Château Rieussec 2009

The 2009 vintage in Sauternes

Vintage benchmark: 97/100 (appellation benchmark, not a score for this wine)

Vintage character: An ideal autumn after a hot summer gave opulent, complex sweet wines, capable of holding for several decades.

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.

Tasting

A long ageing in barrels was necessary to round out this very powerful whole. The notes of citrus and fresh fruit are complemented by candied apricot and fresh almond. On the palate, great length combined with the freshness and liveliness of the fruits. The notes of honey and acacia flower are very present.

Blend of the 2009 vintage

Figures from the 2009 sheet

• 14 % vol.Alcohol
• 35 yrsVine age
• 70,000 bottlesProduction

Winemaking

Fermentations are carried out in barrels. Each sort coming from a well-identified plot is isolated in a batch of barrels to assess its capacity to enter or not into the great wine after the end of fermentation. Several tastings of each barrel are then carried out for a strict selection of the great wine.

Ageing

18 to 26 months depending on the vintage, including 50 to 55% new barrels

Terroir

The vineyard of Château Rieussec lies at the junction of Fargues and Sauternes, adjoining Château d'Yquem. Rieussec is one of the largest estates in Sauternes; its vines cover 93 ha of gravel soils overlaid with a fine layer of silt. Sémillon, the emblematic grape variety of Sauternes, dominates (90%), complemented by Sauvignon (7%) and Muscadelle (3%). Production is small and varies at the whim of nature: the traditional benchmark in the Médoc of one vine yielding one bottle of wine is here closer to one vine yielding a single glass!