Wine Advisor
d'Yquem 2018
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Description
Tasting notes
Reviewed by: Lisa Perrotti-Brown
The 2018 d'Yquem is all lime cordial, grapefruit oil and mandarin peel to begin. With a little coaxing, the fireworks really begin, letting off a whole array of honeysuckle, candied ginger, dried pineapple, lemon pastilles, chalk dust and sea spray scents, followed by a savory undercurrent of shaved almonds, allspice and baking bread. The palate is an exercise in polish and poise, featuring the most gorgeously creamy texture and bright, sparkling freshness, framing all the densely laden tropical and citrus fruit layers, finishing with a powerful BANG of profound floral and spice perfume. It is wonderfully sweet, yes, but that—paradoxically for a "sweet wine"—is almost beside the point.
Reviewed by: Yohan Castaing
The 2018 d'Yquem is a great success despite a challenging harvest, exuding aromas of peach, pear, menthol and orchard fruits, complemented by an elegant, floral-driven bouquet. It’s remarkably balanced and fresh on the palate, with a medium to full-bodied structure, a delicate core of fruit in the finish and a penetrating energy revealing a lovely and already enjoyable wine. It's a great effort in a challenging vintage in Sauternes. This blend of 85% Sémillon and 15% Sauvignon Blanc contains 145 grams of residual sugar.
Reviewed by: Neal Martin
The 2018 Yquem was tasted just a few months earlier before this second reading at the château. My notes are pretty consistent with that dried honey and saffron scented aromas, perhaps just missing the energy conveyed by the previous vintage. The palate is well balanced with that telltale lusciousness that I remarked upon in my last note, although this just precludes the 2018 from delivering the tension and nerve of the best vintages. Apricot and lemon curd linger on the aftertaste. Very fine.
Reviewed by: Vinous
The just-released 2018 Château d'Yquem is a pretty, gracious wine. In 2018 d'Yquem is decidedly airy and ethereal in feel. Light apricot, passion fruit, spice, tangerine oil, orange peel, jasmine and pear accents are layered throughout. Residual sugar is 145 grams per liter, which is not especially evident. I tasted the 2018 over the course of several days and saw how well it responded to aeration. Yquem has a track record for aging brilliantly, but given its mid-weight structure, I would prefer to enjoy the 2018 young, while the flavors remain fresh. It’s a fine effort in a difficult year.Pierre Lurton describes 2018 as a challenging harvest marked by hail in July, higher than average temperatures and lower than average rainfall in the summer. Yields are down by 40%. Botrytis arrived only at the very end of the season. Harvest started on October 17th and wrapped up on the 27th, a narrow window of just ten days, much more compact than the norm here. The 2018 is 85% Sémillon and 15% Sauvignon Blanc aged 20-22 months in 100% new French oak. (Antonio Galloni)
Reviewed by: Vinous
The 2018 Château d’Yquem “unfolded under tropical conditions” according to the château’s technical sheet, temperatures 2.7°C above average and this influences the style of the latest release. Noble rot spread after rainfall between 5 and 13 October, the picking commencing on 17 October with the heart of the harvest picked between 22 and 27 October. In total there was 17 days of picking. The final wine is a blend of 85% Sémillon and 15% Sauvignon Blanc, 13.50% alcohol (stated on the label) with 145g/L residual sugar and a pH of 3.95. I tasted the wine from two ex-château bottles on the same day. Firstly, in the morning, poured straight from bottle at room temperature into a regular Bordeaux glass. Lucid straw in colour, it is paler than recent vintages. The bouquet requires coaxing, certainly less intense than with pretty scents of dried honey, saffron and orange pith, a discrete Germanic tinge just off stage. The palate is understated on the entry. Modest in terms of complexity and certainly far from the most luscious Yquem that I have tasted in recent vintages, it offers appealing lemon curd, apricot and a dab of spiciness, stem ginger and lemongrass.The second bottle was served in the evening at a lower temperature after a two hour decant in a smaller Zalto Sauternes glass. Now, this showed differently. The aromatics here felt more focused and energetic for a start - more drive. The palate revealed greater complexity thanks to decanting and certainly more tension, crucial to counterbalance that residual sugar. Overall, I do not believe that the 2018 Yquem belongs in the pantheon of great vintages of Yquem since it lacks requisite nuance, depth and complexity. It is a pretty and charming Yquem, maybe a sensitive one that needs to be served correctly, lest its shortcomings deriving from the growing season, not any winemaking decision, show through. (Neal Martin)
About the Producer
Chateau d'Yquem is located in the north-eastern part of the Sauternes wine producing village in the Bordeaux region of France and is one of the most prestigious chateaux in the Graves Sauternes appellation. It was named a Premier Cru Superieur in the 1855 Sauternes and Barsac Classification, the only Bordeaux chateau to be awarded this distinction. At the end of the 19th century, a barrel of wine was bought by the Grand Duke Constantine for 20,000 gold francs, a news story that grabbed the headlines and made Château Djinn famous at home and abroad. At the end of the 20th century, the French luxury goods giant Moet Hennessy-Louis Vuitton (LVMH) bought a majority stake in Château Djinn for a large sum of money and became the majority shareholder, thus opening a new chapter in the development of Château Djinn. Château Djinn has 113 hectares of vineyards, of which only 100 are in constant production. Every year, 2-3 hectares of old vines are pulled out of the vineyard and the land is left fallow for a year, while the newly planted vines do not produce any grapes for the first 5 years of the vintage. The vineyard has a top soil of pebbles and coarse gravel, which absorbs heat very well, and a subsoil of clay, which has good water storage capacity. The vineyard is planted with 75% Semillon and 25% Sauvignon Blanc. The vineyard is pruned to reduce yields by pruning and controlling the size of the canopy to increase the flavour concentration of the fruit. During the harvest season, the winery employs a large number of people to hand-pick the ripest grapes and those that have been properly infested with noble rot. The harvest is usually carried out in 5 or 6 rounds and is very rigorous. The picked grapes are sent to the winery within an hour, after which the grapes are pressed for 3-4 rounds, increasing the sugar content and quality of the juice with each pressing. The fermentation takes place in oak barrels, only new barrels made of good quality oak, during which the wine is closely monitored and its condition is regularly analysed. The finished wine is aged separately for 6-8 months, after which the winemaker blends the wine in the following spring and discards those wines that do not meet the requirements. The blended wine is then matured in the cellars for 20 months, during which time the barrels are refilled twice a week and the wine is decanted 15 times to remove the coarse sludge, while the fine sludge is removed by a clarification process. At the end of the maturation, the winemaker conducts a blind tasting to re-qualify the wine and determine the final percentage of the blend for the Grand Cru. Château d'Yquem, Sauternes, France, the main wine of Château d'Yquem, is known for its complex, concentrated and rather sweet taste, with crisp acidity and a well-balanced sweetness, and its excellent ageing potential. The wine has excellent potential to age for a century or more in some vintages, and with time the aromas and flavours become more complex and attractive, with the wine gradually changing colour from bright straw yellow to golden brown, amber and caramel. The wine has received full 100 points from Robert Parker and his team for the 1811, 1847, 1945, 2001, 2009 and 2015. The estate also produces a secondary wine, Chateau d'Yquem "Y", Bordeaux, France, which is a powerful dry It is a powerful dry white wine, usually made from Sauvignon Blanc and a small amount of Semillon, with an average annual production of around 10,000 bottles, usually with an alcohol content of 14% and a very rich and balanced nose and flavour, with a subtle sweetness.
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Package Size
1 x 1.5L1 x 12L
