CHATEAU D'YQUEM 1er Cru Classe Superieur - Sauternes 2022 HALF
Dessert Wine | France | Bordeaux | Barsac and Sauternes | 37.5cl
£169.95 / £1,019.70 (case)
ABV: 13.5%
Size: 37.5cl
Closure Type: Cork
Country: France
Region: Bordeaux
Sub-Region: Barsac and Sauternes
Wine Style: Sweet
Grapes: Sauvignon Blanc, Semillon
Description
Château d’Yquem 2022 stands as a monumental Sauternes, reflecting a warm vintage that concentrated its flavours while retaining vital acidity. This Premier Cru Supérieur blends Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc, harvested through meticulous successive passes to ensure optimal noble rot.
The bouquet reveals intense aromas of dried apricot, honeycomb, white peach, and delicate saffron, woven with subtle floral notes. On the palate, it is opulent and rich, coating the mouth with luscious marmalade, tropical fruit, and vanilla bean.
Despite its immense sweetness and weight, a brilliant thread of acidity lifts the wine, ensuring balance and preventing heaviness. The finish is extraordinarily long and precise. This is a brilliant sweet wine that will reward decades of patient cellaring.
*****
JAMES SUCKLING 100 points/100
This is a powerful, seductive and lush wine. Ornamented and richer this year than 2021, but there is so much charm and harmony. Long and spicy, with a hint of petrol at the end. It will live forever.
JAMES SUCKLING 18+ points/20
Less obviously oaky than in previous vintages? Or perhaps that is simply the power of the fruit and botrytis, which has an intense marmalade, ginger, honey-glazed flavour. There's a bit of floral character too, and huge persistence. Less sweetly spiced that it sometimes is, but in this young phase there should be much more to come. - Richard Hemming MW
VINOUS - 98/100 Points
"Vivid flavours of clementine, wild honey, quince and tangerine that effortlessly combine. This is a marvellous and quite cerebral Yquem for which patience is required."
THE WINE ADVOCATE - 98 Points
"Exhibiting a remarkably delicate, complex and energetic bouquet of rose, confit citrus, exotic fruits and orange marmalade, it's full-bodied, dense and deep with a pristine balance enhanced by a fleshy core of fruit, bright acids and beautiful, gastronomic bitterness and dry extracts that segue to a long, ethereal, delicately perfumed and refined finish."
Drinking Window: 2034-2074
JAMES SUCKLING - 100 Points
"This is a powerful, seductive and lush wine. Ornamented and richer this year than 2021, but there is so much charm and harmony. Long and spicy, with a hint of petrol at the end. It will live forever."