Product Review
A gold-colored wine. The palate has intense freshness as well as ripe apricot and orange zest flavors. The acidity cuts through the intense richness, leaving a wine that needs time to fully integrate, and then many more years to mature. ROGER VOSS
Located in South West France, Bordeaux is one of the Worldâ??s most important wine producing regions. The Gironde estuary and its two tributaries, the Garonne and Dordogne, splits the region into the â??left bankâ?? and â??right bankâ??. The left bank, on the west side of the Gironde, consists of the M??doc and Graves, while Pomerol and St. Emilion are located on the right bank. In between the Garonne and Dordogne is the Entre-Deaux-Mers region, French for 'between two seas'. From north to south the M??doc includes the famous classed growth chateaux in the communes of St. Estephe, Paulliac, St.Julien, and Margaux. The Graves and itâ??s enclave Pessac-L??ognan make both red and white wine. While those of Pessac- L??ognanâ??s are dry, Sauternes and Barsac make world-famous sweet whites. Although Bordeaux makes some of the worldâ??s most expsenive wines, less expensive but good value alternatives come from Moulis and Listrac on the left and Bourg and Blaye on the right offer less expensive wines for earlier consumption.
Sauternes is a remarkable region of Bordeaux whose wines, both sweet and unfortified, are unmatched by anything else in the world. It is the region's mesoclimate, in particular the proximity to The Garonne and its tributary the Ciron, which combine to create the ideal conditions. During fall, the cooler water from the Ciron meets the warmer tidal Garonne, causing mists to develop, blanketing the vineyards. The fluctuation between the humid mornings and warm drier afternoons provides the ideal environment for the benign fungus Botrytis cinerea, to thrive. The fungus consumes the grapes' water, concentrating its sugars and tartaric acid, which helps produce wines with beguiling exotic aromas and thick viscosity.
Dessert wines are usually any sweet wine drunk with or around a meal. White fortified wines (fino and amontillado sherry) are usually drunk before the meal, and the red fortified wines (port and madeira) drunk after it. Most fortified wines are regarded as distinct from dessert wines, but some of the less strong fortified white wines, are regarded as honorary dessert wines. In the United States a dessert wine is legally defined as any wine over 14% alcohol by volume, which includes all fortified wines.
