Product Review
The 1983 Laville-Haut-Brion is an elegant, classy, textbook Laville.
Semillon's contribution to quality wine often goes by unrecognized, however due to its base in Bordeaux and migration to the New World it was, at one point, the most planted variety. While its role as a varietal wine is diminishing it is still an important component in the famous dessert wines of Sauternes, and is increasingly being used in dry whites adding complexity to the Sauvignon Blanc and sometimes Chardonnay. One of the exceptions are the producers of Hunter Valley (Tyrell's and Brokenwood to name a few) in Australia who continue to carve out exceptional examples capable of long bottle maturation of more than 10 or 20 years.
Located in South West France, Bordeaux is one of the World’s most important wine producing regions. The Gironde estuary and its two tributaries, the Garonne and Dordogne, splits the region into the ‘left bank’ and ‘right bank’. The left bank, on the west side of the Gironde, consists of the Médoc 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 Médoc includes the famous classed growth chateaux in the communes of St. Estephe, Paulliac, St.Julien, and Margaux. The Graves and it’s enclave Pessac-Léognan make both red and white wine. While those of Pessac- Léognan’s are dry, Sauternes and Barsac make world-famous sweet whites. Although Bordeaux makes some of the world’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.
Graves and its new (as of 1987) sub-region, Pessac-Leognan, is one of the most important districts of Bordeaux for both red and white wine, and where the earliest estates – see Chateau Haut-Brion, La Mission-Haut-Brion, and Pape-Clément – were established. Named after its soil type, gravel in French, Graves has particularly good drainage on which mainly Cabernet Sauvignon, as well as smaller amounts over Merlot and Cabernet Franc, is grown. Cabernet Sauvignon produces particularly good fruit on these soils and is able to transit its terroir with distinctive mineral aromas. The dry whites wines are made from a blend of Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc, the latter of which must make up at least a quarter of the blend. Most are fermented and matured in oak, of which the best examples benefit from at least a decade in the bottle.
White wine is a wine whose color can be pale-yellow, yellow-green, and yellow-gold colored. The wine is produced from a variety of grape varieties. The flavor and color comes from the juice of the grape and sometimes the skin of the grape as well. Interestingly, not all white wine comes from white grapes. Some select red grapes are used as in Champagne.
