Botrytis Selection: Tries Successives (Multiple Passes)

Tries successives is a harvesting method in which pickers make several passes through a vineyard, each time taking only the grapes that noble rot (Botrytis cinerea) has reached. Noble rot does not work uniformly but spreads, berry by berry, at varying pace, so for producers with the financial means several rounds of handpicking are required, with multiple passes through the vineyard capturing only grapes that are perfectly affected by the rot. The Sauternes harvest requires meticulous selection with handpicking in successive passes, one grape at a time. Across Bordeaux's sweet whites, the grapes are picked in several passes, and 5 to 9 tries are sometimes necessary.

• At Château d'Yquem, pickers carry out an active selection of the fruit as they go, a further selection is made when the fruit is first deposited into the collecting hod, and a third selection is carried out on arrival at the cellar
• The Yquem harvest is brought in by 200 pickers divided into four teams that work the vineyard section by section
• Beerenauslese is made from individually selected, overripe berries that are usually infected by Botrytis cinerea

In Bordeaux, the hand harvest for sweet white wines generally takes place at the end of September, after the harvest of the grapes for dry whites and reds. As Botrytis cinerea penetrates the grape skin, it creates tiny holes through which water evaporates, concentrating the grapes' acids, sugars, and flavours. Noble rot needs early morning mists followed by warm, sunny afternoons; in Sauternes, the cool waters of the Ciron river flow into the Garonne, and the combination of morning fog and afternoon sunshine creates the conditions for it. If damp conditions persist the berry degrades and is ruined, while warm, sunny and dry afternoons halt the spread of the rot. At Château d'Yquem, each portion of the harvest, differentiated by plot of origin and tri, is handled separately in the cellars before the blend is assembled.

• In Tokaj, the Tisza and Bodrog rivers meet, and most autumn mornings see the region enveloped in fog, followed by sunny and breezy afternoons
• Yquem assembles a preliminary blend about 10 months after the harvest, leaving 10% to 20% of the lots to be assessed later
• In the winery, pressing is carried out slowly and carefully, or, in the case of Tokaji, while the berries are macerated with fermenting juice or a youthful base wine

The pressed juice is extremely rich and concentrated. The residual sugar in a Sauternes varies from year to year depending on the level of noble rot, usually between 130g/l and 150g/l, though it can go much higher, and Botrytis cinerea bestows over 50 different aromas and flavours on Sauternes. Noble rot wines exhibit higher levels of the aroma compound phenylacetaldehyde. Botrytis also infuses the grapes with its own aromatic compounds, which can include honey, marmalade, ginger and beeswax.

• WSET gives Sauternes a wider sugar range of 100 to 220g/L; Tokaji wines tend to combine intense sweetness with vibrant acidity
• Writing for Decanter, Caroline Gilby MW calls Aszú wines incredibly well balanced with vibrant acidity despite their sweetness
• Yeasts do not ferment all of the natural sugar in Beerenauslese and Trockenbeerenauslese, so such wines generally have very little alcohol

Dessert wines made from noble rot include the sélection de grains nobles of Alsace, Germany's sweeter styles, Sauternes in Bordeaux, and Tokaji in Hungary. In Barsac, experienced pickers make multiple passes through a vineyard searching for botrytized grape clusters. In Tokaj, the Aszú grapes must be harvested laboriously one by one. In Germany, Trockenbeerenauslese is made from shrunken, shriveled, noble rot berries that cannot be harvested every vintage.

• Sauternes has 27 châteaux ranked in the 1855 classification, and Château d'Yquem is the only Premier Cru Supérieur
• Trockenbeerenauslese is a German and Austrian quality wine category in which individually selected, shrivelled, over-ripe grapes are cut from the bunches
• In 2013 Tokaj regulations removed the three and four puttonyos categories, and all Aszú must now be the equivalent of at least five puttonyos

The number of tries at Château d'Yquem may be as high as eleven in some vintages, and the estate's declared average yield over multiple vintages is 8 hl/ha. Average production is some 100,000 bottles, and Yquem decided not to release any wine from the poor 2012 vintage. On its own site, Yquem describes a sense of quiet confidence throughout the successive rounds of picking in 2021, when every plot was mottled with Botrytis cinerea, and says that in 2022 it had to wait until the morning of 15 October for the rot to spread. In Tokaj, the word puttonyos refers to the bucket traditionally used to collect Aszú berries.

• In 2011 a bottle of Yquem's 1811 vintage sold for a record £75,000
• Tokaji sweetness was traditionally based on the number of puttony of Aszú berries added to each 136L gönci barrel, but today the classification is based on residual sugar
• The most expensive Trockenbeerenauslese wines of recent years were auctioned for well over €1,000 per bottle

Yields are extremely low, not only because the grapes are hand-harvested at their optimum but also because of the vastly reduced volume of liquid inside them. A great Sauternes property soaks up money through low yields, perhaps a quarter of those from a top Médoc property, and the immense costs of harvesting. Grey rot, the destructive counterpart to noble rot, is caused by excessive moisture in the vineyard and can cause severe crop losses. When the weather is less than ideal, producers may face insufficient onset or even no botrytis at all.

• Harvesting is labour intensive and costly, requiring hand-harvesting and several passes through the vineyard over a two month period
• Yquem's very low yields come partly from strict selection but mainly from dehydration of the fruit by botrytis
• Drawn-out fermentations are the norm and need close watching to stave off threats including refermentation triggered by the high sugar levels

Primary sources (the Bordeaux wine council CIVB, the German Wine Institute DWI, WSET, and Château d'Yquem's own site for its own harvests): https://www.bordeaux.com/en/mag/blog/what-is-noble-rot/, https://www.bordeaux.com/en/designations/graves-sauternes/sauternes/, https://www.bordeaux.com/en/mag/blog/the-sweet-wines-of-bordeaux/, https://www.bordeaux.com/fr/mag/blog/quand-la-pourriture-se-fait-noble/, https://www.winesofgermany.com/our-wine/quality-standards/quality-standard/449/pr%C3%A4dikat-categories, https://www.winesofgermany.com/our-wine/wine-tasting/wine-tasting/192/noble-sweet-wines, https://www.wsetglobal.com/knowledge-centre/blog/2024/tokaji-decoded-the-science-behind-hungary-s-iconic-sweet-wines, https://2023.yquem.fr/en. Secondary: https://www.decanter.com/learn/botrytis-noble-rot-explained-474590/, https://www.decanter.com/learn/advice/tokaji-sweetness-measured-aszu-430218/, https://www.decanter.com/learn/whats-the-difference-between-sauternes-and-tokaji-aszu-ask-decanter-472562/, https://www.thewinedoctor.com/bordeaux/yquem_7.shtml, https://www.decanter.com/wine/producer-profiles/chateau-d-yquem-producer-profile-245936/, https://www.decanter.com/learn/trockenbeerenauslese-45741/. Last verified 2026-10-05