Château Laville, Sauternes 2019 (13%)

POA £ Liberty Wines

This is the first appearance by a Sauternes in our Best in Show selection. Our judges were impressed by the generosity of this wine and by its value for money, and comparisons with other dessert-wine categories underscored the perennial appeal of this misty spot near the Garonne. It’s a mid- to full gold in colour, with luscious sweetness lent unction by botrytis complexities and lanolin oak. The wine is generous, creamy and long on the palate, with a crème anglaise and chantilly richness, and just a faint perfume of lemon; the oak is restrained, and it has fairly low acidity. It’s not a Sauternes to keep for a decade or more, but this generous and accessible sweet wine will offer huge pleasure in the short term. Best with desserts – or as a dessert itself – rather than in aperitif mode.

‘We harvest our grapes, more or less, like cooking pasta – the berries have to be “al dente”.’ While such a statement may suggest an over-reliance on intuition, the winemaking vision of Château

Laville’s owner Jean-Christophe Barbe could never be described as flighty.

‘I am Professor of Oenology at the Institute of Vine and Wine Science [ISVV] at Bordeaux University,’ he explains. ‘I am head of the Determinants of Sensory Perception team, and my PhD thesis focused on the compositional aspect of sweet wines affected by noble rot. It strongly influences my approach.’

With its late-17th to late-18th century buildings, Laville is one of the oldest properties in Sauternes, and its wines were estate-bottled as early as the 1890s, a time when most Bordeaux châteaux were still selling their wines by the barrel.

‘This wine is a blend of more than 80% Semillon, and the rest Sauvignon Blanc,’ says Barbe. ‘We hope to produce rich and complex wines where freshness is preserved. We pass through each plot between four and six times, and this painstaking sorting process clearly influences our style, allowing us to keep that aromatic and palate freshness.’