Sauternes
Sauternes is a small, sleepy, pretty, one-street town about a 45-minute drive south of the city of Bordeaux. There’s nothing much there apart from the lovely hotel at which we stayed, a restaurant, a cute café, and a couple of bars that both maintain odd opening hours. Oh, and there are some of the greatest sweet wines in the world.
classifications
A few minutes in Sauternes is all it takes for the 1855 classifications to be mentioned. That’s because all the châteaux listed were, with the exception of Haut-Brion in what is now Pessac-Léognan, in Haut-Médoc. The only white wines were sweet and from Sauternes—27 in total.
Château d’Yquem
Château d’Yquem was the only producer to receive the Premier Cru Classé Superieur designation. It remains the most famous, highly-regarded, and expensive producer in Sauternes. The 110ha of plantings are at the highest point of Sauternes and just below it are the eleven Premier Cru Classé producers, revolving around it in a semi-circle. The 1855 classification is unchanged and conservative, but retains a high degree of accuracy. It was based on a commercial rating of a producer’s sales, but it showed that site mattered then and still does.
the place
There are five villages all located in the southern part of the region of Bordeaux near the western banks of the river Garonne: Sauternes, Barsac, Preignac, Fargues, and Bommes. All fall under the Sauternes appellation; only Barsac has its own separate AOC, though the wines can also be labelled as Sauternes according to the producer’s preference. Sauternes and Barsac are the most famous and are considered to produce the greatest wine; in fact, the wines are promoted locally as Les Vins de Sauternes et Barsac.
Most of Bordeaux is described in textbooks as being quite flat, in contrast to other regions in France which have slopes to capture the sunlight and produce high-quality wine. To a certain extent, this is true of Sauternes as with the rest of Bordeaux, at best on gently undulating slopes (which makes it great biking territory). However, it is a bit more complicated than that: the gentle slopes, which are found in the heart of Sauternes and Barsac, influence exposure to sunlight, the length of the growing season, the ripeness of the grapes, the development of noble rot, and therefore the quality and style of the final wine.
The most extreme example is Château d’Yquem which sits at the highest point of the region, overlooking the greatest vineyards of Sauternes. Its elevation means it is exposed to wind, which limits the possibility of spring frost. One of the reasons d’Yquem is historically considered the greatest of all Sauternes producers is not just the quality of the wine, but the consistency of that quality from year to year because of the advantageous growing conditions.
the climate
I only spent three days in mid-June in Sauternes, but experienced varied weather. The first day had violent thunderstorms and heavy downpours. This made the night warm and humid, and quite unpleasant. The warm humidity continued into the second day, but gradually began to cool down as the sun fell into a balmy, sunny evening with gentle breezes. The next morning was cool and overcast, but brightened into a warm afternoon with quite intense sunlight. On all three days, mosquitoes were a danger: insect repellent is a must.
In those three days, I had experienced what Bordeaux growers and producers have to put up with every year: inconsistency, inclemency, pests, and diseases. The combination of warmth and humidity increases the chances of rot and other fungal diseases. The rain also adds to the chance of rot at harvest and of stunting the development of grapes on the vine throughout the growing season. The intense sunlight aids ripening but can create sunburn. The wind, which like the rain comes from the Atlantic Ocean, can ease the risk of frost and disease pressure, but also cause damage to vines. There are plenty of small pine tree forests near vineyards which help protection from wind, and which also make the soils more acidic, but they may also increase the chances of frost falling on the vineyards. Canopy management is important and has to be adapted throughout the season to either mitigate weather risks or to benefit from favourable weather patterns.
the rivers
river Garonne
The confluence of the large river Garonne and the much smaller Ciron provides the perfect conditions for the development of noble rot in September and October. Because the Garonne is large and not protected by trees, its temperature varies—cold in the winter and as high as 25-26°C in the summer. The Ciron, which is only 90km long, is cooler and more consistent, at 12-16°C year round. It’s mostly shaded and some of the river is underground so it doesn’t receive much sunlight. As the two rivers converge, their different temperatures react with each other to create misty, moist, humid conditions which slowly spread south-west into the vineyards of Sauternes and Barsac and encourage the gradual growth of noble rot in the cool mornings with the warm afternoons drying the grapes to help build up the sugar levels for the final sweet wine. Subtly different levels of elevation and exposure in the vineyard mean than noble rot develops at various rates from bunch to bunch as well as from site to site.
noble rot
Noble rot is a fungus which forms on the skins of the grapes due to the high humidity in the air. To thrive, fungus has to attack living organisms. In the case of grapes, the fungus penetrates the skins and removes water to further increase the level of rot on the skins—a self-perpetuating cycle. This is why thin-skinned grapes, such as Sémillon and Sauvignon Blanc in Sauternes, are best for noble rot.
Sémillon and Sauvignon Blanc
Noble rot forms in mid to late autumn when the conditions are ideal: cool, misty, humid mornings and warm afternoons which dry the grapes and further concentrate sugars. The timing of the formation of noble rot changes from year to year, making it unpredictable and sometimes very little may form—an inconsistency which further adds to the cost of the wines.
