Château Guiraud 2012

The 2012 vintage in Sauternes

Vintage benchmark: 88/100 (appellation benchmark, not a score for this wine)

Vintage character: A rainy autumn reduced the crop: sound wines, but without the brilliance of their neighbors.

Overall reading of the year’s season across Sauternes. An estate can depart from it sharply, in frost or hail years, where two neighbours did not make the same vintage. What this particular wine actually gave is on its technical sheet and in the scores above.

Blend of the 2012 vintage

Figures from the 2012 sheet

• 13 % vol.Alcohol
• 35 yrsVine age
• 100,000 bottlesProduction

Winemaking

The fermentation and ageing carried out in barrels take advantage of the beneficial effects of contact between the wine and the wood by the extraction of certain organoleptic characters from the oak thanks to the action of the yeasts which will mix with the wine, also providing a certain finesse.

Ageing

Depending on the vintage, ageing on lees for 3 to 6 months is practiced with regular stirring, then regular racking is carried out every 3 months.

Terroir

Situated 45 km south of Bordeaux on the left bank of the Garonne, Château Guiraud, with an area of 128 ha, has among its distinctive features that of lying entirely within the commune of Sauternes. The climate of the Sauternes appellation is oceanic. Winters there are mild and damp; spring, also damp, is temperate. Summers are moderately warm and give the vine a gradual ripening. It is in autumn that the weather conditions differ from those of a normal oceanic climate. The Sauternes district then comes under the influence of a particular microclimate, favouring the development of a microscopic fungus, botrytis cinerea or noble rot, without which Sauternes would not exist.