The aroma is all honey with a faint hint of peach. The wine is full bodied with a finish that tastes like sugared apricots and lasts forever. The sweetness starts on the tip of your tongue with a burst of honeysuckle. It reminds me of childhood, snacking on the honeysuckle bush outside my bedroom window. As the wine rolls towards the back of your mouth, you begin to taste the peaches that were faint on the nose. This dessert wine packs some heat at a whopping 12.5% alcohol and can definitely be tasted as the wine warms up. Keep this wine in a bucket of ice. This is the second time I've had the pleasure of drinking this Botrytis Semillon and it continues to be one of the most enjoyable bottles I've had the pleasure of drinking.
Date Purchased - May 2008
Price - $20
Date Tasted - May 2008
Vintage - 2006
Winery - Peter Lehmann
Varietal - Semillon
Country/Region - Barossa Valley, Australia
Website - Peter Lehmann Wines
What the website says: The Barossa is an ideal region for late harvest style white wines given the quality of Semillon in the region and the warm weather conditions that continue well into late vintage.
Chief Winemaker Andrew Wigan had the good fortune of winning a trip to visit France in 1982 at vintage time and enjoyed a rare opportunity of spending time in the vineyards at Chateau d’Yquem – unquestionably then, and still today, home to the greatest sweet white table wine in the world. Walking through the vineyards he could see the same deterioration in the grapes that he had seen in the fruit being received at our own winery back in the Barossa! What he had assumed to be common spoilage in extremely ripe Semillon in fact was Noble Rot - Botrytis Cinerea.
Andrew returned armed with the confidence that what we were experiencing in our vineyards in the Barossa was identical to what he’d seen in Sauternes. He was determined to master Noble Rot and create Peter Lehmann Wines own expression of Botrytis Semillon. 25 years on from that moment of inspiration in the vineyards of Chateau d’Yquem, we are convinced our Botrytis Semillon is a Barossa classic.
