Botrytis sweet wine
Noble rot dehydrates the berry and adds glycerol and its own flavours. Sauternes and Tokaji, and the reason those wines taste of marmalade and saffron rather than just of sugar.
The numbers
Each bar drawn against all 30 styles
Alcohol
11-14%
11% - 14%
Titratable acidity
6-9 g/L
6 - 9
pH
3.2-3.7
3.2 - 3.7
Residual sugar
100-250 g/L
100 - 250
Serve at
8-11 C
Worth opening after
2 years
and it keeps improving to roughly 40 years
Sulphite at pH 3.45
36 mg/L
free SO2, for 0.8 mg/L molecular
What goes wrong
Confusing noble rot with grey rot. The same fungus in wet weather is a disaster, and sorting is the difference between the two.
Usually made from
At least one of these figures is set by an appellation or labelling rule somewhere. The rest are typical published analyses of commercial examples.
More sweet and late harvest