2011 Tour de Bordeaux - Tuesday Morning Chateau Coutet in Barsac

Tuesday Morning, we are off to Chateau Coutet, a sweet wine Chateau in the Barsac area of Bordeaux. Coutet is one of only two First Growth Chateaus in Barsac. (The other is Climens). I had never been sure of the difference between the Barsac and Sauternes areas.  Our host at Coutet, Aline Baly cleared it up.  Barsac is a small appellation within Sauternes. So, all Barsacs are technically Sauternes, but all Sauternes are not Barsacs.  In fact at Chateau Coutet, they call their first wine a Barsac and their second wine a Sauternes.

Aline Baly, the general manager of the Chateau, who has an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and who considers herself "an American" now runs the operation which is owned by her family. A great lady.  They have a really beautiful place with a wonderful barrel room where the wines are aged in new french oak for 36 months.

They also have a great museum area with some interesting old winemaking equipment including special heavy duty presses and  the most interesting thing for me a large shallow wooden vat where, before automated crushers, people would stop the grapes with their feet.  It is a very shallow, elevated, slightly slanted with a drain on one side where a large wooden bucket would fit under the drain to  catch the juice.

The sweet wines at Coutet are generally 75% Semillion, 22% Sauvignon Blanc and 3% Muscadel. All are aged in 100% new french oak and they buy about 400 new barrels  (at about 600 Euros per barrel) per year. That, folks, is a bill of about $350,000 per year just for barrels. Incidentally, 400 barrels is enough for about 120,000 bottles of wine.

 

At out tasting, we tasted a barrel sample of the 2010s and a 1989 which was truly a "melt in you mouth" wine as one of our traveling companions put it.  Both wines were spectacular.  What a treat.

Finally, I also learned an advanced way to taste and spit fine wines, to get the maximum benefit of the flavor, by looking at a photo on the wall which appears below.  On to lunch at Chateau Guiraud. Cheers.