Sauternes

Sauternes is a rich, sweet white wine from Bordeaux, France, usually made from Sémillon and Sauvignon Blanc grapes affected by noble rot. Expect apricot, peach and citrus with honey, marmalade and spice. Luscious but balanced by bright acidity, it’s brilliant with blue cheese, foie gras, crème brûlée, cheesecake and fruit tarts.

Taste:

Sweet, golden and gloriously over the top.

Sauternes is typically full-bodied and intensely sweet, but its natural acidity keeps all that richness beautifully balanced. Expect apricot, peach, pineapple and citrus, often joined by honey, orange marmalade and floral notes.

Oak ageing and time in the bottle can add vanilla, caramel, nuts, spice and toast, while mature bottles can become even more complex and honeyed.

The texture is rich and silky, sometimes almost luscious enough to feel like dessert in its own right.

Sweet wine sometimes gets treated like the supporting act at the end of dinner. Sauternes has absolutely no intention of accepting that role.

Food Pairings:

Sauternes has two great loves: rich desserts and salty, intensely flavoured food.

Blue cheese is one of its most famous matches. Try it with Roquefort, Stilton or another strong blue cheese, where the saltiness and punchy flavour balance the wine’s sweetness.

Foie gras and pâté are other classic French pairings, with the wine’s acidity cutting through their richness.

For dessert, try crème brûlée, cheesecake, peach tart, apricot tart, fruit tart, lemon tart or tarte tatin. Desserts featuring peach, apricot, citrus, honey or caramel are particularly good matches.

Sauternes can also work beautifully with fruit such as peaches and apricots.

The key with dessert is making sure the wine is at least as sweet as what’s on the plate. Sauternes rarely struggles with that particular assignment.

Similar Wines:

If you enjoy Sauternes, Monbazillac is a natural next move for another sweet French wine made using similar grape varieties and noble rot.

Tokaji is another legendary sweet wine, combining intense fruit and honeyed flavours with brilliant acidity.

Icewine achieves its concentration through frozen grapes rather than noble rot, while Beerenauslese offers another beautifully concentrated dessert-wine experience.

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More About Sauternes:

Sauternes comes from a small area south of Bordeaux in southwestern France and is usually made primarily from Sémillon, supported by Sauvignon Blanc and sometimes Muscadelle.

Its magic ingredient is Botrytis cinerea, better known as noble rot. Under the right autumn conditions, morning mist encourages the fungus to develop on the grapes before warmer afternoons dry them out.

The grapes gradually shrivel, concentrating their sugar, acidity and flavour. Harvesters often have to pass through the vineyards several times, selecting individual grapes as they reach the right stage.

Tiny yields, multiple harvest passes and grapes deliberately left to shrivel with fungus on them.

Someone had to be the first person to look at that situation and say, "We should make wine out of this."

We owe them a drink.