Yquem

History

Château d'Yquem's recorded history stretches back to the sixteenth century, when the estate was granted to the Sauvage family. It passed through marriage to the Lur-Saluces family in 1785, who would steward it for over two hundred years and cement its reputation as the unrivalled summit of Sauternes. When the 1855 classification was drawn up for the Paris Exhibition, Yquem stood apart from all other Sauternes properties and was designated Premier Cru Supérieur, a rank created specifically for it and shared by no one else.

The Lur-Saluces family produced a long line of committed owners, most notably Alexandre de Lur-Saluces, who managed the estate from the 1970s through the late 1990s and oversaw some of its most celebrated modern vintages. The transition from family ownership came in 1999, when LVMH acquired a controlling stake after a prolonged and occasionally acrimonious negotiation. Alexandre de Lur-Saluces remained at the helm for several years after the acquisition before eventually departing. Pierre Lurton, who also directs Château Cheval Blanc, has served as managing director since 2004 and has guided the estate through a period of continued investment and consolidation under the LVMH umbrella.

Yquem famously produced no wine under its own label in 1910, 1915, 1930, 1951, 1952, 1964, 1972, 1974, and 1992, years when the quality of the botrytised harvest was judged insufficient. That discipline, maintained across both family and corporate ownership, has done as much as any single vintage to sustain the estate's reputation.

Vineyards

The estate covers roughly one hundred hectares under vine in the commune of Sauternes, sitting at the highest elevation in the appellation on a gently rolling hill that drains exceptionally well in wet conditions. The soils are a complex mix of gravel, sand, and clay over a limestone subsoil, with the clay component helping to retain just enough moisture during dry summers. Semillon dominates the planting at around eighty percent, with Sauvignon Blanc making up the remainder.

The elevated position and the particular microclimate of the Ciron valley nearby, where cool and warm air masses meet in autumn, make Yquem one of the most reliably affected sites in Sauternes for Botrytis cinerea. Harvest is conducted entirely by hand, with pickers moving through the vineyard in multiple successive passes over several weeks to select only grapes at the precise stage of noble rot. In a poor vintage this selection process yields virtually nothing usable. Specific farming certifications have not been publicly emphasized by the estate, though the vineyard management is understood to be careful and conservative.

Winemaking

Fermentation takes place in new French oak barrels, into which the intensely concentrated, botrytised must is transferred directly. The wines age in oak for approximately three and a half years before bottling, longer than virtually any other estate in the appellation. This extended barrel aging contributes to the oxidative richness and structural complexity that distinguish Yquem from other Sauternes. New oak is used for each vintage, which adds to the considerable cost of production and to the wine's capacity for decades of development in bottle.

The estate also produces Y de Yquem, a dry white wine made from Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc grown on the same property. It is not made every year and historically appeared only in vintages unsuitable for the sweet wine, though production has become somewhat more regular in recent decades. Y (pronounced "Ygrec") is fermented and aged in oak and can be a serious, full-bodied white Bordeaux, though it occupies a different category entirely from the grand vin. The two wines represent the full spectrum of what the Yquem vineyards can produce depending on harvest conditions and winemaking intent.