Barsac

Château Nairac sits in the north of Barsac, the flatter half of Sauternes where red sandy clay lies only fifty to eighty centimetres over limestone bedrock - shallower soils than Sauternes proper, and the reason Barsac tends to give the fresher, more mineral reading of the same grapes. Sémillon does almost all the work here, around 90% of the planting, with a little Sauvignon Blanc and Muscadelle behind it.

What sets the house apart is how hard it leans on wood: fermentation in new oak and then roughly three years in barrel, against the eighteen months to two years more usual among the classed growths. The wines are correspondingly oak-marked when young and want keeping.

2003 was the heatwave vintage. Fruit was fully ripe by the end of August, and light rain in the first week of September set botrytis running uniformly - though much of what concentrated the grapes that year was passerillage, raisining on the vine in the heat, as much as noble rot. By late September bunches were carrying 25 to 30% potential alcohol, high enough that some cellars had yeasts stall outright.