1983 | Château d'Yquem | Sauternes

The 1983 vintage of Yquem is drinking beautifully and has reached a lovely, tertiary stage of its evolution that still retains the vibrancy of youth to go along with all of the additional layers of complexity that bottle age brings. The bouquet wafts from the glass in a refined blend of apricots, honey, barley sugar, chalky soil tones, new leather and a topnote of tea leaves. On the palate the wine is deep, long and focused, with superb depth at the core, lovely balance and a long, complex and still very zesty and energetic finish.

Reviews:

• Wine Advocate: The 1983 is among the most concentrated wines from this property over the last 20 years, with a staggering display of extract and a mind-boggling amount of glycerin. The vintage commenced early for Yquem, beginning on September 29 and finishing on November 18. Most observers feel the 1983 will mature more slowly than the 1986, and will last for almost 100 years. Given Yquem's unbelievable aging potential, such comments do not seem far fetched. At present, the 1983 is enormous, with huge, honeyed, pineapple, coconut, and caramel flavors, massive extract, and an unctuous quality barely framed by acidity and new oak.

• James Suckling: Super-intense and full-throttled, elegant and stylish. Dark amber in color and rich in complexity, this '83 coats your mouth with butterscotch, dried apricot, fig and spice flavors.

Producer Information

Château d'Yquem is a property in the Sauternes district of Bordeaux, making what is arguably the world's most famous dessert wine. It was the only Sauternes château rated as Premier Cru Supérieur in the official Classification of 1855, and is priced accordingly. The Yquem estate, owned by the King of England in the Middle Ages, has produced late-harvest wine since at least the late 1500s. The 103 hectare (254 acre) vineyard is situated on the highest hill in Sauternes. The soils here are perfect for the production of sweet wine – a warm, dry topsoil of pebbles and course gravel lies over a clay subsoil that retains generous water reserves, aiding with the development of noble rot, and there are around 60 miles (100km) of drains to prevent waterlogging. At any one time around 12ha (30 acres) of vineyard are either fallow or have young vines not suitable for production. The Yquem vineyard is planted to around 75 percent Semillon and 25 percent Sauvignon Blanc. A team of around 150 expert pickers are used each vintage and make multiple passes through the vineyard to ensure that only fully botrytized fruit is harvested. Yields are very low – about 900 liters per hectare, or around one glass per vine. In the winery, the grapes are pressed three or four times, with increasing pressures yielding lower volumes but higher sugar levels. Yquem is fermented in new oak barrels for maximum control over small lots. The cellar team have an ideal target of 13.5 percent abv for a wine with 120 to 150 grams per liter of residual sugar, though the alcohol content can vary either way by about 1 percent depending on sugar levels. Individual batches organized by day of picking are aged separately for six to eight months, after which the first selection and a preliminary blend is made. Following around 24 further months of aging the barrels are then re-tasted and the best lots make the final wine. On average around 80,000 bottles are produced each year, though in poor vintages the entire crop is sold off anonymously in bulk (this happened nine times in the 20th Century). Yquem can show stonefruit, mandarin, toast and vanilla when young and develops rich complexity with age. In top vintages it can be cellared for 50 years or more. Yquem also makes a dry Bordeaux Blanc called Y (pronounced "ee-grek" in French). This is made primarily from Sauvignon Blanc picked at the start of the harvest, with smaller amounts of Semillon with a little bit of botrytis. The estate was under the ownership or the Lur-Saluces family from 1785 until 1999, when it was sold to LVMH.

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