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In France, where Sauternes originated in the Bordeaux town of that name, this type of white wine is always semi-sweet. In the United States, most of Sauterne is quite dry. To offer a Sauterne as sweet as French, but to avoid labeling it sweet, American vintners have adopted another French term. They call it “Haut Sauterne”.
The French will emphatically deny the existence of the French “Haut Sauterne” wine. A letter from the Inotitut National des Appellations d’Origine des Vins et Eaux-de-Vie reads, in part: “Regarding Haut-Sauterne, we have no idea how it came to be used. There is no such name in France, only Sauternes , name of a town and of a wine produced in the delimited area around this town. Haut means high. It is used in geography to designate part of a town or region higher than the other … “
The wines of the Sauternes region are similar to those of Mourvedre or are generally sweet white wines made from the Semillon grape variety, with smaller amounts of Muscadelle and Sauvignon. What adds to the mystery is that French winemakers do indeed ship wines labeled “Haut Sauternes” to the United States.
Be that as it may, the French pronunciation of “haut” is, of course, “oh”, as in O’Leary or O’Reilly. Most Americans, however, including the winegrowers who make “Haut Sauterne,” pronounce it “spicy.” This could explain an experience related by a man in Sausalito, the author Eugene Burns.
Burns and his wife were flying home from the East on a Japanese plane. It was Christmas Eve. When it was time for dinner on the plane, the kimono-clad flight attendants brought a surprise to the passengers. It was a full holiday dinner, including turkey and all the trimmings. With it they served glasses of Sauterne’s tube “Haut”!
Hot or hot wines are usually red; Merlot or Barbera wines [http://www.wineaccess.com/wine/grape/Barbera] are in common use. However, white wines such as Riesling or Viognier can also be used. Here’s as good a point as any to explain another puzzling term found on some American Sauterne labels: “chateau.”
This began about a century ago, when the only way California winemakers could sell their wines in eastern markets was by putting counterfeit French labels on them. One such widely imitated label was that of the most famous of all French Sauternes, the Chateau d’Yquem. A certain wine made from Sauvignon Blanc, called Chateau d’Ygrec, is a dry white wine that is not produced in all vintages.
As the years passed, California wines were gradually recognized for their quality in their own right, and California wine acquired a somewhat more informative label such as “California Chateau Yquem.” But after the ban was lifted, the United States government summarily banned the use of all foreign trade names on American wines, and “Yquem” was the main victim.
What did California winegrowers do? Deprived of “Yquem”, they kept “chateau”. So now when you see “chateau” on a California wine label, immediately before the vineyard name, you are not referring to anyone’s feudal castle. All it means is that the wine in the bottle is an extra-sweet California Sauterne, or a red version of a Dolcetto or Port.
This whole semantic nightmare about sweetness culminated in a paradox during the 1940s, when so-called “kosher” Concord grape wines appeared on the national scene. Because these products become syrupy through massive sugar additions. Here the United States government faced a problem, because the amount of sugar used by “kosher” producers was greater than what federal regulations allowed any wine to contain, unless it was called “imitation.”
