White grape
Sémillon
A versatile white grape used for dry, blended and botrytised sweet wines, with a distinctive ability to gain waxy and toasty complexity with age.
Where it grows
Works in moderate to warm conditions; thin skins can make disease and botrytis either a risk or, in specific sweet-wine contexts, an asset.
What it usually feels like
Think of this as the grape’s default setting, not its destiny. Change the climate, the vintage or what happens in the winery and it can turn into a rather different beast.
Acidity
Low to medium
How fresh, tart or mouth-watering the wine tends to feel.
Tannin / grip
Minimal
Most white wines have little drying tannin because the juice is usually separated from the skins early. Skin-contact styles can feel grippier.
Body
Medium to full
How light, rounded or weighty the wine feels in the mouth.
Aroma intensity
Moderate
How strongly the wine tends to smell before you even taste it.
What tends to turn up in the glass
No, nobody put any of that in it.
Wine people use fruit, herbs, flowers and spice as shorthand because saying “it tastes like itself” is not terribly helpful. These are the clues that crop up most often; place, ripeness and winemaking decide which ones shout and which merely wave from the back.
Then the winemaker gets involved
Same grape. Different decisions. Quite a different drink.
Once the grapes reach the winery, the choices start piling up. Steel can keep things brisk, skin contact adds grip, lees can broaden the texture and oak can change the whole mood. None is automatically better — they simply pull the wine in different directions.
Stainless steel
Keeps oak and oxygen largely out of the way, so the fruit and acidity get to do the talking.
Oak
Oak can add texture, spice, toast and sometimes vanilla. New oak tends to announce itself; older barrels are usually rather better behaved.
Blending with Sauvignon Blanc
The grape becomes part of the conversation rather than delivering the entire speech on its own.
Botrytised sweet wine
Noble rot shrivels the grapes and concentrates everything — sugar, flavour and, when it works, quite a lot of drama.
Now put it next to something else.
Wine makes far more sense side by side. Try this grape against something similar and the differences suddenly stop being theory — more acidity here, more perfume there, perhaps a bit more weight or considerably less restraint.
Compare with
Sauvignon Blanc
An aromatic white grape known for high freshness and a range of citrus, herbal and tropical characters depending on site and ripeness.
Open grape
Compare with
Chardonnay
A highly adaptable white grape that can produce lean, high-acid wines, rich barrel-fermented styles and important sparkling wines.
Open grape
Compare with
Chenin Blanc
A high-acid white grape with exceptional stylistic range, including dry, sweet, sparkling and long-lived wines.
Open grape