come into perfection somewhat before the other highly concentrated bottlings.
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Wine Enthusiast
Picked over a period of eight weeks, this wine shows the class and care resulting from such efforts. Citrus and white flower aromas lead to a wine that is not overtly rich, with subtle shades of botrytis and orange marmalade flavors. The acidity is vibrant, fresh, a great balance.
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Wine Spectator
Shows dried pineapple, honey, pear, caramel and piecrust aromas. Full-bodied and very sweet, with spice, coconut, tropical fruit and apple tart flavors. Long and dense, yet lively.
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.