Noble rot
- Foggy morning with sunny afternoon (to prevent grey rot)
- More for white grape varieties
- Healthy and ripe grapes before infected with fungus
- Microfilements puncture grape skins and water evaporate to concentrate sugar, acidity, and flavours
- Fungus modifies flavour components, adding complexity
- Distinctive honey, apricot, orange marmalade, ginger
- Uneven ripening
- Several passing to select botrytized grapes
- Hand harvest often needed
- Laccase oxidizing grape must and wines
- Chilling, high dose of SO2, inert gas to reduce oxidation
- Cultured yeasts to initiate fermentation in high sugar environments
- Neutral varieties like Semillon: matured in barrels (old or new to integrate flavours and add texture)
- Aromatic varieties like Riesling: matured in invert vessels (to retain varietal aromas)
- New oak to add vanilla, clove for more complexity
- Sauternes, Tokaji, Beerenauslese, Trockenbeerenauslese
France-Sauternes
- Moderate maritime with 1000 mm annual rainfall (marked variation from year to year)
- Ciron and Garonne Rivers create morning mists
- Sweet wines: max. yield 25 hL/ha; top estates < 10 hL/ha
- Semillion, Sauvignon Blanc, Muscadelle
- Sweet balanced with M to M(+) acidity and H alcohol, F body, pronounced flavours of citrus peel, dried apricot, mango, honey, vanilla and sweet spices (from new oak), and waxy texture
- Semillion
- mid-ripening, high yields, prone to noble rot
- double Guyot common
- softens H acidity, pronounced flavours of Sauvignon Blanc
- ageability: developing toasty, honey
- Harvest from September to November
- Fermented in stainless steel, concrete tanks, barrels
- Top estates ferment in barrels (to better integrate fruit and oak), use higher proportion of new oak (30~50%, 100% for Ch. d’Yquem to add vanilla, spices), mature in oak for 18~36 months (to develop toasty, honey tertiary flavours via slow oxidation)
Hungary-Tokaj
- Moderate continental with warm summer and cold winter
- 600 mm annual rainfall
- 48dN northern latitude with longer growing seasons
- Two rivers create frequent morning fogs in autumn
- Morning fogs (to develop noble rot); sunny afternoon (to prevent gray rot)
- Vines planted in slopes for better sunlight interception and to reduce frost damage
- Soft vocanic bedrock for vines to root deeply and to dig cellar for ageing wine
- Grey-black fungus help regulate humidity
- Aszú berries shrivelled on the vine with tiny yield of 2~3 hL/ha
- Furmint, Harslevelu, Muscat Blanc à Petits Grains
- Furmint (69% planting), an ideal variety for sweet wine production with balanced sweetness, acidity, and flavour
- neutral, versatile variety
- high acidity
- accumulates high levels of sugar
- thick skins but prone to botrytis
- Single posts to increase sunlight interception; VSP common
- Late Harvest
- fruity style, lighter bodied and less concentrated than Aszu wines
- 45~110 g/L residual sugar
- lower proportion of botrytized grapes than Aszú wines
- stored in stainless steel to retain primary fruit
- oak is not compulsory
- release earlier than aszu wines (12~16 months after harvest)
- Szamorodni
- as it comes
- whole bunch of healthy and botrytized grapes
- sweet (édes) and dry (száraz) styles
- 45~110 g/L residual sugar
- sweet wine has a fresher style than Aszu
- dry style aged under flor yeast for < 10 years without topping up to develop nutty, green apple aromas
- only aged in oak for 6 months
- Aszú
- botrytized berries macerated in must, young finished wines, fermenting must to give lightest to strongest styles
- deep amber, H acidity, L to M alcohol, pronounced aromas of orange peel, apricots, honey
- residual sugar >120 g/L
- base wines > 12.08%; in practice 14.5~15.5%
- cultured yeasts preferred for reliable fermentation in high levels of sugar
- fermentation in stainless steel or barrels
- aged in Hungarian oak for >18 months
- Eszencia
- free-run juice trickles from Aszú berries
- full body, luscious, age for a very long time
- residual sugar > 450 g/L
- usually alcohol < 5%