After a brief break for the May holidays we have two top Sauternes and Barsac releases to report - Château Guiraud from Sauternes and Château de Myrat from Barsac. Just click HERE to find out the prices for them both and all of the other released 2012 wines.
Here are my tasting videos for both wines, Guiraud first:
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Enjoy! Bill Blatch
Now onto some First Growth 2009 Sauternes!
Some other tasting results from the Southwold tasting are filtering through. For Jancis Robinson’s full tasting notes (subscription required) click here. The overall opinion was:
The sweet whites on the other hand were lovely, some of the best wines we tasted in Southwold. The wines were very charming indeed and had quite enough acidity. Blatch, a big sweet white bordeaux fan, puts 2009 ahead of 2005. We found the quality generally very high.
We have half bottles of the de Fargues (18.5pts from Jancis) and the Rabaud-Promis (17pts) available for immediate delivery in the UK – just click on this link!
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Enjoy! Bill Blatch
Sometimes even I think opening a bottle of Sauternes can be a bit daunting. It’s somehow easier to open a bottle of red for lunch or to take some dry white along on a picnic. It really shouldn’t be like that though as this clip shows – you can drink Sauternes anywhere and at any time.
On Friday Steve and I were enjoying a day’s fishing, trying our best to relieve a chalk stream of some unwanted pike. An unsuccessful morning meant lunch and a glass of wine or two was much needed. I had a selection of red and white Bordeaux in my car boot but, as many of you will have recently taken delivery of your 2009 Sauternes it seemed a good idea to try some Chateau Climens and Chateau Guiraud alongside our sandwiches just let you know how they are tasting.
It’s something that I should do more often and I’d encourage anyone to do the same – Sauternes can help to make the most of the most mundane meal or occasion and always puts a smile on my face.
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We never did catch any pike but the river keeper very kindly provided us with some crayfish for our efforts which we had for supper – more about that later. Steve thinks that the clip below might explain why the fish weren’t biting! Bill Blatch
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2011 Sauternes is without doubt a big success. And at the head of this we have some sensational First Growth wines.
For my thoughts on Coutet, Clos Haut-Peyraguey, de Fargues, Guiraud, Lafaurie-Peyraguey and Rabaud Promis click on the first video below. After that click on the second video for comments on Raymond Lafon, de Rayne Vigneau, Rieussec, Sigalas Rabaud, Suduiraut and La Tour Blanche. There is at least one sensational wine in each video! Enjoy! Bill Blatch
It is early days yet but we might just have a very special 2011 Sauternes vintage on our hands. I hope you enjoy the videos below.
In my first foray into the cellars since fermentation stopped I visited Xavier Planty at Chateau Guiraud and Laure de Lambert Compeyrot at Chateau Sigalas-Rabaud. At Guiraud Xavier was very happy despite nearly 60% of his harvest being lost in the Easter Monday hail storm that hit the south west plateau of Sauternes. His Sauvignon lots, in particular were stunningly fresh and, as this makes up a large percentage of the blend here, we can confidently expect a great Guiraud.
At Sigalas-Rabaud we again tasted all the lots and also had some fun anticipating what the final blend might be. Here the jury is out on the Sauvignon – yet again it is stunningly fresh but will it blend well? At the moment Laure is inclined to think not but as the wines are still on their lees there is plenty of time for many changes of opinion after racking and before bottling.
I popped down to Sauternes and Barsac at the beginning of the week and checked up on the grapes at Guiraud, Liot and Clos Haut-Peyraguey. It’s looking good again but this is a critical stage and the embryonic botrytis needs the right conditions over the next few weeks.
The grapes themselves are excellent with good sugar levels and excellent aromatics. It will be an early harvest with the first picks starting as early as next week to weed out unwanted ‘beery’ grapes and capture some of the early botrytised bunches. This will leave the beautifully golden grapes you can see in the videos below to ripen fully and gain an added degree or so of potential alcohol. Bill Blatch
Well it isn’t all over until the fat lady sings but most of the audience has left already! As I write the Medoc 1st Growths, the Super 2nds and the the top Right Bank chateaux are finally releasing their wines onto the market after what has been one of the most criticised and extraordinary En Primeur campaigns. It has been one of the longest campaigns ever with long lulls followed by intense spurts of activity, not to mention the record prices (for the red wines).