Noble rot does not all form at once, but instead develops slowly as the fungus establishes itself on individual grapes. This is why the harvest can take up to two months, as late as 22 December in 1985 at Château d’Yquem; in 2022, it was just two weeks long in the middle of October.
2022 had a hot summer, not ideal for noble rot as the grapes may ripen too quickly for it to develop, or acidity may be lost. At Château Guiraud, a neighbouring producer, an unusual approach was taken. On 17 September, 20% of the grapes were picked, leaving plenty of bunches on the vines to encourage rot when humid, misty conditions developed; this limited early picking also assured there was a guaranteed back-up of dry wine. It then rained non-stop for a month, creating humid conditions but no further ripening, increasing the chances of developing damaging grey rather than noble rot. But because of the humid conditions, once the weather dried out, noble rot quickly developed and harvest was two picks over the course of just over a week from 17 to 27 October.
The law in Sauternes states that there must be two passes (tries) in picking the grapes; at the best producers, there are usually three and as many as six. Noble rot is identified when the grapes turn purple. The development of noble rot occurs differently not just in different parts of the vineyard, but within individual clusters. Growers and producers regularly pass through the vineyard to monitor the development of noble rot; when they feel grapes have the right amount of rot they can be picked individually or, in the case of lesser producers, picked as whole clusters even if noble rot hasn’t fully developed in all the grapes. The rot then naturally moves to other grapes or clusters; when they have developed the right level of noble rot, they are picked and so on until there is nothing left for the fungus to draw on and it is too cold for it survive. This is a painstaking, time-consuming, expensive process which takes a great deal of care in the vineyard and explains why the wines are so costly—all justified by the quality and ageworthiness of the wines.
new oak
Sauternes is unusual for noble rot affected sweet wines because it’s high in alcohol and there is a lot of new French oak.
Château d’Yquem and Château Guiraud have similar oak-ageing regimens. Because of the staggered pickings, the grapes are fermented in batches and moved to barrels to free up space for the next batch to ferment. At Château d’Yquem, 5% of each batch is removed after fermentation to help inoculation for the next batch. Each batch is considered a separate entity even though they are stored in the same location.
At Château Guiraud, there are 70 batches from each vintage. The wines are aged for a year in 100% new French oak barrels. The wines are racked into vats for four weeks to allow the barrels to be washed, and then the wines are returned to the barrels in a second cellar where they are aged for another year. This process allows blending of the different batches before the final year of maturation, as well as freeing up space in the first cellar.
At Château d’Yquem, there is a subtle difference. In the second cellar, there is a barrel set aside containing wine and the gros lees. Normally, these are discarded after fermentation as they result in a heavy, unsubtle texture. But at Château d’Yquem they are retained in this separate barrel. Every four months, the maturing wines are racked to tank and the gros lees wine is passed through to clarify them. The result is a very clear, vibrant appearance with an extra weight from the subtle lees influence.
I’m always sceptical of excessive use of new oak, maybe because I’ve lived and worked in Napa. But these are very different wines. The high levels of residual sugar—148g/L in the 2017 Château d’Yquem and 150g/L in the 2010 Château Guiraud I tasted—need a balancing influence which comes from acidity but also from the use of new oak which adds weight, texture, and spice complexity. In the best wines, the oak adds to the character of botrytis wines rather than diminishes it. (Which isn’t to say there aren’t alternative approaches: Château les Justices make very good Sauternes without any use of new French oak.)
tourism
Ch. Guiraud
Kingsley Amis half-joked that a château in Bordeaux was actually a shack by the side of the road. It’s a funny observation because it remains true of many producers for financial reasons. But in Sauternes and Barsac, it’s most definitely not true: the big, historic producers whose wines have been appreciated for centuries (even if quality has gone up and down) have properties that look like castles or at least grand manor houses. It’s an impressive region just to drive through.
Not all producers are open to the public, but many of them are—Sauternes, like all sweet wine, needs customers. Even Château d’Yquem had cyclists riding through it, pausing to admire the property and stopping off to learn about it.
On my visit, there were tourists from the UK and the US because of the reputation of the wines—a little more could be done to cater to their needs and to take money off them. Like much of rural France, all the villages shut down completely for much of the morning, afternoon, and evening. The tourist infrastructure could be developed further. Maison du Sauternes-Barsac has regional tasting rooms in both Sauternes and Barsac with the possibility of tasting 70 wines, but they didn’t feel like hubs driving tourists to wineries. But it’s hard to generate a natural centre when the most famous village is so small.
Sweet wine is now a very small category globally, and within Bordeaux it’s just 2% of production. But visiting Sauternes, the villages, and the appellation shows the history and identity of the region, the distinct styles of the wines, and an understanding of terroir which isn’t always associated with Bordeaux in general. Plenty of tourists visit the region, which suggests sweet wine from Sauternes has a place in consumer’s drinking habits.
