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Sauternes Wine Characteristics

Main Grape Varieties

Beauty, Sauvignon Blanc

Wine Features

Sauternes’ sweet white wines have a deep golden color that develops into a warm amber color with age. The nose is incredibly rich and balanced. A harmonious blend of aromas of almond, hazelnut, papaya, mango, banana, peaches in syrup, dried apricots, passion fruit, and beeswax. In addition, there are rich floral aromas, such as linden, acacia, acacia, and honeysuckle. On the palate, it is powerful, extremely silky and has unparalleled elegance.

The perfect balance of acidity and sugar makes it always fresh. The aftertaste is long, fragrant and lingering on the lips and teeth. It was like experiencing a grand festival of the senses. Sauternes wines are mainly blended from Semirne. Pair with Sauvignon Blanc. Sometimes the addition of Miscadella can bring out the scent of wild plants. The most famous is the Chateau d’Yquem of Lvsa-Lvsi, the world’s first sweet wine. In the Bassac region in the north, the style of wine is not as strong and sweet as Sauternes, but it is more balanced and elegant.

Wine Naming

The wine produced in Sauternes has the right to use the appellation of origin of Sauternes (AOC Sauternes), but wine farmers in Bassac Village can choose to use the name of Sauternes (AOC Sauternes) or their own Bassac name ( AOC Barsac). In fact, the legal technical standards of the two are unified.

Winery

When it comes to the Sauternes region, of course we have to mention Chateau d’Yquem. In the grading of 1855, it was the only one ranked super, standing out from the crowd. Here’s another interesting story about the winery. In 1847, the Count of Lur Saluces, the lord of the Ygan winery, visited Russia. Before leaving, he explained that he could not harvest the grapes until he returned. As a result, the return date was delayed for some reason.

All have been infected with a layer of fungus. Even so, he felt that it was “too wasteful to throw away”, so he used those grapes to make wine, and after bottling the wine, he put it in the cellar for storage. About 10 years later, the younger brother of the Russian tsar came here to visit and stumbled upon the wine’s extraordinary style. It is said that Yigan Winery started to make botrytis wine because of such an opportunity.

Making botrytis wine is quite a risky business, in the words of Count Alexandre, the former director of Dijinzhuang, which is often on his lips: “Without the courage to lose everything, you will never win. !” Because the brewing of noble rot wine requires picking rotten grapes, it must be done at a slow pace with the most primitive manual work, and it must be picked in multiple times. Only the most rotten grapes can be picked each time, and the rest will be left to the next.

Harvest when the requirements are met. Wines made from such grapes with very little water content yield low yields and are often culled due to poor vintages. In the past century, there have been 9 vintages that were completely discontinued because the quality of the grapes did not meet the requirements of the winery.

In 1972 was the most tragic year in history. In that year, the workers of Yigan Winery broke a record to harvest the grapes 11 times in more than 2 months. However, after the wine was made, due to the strict quality of the winery request, and finally decided to abandon the launch of the 1972 vintage.