Semillon

Also known as: Sémillon (France), Greengrape (Australia, historical)

Semillon is a variety with two faces. In Bordeaux, the basis for sweet wines from Sauternes – botrytis-driven, honey-laden, age-worthy. In Australia, by contrast, often vinified dry, with the ability to develop for decades in the cellar without ever seeing oak. The variety oxidises slowly, developing waxy notes, lanolin, toast – even when it appears neutral in its youth.

What Semillon needs is time. Young wines show little profile, but with bottle age a peculiar intensity emerges, not from fruit but from texture. In the range stands Corzano e Paterno from Tuscany, an unusual location for this Atlantic variety – but there too it shows what Semillon can do when met with patience.