Semillon
This is the main white wine variety of Bordeaux with the biggest planting outside France in Chile, where it accounts for about 75 per cent of all white wine produced.
In South Africa it goes by the unusual name of greengrape. In her book Vines, Grapes and Wines, Jancis Robinson says: 'In most of the world's vineyards where it is planted, it sits around sullenly, like an overweight schoolgirl, showing awkward fatness or just plain dullness in the wine it produces. In odd places though, as if under the spell of a fairy god mother, it can be transformed into a raving beauty.
The variety certainly seems to have found a happy home in the
Adelaide Hills, where Penfolds, Petaluma and Nepenthe for example, have
produced some very fine wines.
At tastings people often refer to
the variety as being grassy or herbaceous. More producers are now
tending to blend it with sauvignon blanc. In France the combination
provides the base for the great luscious sweet wines of Sauternes and
Barsac, where the fruit has been affected by botrytis.
