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Botrytis-affected wines

I got an email from a reader this morning asking about botrytis-affected wines.

Botrytis is known as "noble rot" because it can infect grapes destined for dessert wines, creating a fascinating spicy effect.

Botrytis can occur naturally, or vineyards can be inoculated (as happens most notably in California and Australia. Perhaps the most famous and expensive botrytis-affected wines in the world are the Sauternes of Bordeaux.

In the Pacific Northwest, a few wines will be released each year that are botrytis affected. The most memorable I've tasted is from Bainbridge Island Vineyards & Winery, which is a 30-minute ferry ride west of Seattle. Each year, it crafts a botrytis-affected dessert wine from the rare Austrian grape Siegerrebe.

What other botrytis-affected wines have you tasted from the Pacific Northwest.

By aperdue at Oct 6 2007 - 12:47pm | white wine | aperdue's blog | 1050 reads

Botrytis

Blackwood Canyon, in Benton City, WA, historically has produced some nice (but expensive) botrytic dessert wines. But of course, there are a lot of things fungally affected out there...

By andyplymale at Wed, 10/17/2007 - 7:46pm | login or register to post comments

Inoculating Bot Sem

Hi Andy,

I am pretty sure when I was studying at WSU the research scientists said that Botrytist could not be inoculated. In controlled studies it was not successful. That was four years ago but I haven't seen any research saying differently. Maybe you could point to the source where you saw that the viticulturists were successful.

By wine_woman_13 at Fri, 10/12/2007 - 10:33am | login or register to post comments

Terra Blanca Botrytized Semillon

We found a delicious Botrytized Semillon at Terra Blanca a few years ago. It had a wonderful and almost musky melon flavor, but not with an overly syrupy sweetness. We ended up randomly finding a bottle of it in a Fred Meyer a few months later and bought it for Thanksgiving. For not being a fan of sweet wines, I was pleasantly surprised.

By theforbz at Mon, 10/08/2007 - 2:09pm | login or register to post comments

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