Winemaker Notes
Its superlative elegance comes from a match of total opposites: a voluptuous texture, mineral freshness and the heat of spices. Chateau Suduiraut is designed for all those who enjoy sensory and emotional experiences that are both rich and full of surprises and leave a lasting memory.
Blend: 95% Smillon and 5% Sauvignon Blanc
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
The Château Suduiraut 2014 may well be one of the best Sauternes of the vintage. This year, it is a blend of 95% Sémillon and 5% Sauvignon Blanc with a healthy 145 grams per liter residual sugar and 4.5 grams per liter total acidity. It needed some coaxing on the nose so I afforded the sample five minutes of rigorous swirling. It was worth the effort as it reveals intense clear honey and mineral scents that possess exquisite definition, one of those aromatics that stop you in your tracks. The palate is clean and fresh with vibrant acidity, great depth and power as it fans out in glorious fashion on the bravura finish. The phrase “It will knock your socks off” comes to mind, so wear a couple of pairs. Range: 95-97
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Wine Enthusiast
Intense and ripe, this is a superb wine from a top Sauternes estate. It has all the expected elements, including concentrated botrytis and honeyed flavors. Seville orange and lemon notes provide contrast, as does its acidity, which is just as intense as the honey character. It will age well, so drink from 2025.
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Decanter
Marmalade botrytis and smoke mix with ripe peach and honeyed pineapple. Complex and rich, with mouthcoating flavours of ripe peach, mango, honeycomb and tapioca. A rare unctuous quality for Suduiraut in 2014.
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James Suckling
Candied citrus and pineapple drizzled with acacia honey is how this smells and tastes, and the wine is rich and creamy with excellent concentration. Powerful and flavorful finish. Drink or hold.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Despite a challenging year, half of the crop was lost due to an invasion of Drosophila suzukii, the 2014 Suduiraut is showing very well today, evoking aromas of pineapple, baked white fruits, ripe orchard fruits, lemon and spices. Moderately weighted, layered and round, it’s perfectly balanced with an elegant, fresh mid-palate that is long and ethereal on the finish. This blend of 95% Sémillon and 5% 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.