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. Decanter explains that 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 Bordeaux wine council (CIVB) says the Sauternes harvest requires meticulous selection with handpicking in successive passes, one grape at a time. Its French-language site adds that the grapes are picked in several passes and that 5 to 9 tries are sometimes necessary.

• At Château d'Yquem, The Wine Doctor reports, 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 same report says the Yquem harvest is brought in by 200 pickers divided into four teams that work the vineyard section by section
• The German Wine Institute explains that 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, according to the Bordeaux wine council's French-language site. As Botrytis cinerea penetrates the grape skin, it creates tiny holes through which water evaporates, concentrating the grapes' acids, sugars, and flavours, as WSET describes. 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, the Bordeaux wine council explains. Decanter notes that 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, according to The Wine Doctor and Decanter.

• In Tokaj, the Tisza and Bodrog rivers meet, and most autumn mornings see the region enveloped in fog, followed by sunny and breezy afternoons (Decanter)
• Decanter reports that 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, Decanter notes, 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 Bordeaux wine council's site says the pressed juice is extremely rich and concentrated, and that 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 it credits Botrytis cinerea with bestowing over 50 different aromas and flavours on Sauternes. The council's site also says science has shown that noble rot wines exhibit higher levels of the aroma compound phenylacetaldehyde. Decanter adds that botrytis infuses the grapes with its own aromatic compounds, which can include honey, marmalade, ginger and beeswax.

• WSET gives Sauternes a sugar range of 100 to 220g/L and describes Tokaji wines as combining intense sweetness with vibrant acidity
• Decanter's Caroline Gilby MW writes that Aszú wines are incredibly well balanced with vibrant acidity despite their sweetness
• The German Wine Institute notes that yeasts do not ferment all of the natural sugar in Beerenauslese and Trockenbeerenauslese, so such wines generally have very little alcohol

Decanter names the sélection de grains nobles of Alsace, Germany's sweeter styles, Sauternes in Bordeaux, and Tokaji in Hungary among the dessert wines made from noble rot. In Barsac, the Bordeaux wine council says, experienced pickers make multiple passes through a vineyard searching for botrytized grape clusters. In Tokaj, Decanter reports, the Aszú grapes must be harvested laboriously one by one. In Germany, the German Wine Institute describes Trockenbeerenauslese as 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, according to the Bordeaux wine council
• Decanter defines Trockenbeerenauslese as 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 (Decanter)

The Wine Doctor reports that the number of tries at Château d'Yquem may be as high as eleven in some vintages, and that the estate's average yield over multiple vintages is declared as 8 hl/ha. Decanter's producer profile gives average production as some 100,000 bottles and reports that 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, Decanter explains.

• Decanter's Yquem profile records that in 2011 a bottle of the 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 (Decanter)
• The German Wine Institute reports that the most expensive Trockenbeerenauslese wines of recent years were auctioned for well over €1,000 per bottle

Decanter notes that 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, and its Yquem profile says 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, according to the Bordeaux wine council. Decanter adds that producers may face insufficient onset or even no botrytis at all when the weather is less than ideal.

• The Bordeaux wine council's site says harvesting is labour intensive and costly, requiring hand-harvesting and several passes through the vineyard over a two month period
• The Wine Doctor attributes Yquem's very low yields partly to strict selection but mainly to dehydration of the fruit by botrytis
• Drawn-out fermentations are the norm, and Decanter notes they 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 2026-09-28