Ryan Robinson, Director of Education, Brescome Barton and Worldwide Wines.
Part One of Two
By Ryan Robinson, Advanced Sommelier-CMS, WSET Diploma and WSET Educator
Sauternes wasn’t just once considered a great dessert wine. It was considered one of the greatest wines in the world, period! In this first of two articles, we are deep diving into the wine as it warrants more ink and space to cover its nuances.
Long before collectors obsessed over cult Cabernet or all too expensive Burgundy, the aristocracy of Europe chased Sauternes. The 1855 Bordeaux Classification placed Château d’Yquem alone at the very top as “Premier Cru Supérieur,” a distinction no other Bordeaux wine received.
At the time, sweet wines from Sauternes commanded prices equal to, and often exceeding, the finest reds of Bordeaux. Translation, Château d’Yquem was more highly regarded than the four (at the time) 1st Growths of Bordeaux; Château Mouton, Château Haut-Brion, Château Lafite, and Château Latour!
Today, though, Sauternes has quietly drifted into a strange corner of the wine list. It’s often buried at the very bottom under “dessert wines,” brought out only for foie gras pairings or after-dinner pours next to a sweet dessert. That’s a shame, because Sauternes may be one of the most versatile and misunderstood wines in the world. From my experiences, the dessert wine list is where bottles go to die.
I think to really understand Sauternes, you first have to understand how impossible it is to make. It truly is a combination of a fascinating ingenuity, dumb geographical luck and a labor of love. The region sits south of Bordeaux along the Garonne River, where the small, cold Ciron River converges with the warmer waters of the Garonne.
That meeting of temperatures creates the perfect autumn mist. Cool fog blankets the vineyards in the morning, then the warm afternoon sun burns it away. That cycle of humidity followed by dryness is exactly what allows Botrytis cinerea, noble rot, to develop. It’s because of this unique set of circumstances where the magic happens.
Unlike harmful grey rot, noble rot dehydrates the grapes slowly while concentrating sugar, acidity, and flavor. The berries shrivel almost like raisins while retaining freshness. The end result is a wine that can carry intense sweetness without becoming heavy or cloying.
What makes this so fascinating is that many regions around the world try to replicate this process more deliberately. Producers in some places may encourage botrytis through irrigation, vineyard conditions, or simply my inoculation in the vineyard. In Sauternes, nature still drives the process with no easy shortcut. Producers wait for the exact climatic conditions to unfold, and then they do the hardest thing in wine: they wait some more.
Harvesting Sauternes is not a simple matter of picking a vineyard when the grapes are ripe. It is a slow, expensive, nerve-racking process that can take weeks. Pickers move through the vineyards multiple times, known as tries, selecting only the berries that have been properly affected by noble rot. Not the whole bunch, but they harvest a single mold-covered berry at a time.
Sometimes a picker may pass through the same row five, six, even seven times during harvest. In the case of Château d’Yquem, with a ripe bank account, the harvest team can make as many as twelve tries in a single harvest. That means labor costs soar, yields plummet, and producers are exposed to huge risk if rain comes at the wrong moment.
It is among the most demanding wines in the world to produce. Imagine making a wine where the best grapes are not simply ripe, but partially shriveled, infected by the right kind of fungus, harvested at precisely the right stage, and selected berry by berry.
Making this liquid gold is no easier. Because the must, or juice, is so rich in sugar, fermentation can be painfully slow. Yeasts struggle in that environment, and fermentations can take weeks or months to finish. Sometimes they stop naturally before all the sugar converts to alcohol, which is part of how Sauternes retains its sweetness. The wine then often spends extended time in oak, gaining texture and complexity before release.
To put this into context, on average a single vine will produce enough wine to fill a 750ml bottle, whereas, in Sauternes, a single vine will produce enough wine to fill a single glass. It’s here that we will hold part two for the July issue and continue this exploration.
Ryan Robinson is the Director of Education for Brescome-Barton Inc., and Worldwide Wines in Connecticut, an Adjunct Professor at the University of New Haven, and is the Principal at SommCentric, a beverage education and consulting agency. He is a member on the USA Wine Tasting Team, representing the United States and the World Wine Tasting Championships and holds the credentials of Advanced Sommelier-CMS; WSET Diploma and WSET Educator in Wine, Sake and Beer; Rioja Wine Educator; VIA Italian Wine Ambassador; Wine Scholar Guild Educator and Italian and Spanish Wine Specialist; and Certified Scotch Whisky.
