Making good wine is rarely straightforward. But making a sweet wine using the noble rot is asking the gods. This twist of nature does produce great wine, but only if the vintner is willing to sacrifice. TEXT HUIB EDIXHOVEN
When you leave strawberries too long, they often fall prey to a greyish fungus - an image that makes most people horrified to their toes. A thick, downy, grey-black layer of fluff has pulled itself over the fruit. That is the grey mould or on its chiquest: botrytis cinerea. It is almost impossible to imagine that this voracious fungus has a very different face besides its pernicious side. Yet it does. Wine lovers worldwide mouth water precisely when they hear its name and winemakers even risk entire harvests for it.
Grapes as ashes
Under humid conditions, this fungus develops on many fruits and plants. Yet the name botrytis cinerea is directly derived from the grape. Indeed, it means 'grapes as ash'. If conditions remain humid, things go completely wrong: the grape splits open, the fungus attacks full on and little is left but those 'ashes'. In that fateful case, the term noble mould is no longer appropriate and the grapes must be written off.
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