The story of a great French wine that has become the most prestigious in the world – Château d’Yquem, or excellence since four centuries. To be placed on tables this festive season.
We must head to Sauternais, a beautiful small region hidden in the vallée de la Garonne. There must be a strict micro-climate, but well administrated in order to discover the Chateau d’Yquem and its grape. The domaine, four centuries old is 170 hectares large. There, the vines are treated like a princess; it is subject to no chemicals and its vines are inspected and then picked by hand in full respect of ancestral tradition. Inherited across 12 generations! We find two legendary French grape varieties: the Sémillon and the Sauvignon. Submitted to a very regular climate and associated to exceptional soils – Yquem is a liquor-like wine, at once warm and light.
To breath in its gold-colored robe is to fill oneself with floods of intense ripe fruits (mirabelle plum, apricot) and dried fruits (fig, quince). The famous nectar also presents exotic notes of mango and spice that forms subtle and tickling perfumes, as Pierre Lurton – chef de cave d’Yquem – likes to say. On the palate its amplitude is incomparable, this wine deploys opulence. And then there is a complex refinement that meddles an infinite smoothness, a strong yet delicate velvet and an exquisite softness that carries it all…
Château d’Yquem is the first premier cru superieur of all the Sauternes ranked crus by Napoleon III in 1855. Its submission to nature, which is to say to a capricious nature that rules over its hills, creates its preciousness, its excellence and exclusive character. About one year in ten, the domaine – unsatisfied by the results of its vineyard, renounces to put its harvest in bottle. It is making the choice to forever bring to the name of d’Yquem a demanding sense of quality rarely observed elsewhere. This highly prestigious wine is an incarnation of French luxury: a savoir-vivre entirely. What fills the glass when one pours this magical sap, this harmonious liquid, this drink that is soft to the eyes, is probably a sense of grandeur.
A mythical wine that provokes in all instant emotions. To name a few palates that have vibrated to these notes, that of Louis XIV, Napoléon III or even Thomas Jefferson, who after a visit to France in 1787, wrote that it was the best French white wine. Before ordering some for his general, “I have persuaded our President, the General Washington, to try a sample. He demands thirty dozens, Sir and I ask two dozens for myself”. Visibly, the sample has since conquered as the Château d’Yquem counts among the most prestigious and iconic wines in history! Something to make the end of year festivities even more exceptional!