Here's a find from LCBO: Chateau Suau Sauternes, 2eme cru, produced by the SARL des Vignobles Famille DuBourdieu at Illats. This is now $13.95 Canadian at LCBO for 375ml (on "bin-end" sale, down from $17.70, as it's not from the most recent delivery). It has a nice balance, veering to the sweeter, more syrupy side of the Sauternes spectrum but still elegant, slightly racy but, with what seems lowish acidity, not hugely so. Excellent balance between subtle fruit flavors (hints of pineapple and orange) and a definite caramelized-sugar aspect, hinting at tobacco. The fruits predominate in the nose and early on, and the caramelized aspects are more prominent on the finish, and also, it seemed to me on Thanksgiving, as the wine gets more air. The predominant flavor might be characterized as Seville orange marmalade, with a characteristic hint of bitterness. The low acidity might suggest that the wine is not as ageworthy as some more acidic Sauternes, but that's far from predictable, and the good flavor intensity, caramelized and tobacco elements, and high sugar could yield fantastic results on aging. They remind me a bit of a botrytised late-harvest 1985 Peter Lehmann Barossa Valley Semillon-Sauternes---a fairly reasonably priced Aussie wine that I bought as a grad student in the late 80's and that, drunk in November 2005, was a truly great wine. The Suau has a very similar set of tastes even now---it is absolutely and deliciously drinkable now, but also worth saving for a few years or a decade or two to it to see if they will meld and intensify with age. Good Sauternes is expensive to produce, and even at the initial price of $17.70 this is a good deal, at least by North American standards, for a wine of this quality, but at $13.95 it's a steal. This (along with some other wines I'll post about soon) goes a long way toward making me take back my grumblings about LCBO.
New Wine Review Feature Implemented: If this wine were an opera singer it would be:
Marina Poplavskaya as Elizabeth of Valois in Verdi's Don Carlo, stated by the poster to be from the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, 23 Sept. 2009. Well, maybe not quite. But her voice is elegant, sweet with a hint of bitterness, pure but with hints of complexity...
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