Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
When I was a young wine professional (circa the early 1980's), I could not get my brain wrapped around Sémillon. Was it a minor blending grape in dry white Bordeaux or a major player in Sauternes? In the mid 1980's, I discovered Sémillons from California and Washington state—I found many of those wines ashy, chalky and tight. As a budding wine taster, I was mired in a quandary. Fortunately as time and few thousand wines cycled through my palate—including hundreds of Sémillons from all over the globe, mostly in blends—I got a pretty good handle on this grape. The 2014 Torbreck Woodcutter's Semillon offers distinctive aromas and flavors of earth, chalk and melon. Perhaps the wine's crisp finish cements the deal and makes this one so terrific. Pair with clams and linguine. Drinking well now. (Tasted: July 14, 2016, San Francisco, CA)
Sémillon has the power to create wines with considerable structure, depth and length that will improve for several decades. It is the perfect partner to the vivdly aromatic Sauvignon Blanc. Sémillon especially shines in the Bordeaux region of Sauternes, which produces some of the world’s greatest sweet wines. Somm Secret—Sémillon was so common in South Africa in the 1820s, covering 93% of the country’s vineyard area, it was simply referred to as Wyndruif, or “wine grape.”
Historically and presently the most important wine-producing region of Australia, the Barossa Valley is set in the Barossa zone of South Australia, where more than half of the country’s wine is made. Because the climate is very hot and dry, vineyard managers work diligently to ensure grapes reach the perfect levels of phenolic ripeness.
The intense heat is ideal for plush, bold reds, particularly Shiraz on its own or Rhône Blends. Often Shiraz and Cabernet partner up for plump and powerful reds.
While much less prevalent, light-skinned varieties such as Riesling, Viognier or Semillon produce vibrant Barossa Valley whites.
Most of Australia’s largest wine producers are based here and Shiraz plantings date back as far as the 1850s or before. Many of them are dry farmed and bush trained, still offering less than one ton per acre of inky, intense, purple juice.