The ‘Embarrasingly Good Vintage that I wrote about in my 2010 Vintage Report has been followed by an ‘Embarrassingly Poor En Primeur Campaign’!
In Sauternes we only await the price for Chateau d’Yquem, which will probably follow those for the 1st Growths Reds.
Sauternes and Barsac have, yet again, suffered in the confusion! These are amongst the very best wines in the world (see Sauternes – the Best Bordeaux Wine) and yet they are selling for a fraction of the price of the top red wines (see Sauternes – Best Value in Bordeaux). Despite having the only reasonable pricing policy in Bordeaux the attention has been firmly on the red wines and Sauternes sales have been affected – the apathetic reaction to some of the red wine pricing seems to have rubbed off.
This is such a shame as the wines themselves deserve much, much better. 2010 in Sauternes, and especially Barsac, is utterly irresistible and gets better every time I taste it. I urge you to take another look at my 2010 Tasting Notes and if you’ve been put off buying reds this year, focus on Sauternes instead! All the prices are here:
Cases Prices – Bottles or Half Bottles
Individual Bottle or Half Bottle Prices
Out of interest our Top 10 best selling 2010 wines are as follows:
There is a great mix of value and quality in this list – why not put together a mixed case with some or all of these wines included? Bill Blatch
Amidst the madness 2010 En Primeur it was a real pleasure to sit down with some of my Sauternais friends at Vinexpo and taste some great Sauternes alongside some Chinese food. Below is some video proof that I was there and, I think, appreciated, as are our efforts at Bordeaux Gold to promote their wines.
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The Chan brothers, Tommy and André, of the Bordeaux Chinese Restaurant “Le Bonheur du Palais” made a dish for every wine:
There were a lot of Chinese-food experts there and the debate quickly became one of the challenge of food pairing in China because all the food is served at the same time. Tommy had put the spicier dishes with the younger wines, which was thought not necessarily any better.
Frankly, everything went with everything which actually makes it easier to serve Sauternes with Chinese food than other wines – a result! Bill Blatch
What strange times we are in! You will have already seen my article on Sauternes v Red Bordeaux chateaux prices which can be neatly summed up by this graph:
And chateaux prices for Red Bordeaux show no sign of slowing down. Most winemakers are convinced they have made as good if not better wines in 2010 than in 2009 and their belief in the Chinese market is strong.
But, here we are half way through the 2010 En Primeur campaign and I can’t help feeling that a tipping point of some type is approaching. All my gut instinct is telling me that there will be a significant closing between Sauternes and Red Bordeaux prices over the next few years.
Firstly, the Chinese are beginning to discover Sauternes. It was actually illegal to import Sauternes into China until earlier this year because of the higher than normal Sulphate levels in botrytised sweet white wine. Big efforts are being made by Chateau d’Yquem and Chateau Guiraud to break into the Chinese market and, as Sauternes is such a natural partner to Chinese cuisine, I see no reason why these shouldn’t work.
More importantly though is the fact that Sauternes is better than Red Bordeaux! Who says so? Bill Blatch? No actually – YOU!
We have been looking at what wine drinkers actually think of Sauternes compared to Red Bordeaux and the results are fascinating – take a look at this new article:
Sauternes – the Best Bordeaux Wine
If you are confused by the current market then you are not alone. The only certainty in my mind is that Sauternes is both great wine and great value in 2010. Prices have generally remained at 2009 levels from the chateaux with slight increases from a few balanced by some significant reductions from others. Bill Blatch
Following the Eurovision Song Contest (and popular demand) we couldn’t resist one more Top 40 Chart!
Taken into account are a host of new scores from France (Revue du Vin de France, Professor Bernard Burtschy, Jacques Dupont, Jacques Perrin & Antoon Laurent), Izak Litwar’s scores from Denmark and, to make things truly European, the scores from the Grand Jury Europeen founded by Francois Mauss.
For tasting notes and scores just click on the links or on the large blue box at the top right of your screen. Enjoy! Bill Blatch
