Wednesday, Jun. 25, 2008

Great Semillon is one for the ages

By Dan Berger

Call me strange, but I love Semillon.

So much so that I was willing to join a rather special and esoteric group called the International Society of Semillonards. This society began with three members. A decade-and-a-half later, it has burgeoned to four. We have no slogan, no dues, and we meet rather haphazardly. No official meeting has been held for a few years, but the mere fact that all members of this august association are still alive is testament to the fact that Semillon won't kill you.

But we four are quite serious about this passion we have for Semillon, the primary white grape of Sauternes, where it produces awesome sweet wines. What we like about Semillon is kind of hard to define in words, but it ain't the sweet wine that delights us. It's the dry.

In particular, we love that Semillon has the ability to produce a wine that speaks of the soil in which it grows.

It does right well in Washington's Columbia Valley, where it doesn't discard its naturally high acidity. Moreover, it also has the ability to develop a lushness that works nicely with Chardonnay (of all grapes) to make a wine of richer structure. It also flourishes in numerous areas of Australia as well as some special plantings in California, both warm and cool.

And one wonderful attribute is the wine it makes typically has quite low alcohol. Indeed, less than 12 percent alcohol! How about that, Chardonnay lovers?

Aromatically, it offers figs, wet hay and grass, not radically different from Sauvignon Blanc. On occasion, it gives what is call a "cigar butt" aroma, like leaf tobacco that's been charred.

A final and exciting attribute: It tends to age nicely. Semillons from Columbia, Hogue, Chateau Ste. Michelle and Barnard Griffin in Washington, and from Penfolds, Lindemans and other larger houses in Australia are usually worth trying. Especially when they are a decade old!

Jancis Robinson, in her book Vines, Grapes and Wines, writes glowingly of this oddity of the wine world: "In most of these vineyards, it sits around sullenly like an overweight schoolgirl, showing awkward fatness or just plain dullness in the wines it produces. In odd places, though, as if under the spell of a fairy godmother, it can be transformed into a raving beauty."

When well handled in the vineyard, its Sauvignon Blanc-like grassy characteristic becomes almost melon-like and gains a certain lemon-curd note with a little bottle age. And when aged in barrels then aged in the bottle, the wine can become just too sublime. The fact that it has little alcohol helps us detect its subtle nuances.

Robinson points out that long stretches of excessive heat combined with high tonnage can turn this grape into a lackluster and flabby substrate. "(It) becomes so diluted as to be scarcely distinguishable," she says, noting that a lot of the extensive Semillon plantings in the Southern Hemisphere yield rather uninteresting white wine.

But when I see the appellation of Adelaide Hills on a Semillon, I get excited, since it is here where the Aussies get it. Lower tonnage and a cooler climate make for a dramatic wine with real charm, especially with bottle age.

The same is true for Château Haut-Brion Blanc as well as Laville Haut-Brion, two of the world's most sublime wines, in which Semillon is the major player. These wines take on simply astounding aged character when they have sufficient time in a cool cellar, and the wines then act a bit like the Chateau Y (pronounce ee-grec), the rarely produced white wine of Château d'Yquem, which shows some of the creaminess that such a wine boasts with sufficient time in bottle. I still have a bottle of the 1972 Château Y in my cellar that I'm praying has held up. The color looks fine.

On the other hand, there has been a tendency in Bordeaux over the last decade to over-oak Semillon.

One of the problems with Semillon for the consumer is it is so generally light-flavored and requires a bit of introspection to understand. I use the word sublime a lot when speaking of this wine, and that is certainly true for Washington's best.

We had a bottle of the 2001 Barnard Griffin Semillon the other night with an Australian winemaker, and he liked it but pointed out it was just too young. He suggested that in about a decade the wine would be getting there.

It didn't surprise me. The wine was aged in oak, and it needs time to develop the creamy characteristics and lanolin-esque nature. Unfortunately, far too few people know of this character trait of Semillon that makes it so luscious and succulent. They just assume the wine loses too much with age, the way most domestic Chardonnays lose something over time.

Unfortunately, in the last few years some producers of Semillon have not made the wine with the proper structure to age for more than a year or two, and the result is a confusing message for consumers. Those who have heard that Semillon ages may buy one, age it a few years, and then find it is shot. Not the message most classic Semillon producers want to disseminate.

But when a Semillon comes along that has that superb aging character, it's a joy like little else found in the wine game.

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