Make sure Sauternes is on your bucket list! Why?
Thomas Jefferson reckoned Sauternes was the best wine in France—he liked it so much he bought 250 bottles of the 1784 vintage for himself and more for his mate George Washington.
Sauternes is potable liquid gold. It’s perfumed with a heady mix of almost indescribable scents. People that do try to describe it throw out words like honey, beeswax, peaches, marmalade, oranges, quince, elderflower, roasted pineapples, mint, toffee, pepper, cream, morning dew, spring water, vanilla, and many many more. On the palate, a classic Sauternes is rich, smooth and lusciously sweet, but with a sufficient undertone of acidity to stop it from being cloying.
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| Chateau d'Yquem, the most prized of all Sauternes | © FreeProd / stock.adobe.com |
This sweet vinous delight is all thanks to a little fungus called botrytis cinerea ... AKA Nobel Rot. While plenty of regions dabble in the production of sweet botrytized wines, and some making superlative examples, none (with the possible exception of Tokaji) specialize in it to the same extent as Sauternes.
Now, not just any region can become a specialist in sweet botrytized wines. The Languedoc couldn’t, for example, shrewdly identify a gap in the market for reasonably priced botrytized wine and then just go for it. No! You see, there are two forms of botrytis. A good one and a bad one. The good one is referred to as noble rot and delicious, lusciously sweet wine can be made from it. The bad, is known as grey rot and probably not even the pigs would eat it. For the good, benevolent, noble rot to occur, there needs to be a very particular set of conditions.
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Bottles of liquid gold - sweet botrytis wine - Sauternes | © Pascal Moulin / stock.adobe.com |
The warm, moist atmosphere activates the latent botrytis spores endemic in the vineyard. Its filaments piercing the grapes skin, concentrating the juice inside, stimulating glycerol production, and considerably altering the aroma and flavor of the grapes. If the drying sun comes out (fingers crossed) the botrytis is kept in check and the grapes’ potential for making quality, luxurious, sweet wine remains intact.
If the sun fails to come out, however, and conditions remain warm and damp then botrytis can continue developing at full pace. The fungus breaks down the skin of the grapes and spreads rapidly throughout the berry flesh allowing other fungi and bacteria into the grape. This is bad. This is grey rot—the malevolent form of botrytis.
Now, all this doesn’t just happen over night. It can take between 5 and 15 days from when a bunch of grapes is infected with botrytis to when it is suitable to make exemplary Sauternes. And, the whole vineyard isn’t infected all at the same time. Hence, teams of pickers go through the vineyard multiple times over the days and weeks selecting only the bunches with noble rot. Obviously, this is a costly exercise and draws out the harvest period. All the time with the threat of grey rot hanging over head if the conditions don’t remain just right.
It's not unusual for there to be several vintages every decade where it is either impossible to make good sweet wine or can only be done so in minute quantities. And, even in good years, the amount produced per hectare of vineyard is a fraction of what could be produced making conventional, dry table wine. So, there you have it, Sauternes is not only risky to make it’s exceptionally costly to make as well.
Sauternes used to be one of Bordeaux’s most expensive and sought after wines. Not anymore (with the possible exception of Chateau d’Yquem). Sweet treats are so ubiquitous and so cheap these lusciously sweet, gratifying delights no longer have the same pull that they used to. Given the risk, cost, and time involved in its production and the huge amount of pleasure Sauternes can bring they are currently enormously underpriced.