2019 Klein Constantia Vin de Constance (500 mL) 500 ml

With a 98-point score from Decanter, the 2019 Vin de Constance came in as a top sweet wine of the vintage, a point ahead of Château d’Yquem. Also boasting 97 points from James Suckling, it’s as good as sweet wine gets, and it will age beautifully for decades.

Few wines can match Vin de Constance’s list of admirers: George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson drank it during the Revolution. Frederick the Great, Louis XVI, Charles Baudelaire, Jane Austen, and Charles Dickens all were fervent devotees. Napoleon, even when exiled, had more than 1,000 liters of it shipped to him, and on his deathbed he reportedly refused everything else. 

Founded in 1685, Klein Constantia predates many of the Bordeaux châteaux now considered the gold standard for sweet-wine production. Having survived multiple ownership changes and even a century of nonproduction, they rocketed back to prominence when 100-point Bordeaux winemakers Bruno Prats of Château Cos d’Estournel and Hubert de Boüard of Château Angélus took ownership stakes in the revered property.

Vin de Constance is the winery’s modern re-creation of “Constantia,” as the wine was historically known. It’s made from organically farmed Muscat de Frontignan, a variety used to make vins doux naturels in France’s Languedoc-Roussillon town of Frontignan-la Peyrade.

Due to its thick skin, the grape almost never develops botrytis (as is required in Sauternes), so sweet Muscat de Frontignan wines derive their sweetness solely from the concentrated sugars in grapes that have dried and turned to raisins naturally. Highly concentrated and decadently unctuous, it also has an undercurrent of fresh acidity that keeps the palate juicy.

It’s a wine for the ages, as captivating today as it was centuries ago.