Sweet success

This short week has been dominated by politics and sweet wines. Most Sauternes and Barsac estates have now released with just a few big names such as Yquem, Climens and de Fargues still to come. This is an exceptional vintage with both quantity and quality. In fact most producers have never witnessed such a straightforward harvest. Rather than the usual headache of multiple trie spaced weeks apart, wine-makers enjoyed a uniform transformation in their vineyards as botrytis spread and concentrated sugars in the grapes. Countless estates told the same story; all grapes harvested in a single week, large yields (comparatively) and exceptional quality. Residual sugar levels are high, but these are balanced, fresh, complex, mineral, really engaging wines that are close in quality to the 2001s.

The star releases include Suduiraut (97-99), Rieussec (95-97) and Coutet (96-98). All scores are taken from The Wine Advocate issue 188. We were also particularly impressed with Doisy Vedrines, which, at £245 per case looks tremendous value.

As with the Left Bank and the Right Bank, we asked our tasting team to list their top five Sauternes/Barsac. Unsurprisingly, Yquem and Climens run out as clear winners, but there were strong showings from Rieussec, Doisy Vedrines, de Fargues and Coutet. Our results can be found below (in order of preference):

Yquem
Climens
Rieussec
Doisy Vedrines
De Fargues
Coutet
Doisy Daene
Suduiraut
Rayne Vigneau

Weekending: Riesling Greats....

Not a piece on tourism, though we are rather taken by the area. Merely a couple of photos of some of Germany's most famous vineyards to demonstrate just how steep, imposing and impressive these steep sites are.

The famous Brauneberger Juffer vineyards comletely dominates the scene in the town of Brauneberg, seen here from Oliver Haag's window.

Looking down the river from the Prum's, with Wehlener Sonnenuhr at left and off in the distance the down of Graach and the Domprobst and Himmelreich vineyards.

Piesporter's Goldtropchen in the distance, a steep, suntrap of a vineyard.

Bordeaux 2009 En Primeur: Chateau Tertre-Roteboeuf

Anybody who has tasted Francois Mitjavile's sumptuously individual and esoteric wines might well be forgiven for wondering just how he achieves the sublime balance between ripeness, precision and aromatic complexity that so sets his wines apart from others in Bordeaux. He is a man with a visionary quality, based on firm philosophical beliefs about the nature of true ripeness.

In our interview the question is put to him as to how he achieves this balance and such ripeness without losing any of his purity. The answer is enlightening.
(Added to this, off camera, he rather modestly remarked that the praise or criticism he receives for his wines were really neither here nor there, his being a mere conduit through which vineyard might express itself most naturally.)

Germany: Day 4

We wake up in Franken, it's day four and we have appointments at both Horst Sauer and Rudolph Furst. The first is regarded as one of the finest white producers in Germany, while Furst is regarded as one of the finest Red producers. We arrive at Escherndorf's "Lump" vineyard, a majestic horseshoe sweep of vineyard, on time. Sandra and Horst meet us. After a brief tour of their newly modernised winery we are once again shown the depth of quality in 2009; from the driest of Rieslings to a 300g/l Sylvaner Eiswein. Their wines are the purest and most complex expressions of riesling from the limestone soil.

Appointment number two, Furst. The first time we've been to the estate and our focus is on their much lauded Pinot Noirs. The red sandstone slopes of the Main have had Pinot planted here since the 1600s and today the Furst esate comprises 10ha of Pinot Vines in two separate vineyards; Centgrafenburg and Klingenburger. These are very pure wines with high levels of elegance and clarity, with a quiet intensity to the morello cherry fruit and delicate haunting length.

Germany: Day 3

Springtime in the Nahe and it's looking extremely pretty as we snake our way down to Oberhausen to meet Helmut Donnhoff, a man full of the joys...and quite rightly so with a vintage like 2009 in his cellar. We tasted a really exciting trio of Grosses Gewachs (Grand Cru) that we will be offering come the first of September. The more we taste these intense dry wines from the region the more excited we get. The stringent vineyard grape selection and warmer recent vintages are giving really ripe, fruit acidities to balance the steely Riesling focus.

At Emrich-Schonleber we tasted more superb 2009 Grosse Gewachs, followed by examples from 1999 and 2002 (at the time labelled Auslese Trocken). It was very revealing. These are quite evidently serious wines that can age wonderfully, gaining in complexity while losing none of their crisp, Riesling precision. Take note these are wines to watch.


Not to be eclipsed were the sweet wines. At both aforementioned estates we saw collections that resoundingly prove what an impressive a vintage 2009 is across the board. As Frank at Emrich-Schonleber commented, "there is less sharpness of minerality than 2008, they are bigger in body and very well balanced. They are perhaps closer to 2007, but with more finesse".



Our last stop of the day was with Klaus-Peter Keller who put the quality of 2009 down to a very cold second half of October. This "refrigerator temperature". period allowed the grapes to develop in complexity without increasing in must weight or decreasing in acidity. It's a truly great year here at Keller and undoubtedly one of the collections of the vintage.