Every Sunday at 7:30 a.m. I'm going deep into my wine cellar to pull out the last of some very great bottles. I promise rare wines for the cellar-builder in very limited quantities, gems of astonishing quality carrying highly pedigreed labels that will tempt the most temperate among us.

So, don't hit the snooze! These wines will be gone, gone, gone, quickly.

Please note: these wines have been in temperature-control storage since they arrived from France.

Yes, 2005 was a superb vintage for Bordeaux's other world-class wine, Sauternes. In fact, Parker rated the vintage a 96! That makes 2005 second only to 2001 in the past decade.

In the fall of 2005, the Sauternes grapes were rotting away down there south of Bordeaux and producing great wines like Chateau Gravas.

It's not easy being a grower in Sauternes. While everyone else is harvesting, you are waiting (sometimes until November) for your pretty and precious grapes to get savagely attacked by the Botrytis mold. And then the mold has the audacity to attack each grape individually so you are making pass after pass through the vineyards to pick just the affected grapes at their moldiest.

Here is how it goes: the mold permits the water within the grape to leak out and get evaporated by the sun. Left behind is intensely concentrated, extremely sweet juice. The most amazing thing is the natural acid stays behind to combine with peachy-flavored sweetness and produce a wine like nothing else in the world.

This is Sauternes: honeyed, peachy, with subtle minerality and acidic backbone, which is what makes it unique. And this is Chateau Gravas.

Chateau Gravas is made from clay-limestone soil and 40-year-old vines. The wine is raised in oak barrels (renewed every three years) for 18 months before bottling. The cepage is 95% Semillon and 5% Sauvignon Blanc. The wine is delicious now, but will age beautifully for another several years. Chateau Gravas is located in the heart of the commune of Barsac. Barsac is a major subregion of Sauternes and generally makes more traditional wines. Richer, more concentrated

I don't think some of you realize how a bottle of Sauternes takes a meal straight out of the ordinary into the highly delectable category. People begin to see you in a different light. Why just the other day someone said to me, "You should get to know John - he knows a lot about wine. I was over for dinner the other night and he served Sauternes."

At our house, it's gotten to the point where it's chilling to think about a melon without a pool of Sauternes and I shrink from figs without the Golden Moldy. And foie gras without the Noble Rot is unimaginable. Let alone a fruit tart left high and dry. Sea scallops in Sauternes sauce is sublime and pistachio ice cream and Sauternes will melt any resistance you've tried to mount against the "peach with the punch".

So give in to its charms and you will be rewarded.

Good morning! Cynthia Hurley

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The Details

Chateau Gravas Sauternes 2005 (750ml - Full bottles)
6 bottles $214
12-bottle case $399 ($33.25)

Only 6 cases left

If you sometimes prefer half bottles just decant in to a half bottle and re-cork the unused half for the future. No problem. I keep an empty half bottle around for that purpose.