Sémillon

At the turn of the 19th century, the Sémillon grape, unwaveringly disease resistant and prolific, owned 93 percent of all vineyard real estate in South Africa. It was so prevalent that in Afrikaans it was called, simply, Wyndruif (“wine grape”).

Today, Sémillon takes up less than 1% of wine grape acreage in South Africa. A similar nosedive occurred in Chile during the second half of the 20th century (75-to-1.5 percent). Once upon a time, Sémillon was the most widely planted white wine grape in the world.

What happened?
The short answer is that wine drinkers wanted better wine. While Sémillon could make any style of wine—dry, sweet, Sherry-like, brandy—what it did make (and would make, if still planted rampantly) was wine that was thin, often “green” and barely on the plus side of serviceable.

In time, winemakers culled Sémillon in favor of Chardonnay—everyone’s darling—and more extensive plantings of Sauvignon Blanc, even Riesling.

Given what the philosopher Thomas Hobbes would have called Sémillon’s “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short life,” how is it that it nonetheless produces, in Bordeaux and Australia’s Hunter Valley, some of the most delicious and costly sweet and dry wines ever to be found?

This is how.

Sweet Sémillon
Sémillon is the basis for two of the world’s great sweet wines, Sauternes [soh-TEHRN] and Barsac, produced in a small subdistrict of Bordeaux. Similar wines are made in several “satellite” districts such as Cérons, and in other southwestern French areas such as Monbazillac.

In all these areas, Sémillon accounts for between 60-90 percent of vine plantings (the balance being Sauvignon Blanc—for verve and lightness—and, to a lesser extent, Muscadelle—for aroma).

During the autumns in lucky years in Sauternes and Barsac, humid nights and mornings—born of the confluence of the very cold river, the Ciron, with the warmer Garonne—and sunny, dry days cause the “noble rot,” botrytis cinerea*, to spread among the vines.

It is a blessing, in this case, that Sémillon has so little native flavor and aroma because botrytis effectively concentrates and complexes what is there; heightens Sémillon’s low acidity; and produces glycerol which contributes to the sexy viscosity of wines hit with botrytis.

Botrytis also synthesizes more than 20 new aroma compounds, one of which has the tempting scent of slightly caramelized honey—a telltale aroma in Sauternes.

Were Sémillon any other white wine grape, little of this magic would happen.

Dry Sémillon
In other areas of southern Bordeaux, Sémillon contributes fatness to the dry white wines of Pessac-Léognan when blended with Sauvignon Blanc. Sémillon also takes to oak even more than Sauvignon Blanc and winemakers of ageable dry white Bordeaux now routinely ferment their Sémillon in wood.

Sémillon also makes for small-to-large percentages of other southwestern white wines—all intended for early drinking—but in these it is fermented cool, in stainless steel, to bring out or augment its negligible fruit.

Australia’s Hunter Valley also favors Sémillon (where many winemakers pronounce its name as SEMM-ih-lawn; also note that, outside France, Semillon is usually spelled without the accented “é”).

In Australia, true to type, Sémillon produces a rather ephemerally tasting white wine that, for some reason not well known to anyone, morphs after ten years or so into one of the most delicious, richly textured, honeyed, toasty white wines known to wine lovers throughout the world. (It is routinely smuggled into blind tastings of mature white Burgundy, to the amusement of its Aussie makers.)

Tastes and eats
Young, unoaked Sémillon (read: Hunter Valley) tastes of citrus and acidity. In time, that develops into toast and nuts, with a hint of honey (especially if a small amount has botrytis). Oaked Sémillon—Australian or French—tastes of tropical fruit, mangoes, apricots and vanilla, and has a soft, round feel in the mouth.

Combine these two and you have an approximation of Graves or Pessac-Léognan Sémillon. Sauternes and Barsac are all about honey, apricots, mangoes, nuts, brown butter and coconut, in a thick, creamy, viscous body.

Dry Sémillon is delicious with fish and seafood; richer versions, with cream or butter sauces. Sauternes begins a meal extraordinarily if served with foie gras, and is fantastic at meal’s end with blue cheeses, especially its fellow citizen, Roquefort.

* Botrytis cinerea [boh-TRY-tihs sihn-AIR-ee-uh]—or “noble rot” (in English), pourriture noble, (in French) and Edelfäule (in German)—is a beneficial mold that often enshrouds wine grapes given specific weather. Botrytis is “noble” because, while it shrivels grapes, thereby concentrating their sugar and flavor, it both leaves acidity high and prevents the incursion of oxygen. The wines from such grapes are intensely sweet, elegant and long-lived. (Under damper, less accommodating conditions, botrytis morphs into “grey rot,” a spoiling fungus.)