Château d’Yquem 2001, Sauternes 1er Cru Supérieur

Château d’Yquem 2001 Vintage

From Château d’Yquem: “A picture-perfect growing season, with a dry month of September (sunny and moderately warm) that was ideal for retaining acidity and freshness. A few showers came at just the right time, and an anticyclone completed a fortuitous set of circumstances that induced widespread botrytisation. The grapes showed rare concentration and great purity. This is clearly a benchmark vintage.”

Château d’Yquem 2001 is a true modern classic that lives up to its multiple 100-point scores from critics like Neal Martin, Robert Parker, Lisa Perrotti-Brown, and James Suckling.

The World’s Best Dessert Wine?

Château d’Yquem is arguably the world’s best dessert wine, certainly one of the world’s most famous.  Chateau d’Yquem is bottled as a Sauternes 1er Cru Superieur the only sweet Bordeaux wine in this top category. The wine is made in the French appellation of Sauternes in Bordeaux. Sauternes is located within the Graves sub-region of Bordeaux on the left bank of the Garonne River.

Château d’Yquem History

Château d’Yquem has a long history; there are records of vines grown at the Château since 1711. The most recent owners, the Lur-Saluces family first entered the estate in 1785 when Françoise-Joséphine de Sauvage d’Yquem married Count Louis-Amédée de Lur-Saluces.

Acquisition by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton

The estate remained in the Lur-Saluces family, albeit with various familial wranglings and declining sales in the 1970s et al., until 1996 when French luxury goods giant LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton bought 55% of Château d’Yquem from the family of the Comte Alexandre de Lur-Saluces. The Comte remained in charge until 2004 when he retired and, since then, Pierre Lurton.

Château d’Yquem Vineyards

Château d’Yquem has 126 hectares of vineyards in the Sauternes appellation with plantings of 80% Sémillon and 20% Sauvignon Blanc. The hand harvest is very carefully planned. Every vintage, the harvest takes around 6 passes through the vineyard to ensure that only grapes infected with noble rot (Botrytis cinerea) are selected. Yields are low at about 9 hectolitres per hectare compared to the norm of 12 to 20 in Sauternes.

Vinification

• Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon grapes are pressed three or four times
• The must is then barrel fermented in new French oak barrels
• Wine from grapes picked on the same day is aged separately for 6–8 months
• In the spring following the harvest, a preliminary blend is made from selected batches
• Taste tests and laboratory analyses are carried out
• Wines that do not meet the Château’s strict standards are set aside (declassified) – if a vintage is not considered good enough to bear Yquem’s name, the whole vintage is sold off anonymously.
• The retained barrels are transferred to the ageing cellar
• The wine remains in the barrel for 20 months
• Every barrel is topped up twice a week
• Every barrel is racked 15 times to remove heavy lees
• Average production is approximately 65,000 bottles per vintage