Bordeaux 2005 at Two Years: Sauternes & Barsac
Tasting the Sauternes at the annual UGC tasting is usually a delight, the wines giving a short but nevertheless very welcome respite from the constant assault of tannin-laden red wines. I was anticipating very good wines here; the vintage seemed to hold the promise of pure botrytis character and good ripeness, and if the red wines are anything to judge by, good acidity too. Unfortunately, it is of course quite inappropriate to translate the structure of the red wines onto the white wines of the region – the white wines of Graves, with their rather low acidities, are a fine example of that. The same characteristic can also be found in Sauternes; in this otherwise almost universally successful vintage, the sweet wines did indeed show low acidity in many cases. Not in every case, thankfully, and regardless almost all were rich and flavoursome. But for those who have a deep need for acidity to match the sugar in a sweet wine, I do not think many of the following wines will be the ones for you.
Looking beyond acidity and structure for a moment, the wines did all possess a fine purity of flavour, with pineapples, apples, honey and floral elements all coming to the fore. There was some botrytis in evidence too, although not as much as I would have expected given the climatic conditions in the region, and the description of the very pure botrytis infection that was found upon the fruit when harvested. Despite this, I think these wines, although still rather straightforward and primary now, will display more character and develop more complexity with time. Nevertheless, in many cases the wines are not quite in possession of the depth of character or potential that can be found in the equivalent 1997, 2001 or even the 2003 vintage I think. They are quite close to the latter I think, although in 2005 we do not have a stand-out wine as we did two years ago, when the 2003 Suduiraut was so sublime. (22/11/07)
