The other Friday we joined together for another Friday’s Tasting at the Office. Last time, when we tried a few white blends with different compositions, Sémillon became a key topic, as some hadn’t even heard of it. So, we decided to go for a full Sémillon tasting!

In terms of dry whites made out of Sémillon, we can find the greatest ones in Bordeaux, more specifically in the Graves area, and in the New World in Australia’s Hunter Valley. So, we went for a Mendel Semillon 2011, from the Uco Valley in Mendoza, a wine which showed a fresh and complex nose with notes of dried flowers and stone fruits, such as apricots. In the mouth it shows a good balance, with acidity present and the flowery reminiscence also present in the after-taste.

The second wine was actually somewhat of a curiosity, something that is rarely bottled and sold: a 2012 unfiltered wine which was made with the idea to make it a sparkling wine. When tasting it, Matias Michelini, the winemaker behind this project called Passionate Wines, decided that it was an interesting opportunity to show how a wine tastes at the winery when fermentation has just finished. The result, Inéditos Semillón Hulk Unfiltered 2012, is a low alcohol wine, with a high acidity which is nearer to a juice, but is perfect as an aperitif, as the crispness that comes from the lack of filtering is really interesting.

To summarize the Sémillon idea, we went for a sweet wine made out of botrytized grapes, made in the mirror-image of one of the world’s greatest sweet wine like Sauternes. It was time for Catena Zapata’s Saint Felicien Sémillon Doux 2007. In the nose you can find what you are expecting out of a botrytized Sémillon – white flowers, caramelized citrics and the noticeable honey character. In the mouth, it shows a lower level of sugar, mainly due to the high acidity present in the wine, showing the difference from a late harvest wine, but overall a great pleasure drinking it. Of course, only meant for those lovers of sweet wines!