Botrytis Wines

Save August 21^st as your back-to-wine-school date!  Additional details in upcoming newsletters and on the website as soon as available.  In the meantime, we share this short and SWEET description of Botrytis wine, adapted from The Beautiful Bounty of Botrytized Wines by Anne Krebiehl as published in Wine Enthusiast

“When conditions are just right, nature can hold a usually nasty fungus in such check that something special happens. Instead of destroying a crop, the fungus creates grapes with incredibly concentrated flavor that can make some of the world’s sweetest, most precious wines.

 The fungus, Botrytis cinerea, is more affectionately known as “noble rot.”  It’s the same kind of rot that spoils strawberries and soft fruit with greyish fuzz. So, what makes this mold noble?  It comes down to a fine balance of moisture, sunlight and temperature. Ripe, healthy grapes must still be on the vine as fall begins, when misty mornings can provide the moisture that the fungus needs to thrive. It will pierce a grape’s skin to feast on its juice. After a few hours, sunshine and otherwise dry conditions must follow. This evaporates moisture and stops the fungus in its tracks. The following morning, the process repeats itself.

A succession of misty mornings and dry, sunny days provide the perfect conditions as sugars, flavors and acids concentrate in the grape while the fungus consumes water. It’s risky business, as rain can turn this delicate interaction into full-blown rot. In some years, growers lose their entire crop.

Botrytized grapes aren’t pretty, as they turn shriveled and brown. Their juice, however, is golden, sweet and precious. Each grape needs to be handpicked individually, and yields are tiny. The resulting wines are complex, concentrated and can age for decades.

In a few places, the crucial elements responsible for botrytis occur year after year, and all are famed for their noble sweet wines.”

So far, we’ve sourced wines from France, Germany and Hungary and the search continues for examples from Austria, so stay tuned!  This will be an event you’ll talk about for a long time.  The wines are memorable and the pairings featuring blue cheese, foie gras, and locally sourced fresh fruit promise to be just right.

Save August 21^st as your back-to-wine-school date!  Additional details in upcoming newsletters and on the website as soon as available.