Château de Suronde, 2022 Update
This tasting report on the most recent releases from Kathleen Mareels-Van den Berghe of Château de Suronde brings us back to what has been a common theme on Winedoctor in recent times, and that is the battle between sweet and dry. In all cases, including Château Suduiraut and Château Guiraud in Sauternes and Domaine Belargus and Château de Plaisance in Quarts de Chaume, to name just four examples, dry is winning out. Fruit which was would once have been dedicated to the production of an iconic and yet slow-to-sell sweet wine is increasingly earmarked for the production of drier styles for which there is a much larger and more willing market.
Here at Château de Suronde the story is much the same. From the outset Kathleen’s intention was always to scale back the production of sweet wines and to increase the volume of dry wines leaving the cellar. In a small estate this can cause problems, if the cellars have been built to accommodate small-volume sweet harvests, not the larger volume of a dry harvest. Kathleen’s solution was to buy the cellars of neighbouring Château Belle-Rive which had been put up for sale by proprietor Alain Château. She acquired the property in 2018, just two years after her purchase of Château de Suronde.
It was therefore no surprise that, catching up with Kathleen in early 2022, our modest tasting of recent vintages began with two dry cuvées of Anjou Blanc.
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