Producer Bordeaux, France
Château d'Yquem
Château d'Yquem is in the village of Sauternes, about forty kilometres south-east of Bordeaux, between the left bank of the Garonne and the pine forest of the Landes. When the 1855 classification was drawn up, the sweet wines of Sauternes and Barsac were ranked in their own right, and exactly one property was placed above all of them, in a category of its own: Premier Cru Supérieur. That property was Yquem, and no other estate has ever joined it there. It belongs to LVMH today.
To understand why anyone pays what people pay for this wine, you have to understand how it is made, because it is closer to farming a fungus than to conventional winemaking. The Ciron, a cold little river running out of the Landes, meets the warmer Garonne at the edge of the appellation. Where they meet, autumn mornings fill with mist, and the mist is followed by warm sunshine. Those conditions suit Botrytis cinerea, the noble rot, which settles on ripe grapes, punctures the skins and lets water evaporate out, leaving sugar, acid and flavour behind at extraordinary concentration.
Noble rot does not arrive evenly or on schedule. It comes in patches, berry by berry, over weeks. So the harvest in Sauternes is not an event but a campaign: pickers go through the vineyard three to five separate times, sometimes more, taking only the berries that are properly botrytised on each pass, and in a difficult year the whole thing can run on for months. It is the most expensive way to bring in a crop that anyone has yet devised, and it is why an off year can end with very little wine.
The grapes are Sémillon and Sauvignon Blanc, the two varieties that carry the whole appellation, with Sémillon in the lead because its skin takes botrytis well and it gives the wine its texture and its weight. Sauvignon Blanc brings the freshness. That balance of high sugar and real acidity is the whole trick: without the acidity the sugar would be cloying, and it is the tension between them that lets a great Sauternes stay fresh for fifty years.
Yquem thinks in decades, and the great runs of vintages, such as 1988, 1989 and 1990, are spoken of together. That tells you something about how the estate sees itself. These are not wines made to be drunk this year.
A wine this intense goes a long way. A half-bottle is a generous serving for two people at the end of a meal, and a full bottle of Sauternes is more than most tables ever finish.
Winery at Sauternes, Bordeaux · Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon · £230.00 a bottle
