Winemaker Notes
Blend: 90% Semillon, 10% Sauvignon Blanc
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This is phenomenal with superb depth and texture. Full-bodied, very sweet, yet the bright acidity balances the wine out. Creamy mouthfeel with phenolic undertones. Great finish. This wine has a great future. Better in 2021 but already great.
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Wine Enthusiast
Full and rich, this is a powerful wine. It's packed with botrytis-driven flavors of wild honey and peach, balanced by tight acidity. For long-term aging.
Barrel Sample: 94-96 -
Wine Spectator
This is on the exotic side of the ledger, with mouthfilling ginger, mango, quince and papaya flavors that course through, backed by a singed marshmallow note on the long, unctuous finish. Approachable, but no hurry. Drink now through 2033.
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Decanter
Fresh and zesty with an almost minty-herbal edge. Deceptively rich as well (150g/L RS). Sweet attack on the palate, then long and linear on the finish. The acidity is present but wrapped in fruit.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Aromas of grapefruit, confit citron, kumquat and lemon preface the 2013 Suduiraut, a moderately weighted, juicy and textured wine with a sweet, layered and round palate that segues into a long, mineral and fresh finish. Harvested between September 26 and October 30 in three tries, with a yield of 15 hectoliters per hectare, this blend of 93% Sémillon and 7% Sauvignon Blanc.
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.