How The Sweet Wine of Bordeaux Is Made

Viticulture and winemaking in Bordeaux dates back thousands of years to the Roman times. However, it wasn't until the 1600s that sweet wines became popular within the region. With the arrival of the Dutch in the early 17th century, demand shifted within Bordeaux, moving away from lighter red wines towards more structured, medium-bodied reds as well as sweet white wines. Although Bordeaux today is still dominated by red grape varieties, the areas of Sauternes and Barsac were identified as being prime locations for white wine production, and some of the world's greatest sweet wines are produced here. What grapes do you use here? In our region, we have three types of grapes. Semillon, which is the prominent grape that originated in Sauternes, probably around the 4th century. It brings a lot of nectars, a lot of structure to the wine. Then you complement it with the Sauvignon Blanc, which we consider a contributor of citrus characteristics. The third grape that we have is Muscadet. It's not prominent, it's a very thin-skinned grape, so it's very susceptible to disease, and you need to have very good clay to have very good Muscadet. Today, most people have mostly Semillon, complemented with a bit of Sauvignon Blanc, and some places have a bit of Muscadet. These grapes are grown all around the world, however, very few places have the required climatic conditions to produce sweet wines of this style. Not to be confused with fortified wines such as Sherry or Port, the sweet wines of Sauternes and Barsac undergo a fascinating natural process known as noble rot. Instigated by a fungus called Botrytis cinerea, noble rot can only occur under highly precise conditions. We are in a specific microclimate that encourages the proliferation of Botrytis, and the microclimate alternates between these humid mornings and these dry, sunny afternoons that allows the evaporation of water and the concentration of sugar. So more technically, Botrytis attacks the grapes and makes little holes in the skin, and in the afternoon, the water is going to evaporate through these holes and you're going to concentrate your sugar. Basically, we have a lot of Indian summers in this region, so this going back and forth between these misty, humid mornings and these sunny afternoons is a prerequisite to controlling the Botrytis to evolve into what we call noble rot. So Botrytis, what flavours is it going to give the wine? So in addition to helping us concentrate the grape and also produce glycerol, which gives wines texture, Botrytis gives us aromas. It's very hard to explain the characteristics of these aromas. It's very personal. Some people associate it in a very young wine to some kind of grapefruit characteristic, the zestiness. In older wines, I think it's easier to spot it as spicy characteristics. So Tern and Barsak now lead the way for high-end sweet wine production around the world. However, the history of this particular winemaking practice is somewhat contested. There's a lot of different stories that people tell about how we came to make sweet wine. There's the great legend of a chateau where the owner went hunting and told everybody, please wait till I get back. And then when he got back, there was all this fungus and all of a sudden they had the idea of making sweet wines. There's also the story of the Dutch that were very present in Bordeaux because they were building the drainage system up in the Medoc. And they had a love and a knowledge of Botrytis within the German area and Austria. So they brought that knowledge to Bordeaux and helped us develop the techniques to turn these Botrytis grapes into sweet wines. So it's probably a little bit of both. A happy accident, but also the right people at the right place with the knowledge to help us develop. Winemaking in the Appalachians of Sauternes and Barsac is often a huge challenge because of the unique conditions required for noble rot to occur. Not enough moisture and the grapes will dry out before the onset of fungus. Too much moisture and the fungus will turn to grey rot, a negative result that affects many different plants, destroying their fruit. Well, everything links back to Botrytis. And unfortunately, Botrytis is an anarchist. So it doesn't attack a bunch of berry all in one go. It's going to start a little bit here, a little bit there. And as a result, when we hand harvest, we have to go and look at each bunch and pick the berries that are ready. So in a vineyard, you're going to go through, in our case at Kutte, we go through six to eight times during a period of six to eight weeks. Wow. Each person looking at a vine and picking the fruit that's reached the right level of concentration. So here you're in a first growth. So we're looking for 21, 22 degrees of potential alcohol. So it's very concentrated fruit. We're picking those berry by berry. We're going to put these in these little baskets. The baskets goes into a second selection process where someone from our team will go through and take anything out that's not qualitative. And then the fruit goes into the cellar and we're going to start pressing. That's so meticulous. It's a lot of work. I presume this is going to impact the yield and then the final cost of the wine because that's a lot of work already just for a harvest. So in our region, we're making about one glass of wine per vine. Relatively speaking, if you're taking a red producer of the same quality, you're making an entire bottle. Wow, that's a really, really good comparison. So one vine will give me one glass. That's correct. It's a lot of work for a glass of wine. It's passion. It's devotion. It's a lot of hard work all year long to ensure that the fruit is healthy at the time of harvest.