Sauternes is located about an hours drive south of the great wine city of Bordeaux and makes for a good day trip if you are visiting the region. The wine growing region is made up of five communes; Sauternes, Barsac, Bommes, Fargues and Preignac. Growers in Barsac have the choice of labelling their wines as either Sauternes or Barsac. It is a region that doesn’t get a lot of tourists. The village of Sauternes is one of those sleepy French villages where time seems to pass at a gentle pace. There are couple of restaurants but not much else for the passing tourist and this adds to its charm. It is nothing like the wine town of Saint Emilion, with thousands of visitors each day, though both are surrounded by vines. It is quiet and tranquil and well worth a stop on a visit to the area.
Although relatively close to the great vineyards of the Médoc the wines here couldn’t be more different. Sauternes is the home of sweet white wine. The grapes grown here are Semillon, Sauvignon Blanc and, to a lesser extent, Muscadelle.
The area is close to the Garonne and Céron rivers and this is key to the development of the noble rot fungus (Botrytis cinerea). The Céron is a cold water river and The Garonne is a warm water river. Where they meet fog/mist forms in the morning where it sits over the vineyards until the sun burns it away to leave warm afternoons. This creates the humidity that the noble rot requires. The fungus enters the vine at flowering but doesn’t develop until the mists of and fogs of late summer, early autumn. If the conditions are right then fungus grows and dehydrates the grape berries, concentrating the sugar inside them.
Its a risky business making Sauternes. In some years the fungus doesn’t develop properly, the grapes do not shrivel and concentrate sugar, in such a case only a dry white wine can be made. The harvest is late, growers need to wait to get maximum concentration in the grapes, leaving them at the risk to autumn rains. Only the most rotten grapes are selected and this means that pickers have to pass through the vineyards several times. As a rough rule of thumb a grapevine can produce enough grapes for a bottle of wine but in Sauternes it is closer to a glass. It is not surprising that it isn’t cheap wine.
Despite the fact that Sauternes is one of the worlds greatest wines they are not currently very fashionable in the UK. This is impart due to the fact that many people only associate them with the dessert course and this is not where they show themselves at their best. As an alternative try them with whole range of foods including savoury dishes and of course they can be a superb match with cheese. Try them young when they have lovely freshness or keep them and let them mature to show lovely honey, caramel, orange and nutty flavours.