2022 Ch Bastor-Lamontagne Sauternes 375ml

97 POINTS: The third Bordeaux wine this year from the magnificent 2022 vintage is a Sauternes – a season during which sweet-wine growers didn’t have quite as easy a time of it as their red-wine peers. Sauternes needs a drenching shower or two towards the end of the season to start botrytis on its way, and in 2022, little rain came until late September. The result was a lengthy, thumb-twiddling, finger-drumming vintage which mingled pre-rain raisined grapes with post-rain botrytised grapes. This particular Sauternes may well have a component of both harvests in its blend: its deep colour and lusciously sweet flavour (145 g/l sugar) are generous and gratifying, but you’ll find some of the butter-roast notes of botrytis, too, in both aroma and flavour. It’s also an unusual Sauternes in having more Sauvignon Blanc in the blend (55 per cent) than Sémillon.