Bordeaux Sweet Flashcards
2021
Extremely high quality and pathetically low quantity with Ch Climens, usually a real performer, producing not a drop of sweet wine. Spring frost and summer hail were to blame but the damp autumn usefully encouraged the formation of noble rot. Sweet white bordeaux continued to struggle commercially alas.
2020
Hail early in the season clipped the crop (there is no Climens, for example), while the dry second half hampered the growth of botrytis. Wines are juicy and tropical in profile, but without the range of an outstanding year WS 89
2018
Mildew pressure early in the season and a hailstorm midway through curtailed yields severely, and as in 2016 a very dry second half of the season denuded the potential for waves of botrytis infection during harvest. Wines are ripe, round and forward, but lack the complexity of top years WS 89
2012
Will not be remembered fondly by the Sauternais. Headlines were made when Yquem, Rieussec, Suduiraut and Raymond-Lafon announced they would not be making any grand vin. The Barsac region had slightly better conditions, but nobody is pretending this will be a sought-after vintage.WS 86
2004
A very difficult year where the strictest selection was needed. Avoid at lower levels. And even the best tend to be pretty light. WS 89
