Winemaker Notes
A vintage with picture perfect weather up until the last day of picking on the 19th of October. The grapes were bursting with absolutely ripe, tremendously sweet fruit and blessed with providential botrytisation thanks to warm, rainy weather… The vintage had a rhythm reminiscent of 1989, the opulence of 1990, the intensity of 2003, and the concentration of 2001 and 1893 put together – which makes it a true masterpiece.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Pale to medium gold colored, the 2009 d'Yquem bursts from the glass with gregarious crème caramel, allspice, dried apricots, mandarin peel and pineapple upside down cake scents plus a fragrant undercurrent of fungi, acacia honey, candied ginger, musk perfume and frangipani. Full-bodied and full-on hedonic in the mouth, the rich, tightly wound layers are still amazingly youthful with bags of citrus sparks and an incredibly long, perfumed finish. Possessing a residual sugar of 157 grams per liter and 13.6% alcohol as well as a laser-focused line of freshness, the rock-solid structure and through-the-roof opulence here is simply mind blowing. Pure perfection.
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Wine Enthusiast
98-100 Barrel sample. The aromas are so rich and powerful, with great ripe apricots. There are honey, spice and beautiful sweet spiced pears. This is an extraordinary wine in an extraordinary year in Sauternes.
Barrel Sample: 98-100 Points -
James Suckling
The length to this is exceptional with an intensity yet subtlety. Full and medium sweet with bright and exciting acidity. It's all in balance here. Creme brulee, pineapple, and papaya. Lasts so long on finish. It's so fabulous now. It will age forever but it's already a joy to taste, even drink. Better in 2020.
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Wine Spectator
The aromas are closed today, but the core is loaded with apricot, nectarine and orange notes, bolted by a citrus zest spine and backed by toasted almond and piecrust accents on the finish. A large-scale Yquem that shows the richness of the vintage.—Non-blind Yquem vertical (July 2014). Best from 2020 through 2050.
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Decanter
Voluptuous honeyed nose, with peach compote aromas and spicy oak. Has a fine attack, leaner and more precise than the nose suggests. It's minty and almost peppery, with dried apricot flavours, a wine of tremendous drive and discreet power.Decidedly sweet but well balanced and very long.
Apart from the classics, we find many regional gems of different styles.
Late harvest wines are probably the easiest to understand. Grapes are picked so late that the sugars build up and residual sugar remains after the fermentation process. Ice wine, a style founded in Germany and there referred to as eiswein, is an extreme late harvest wine, produced from grapes frozen on the vine, and pressed while still frozen, resulting in a higher concentration of sugar. It is becoming a specialty of Canada as well, where it takes on the English name of ice wine.
Vin Santo, literally “holy wine,” is a Tuscan sweet wine made from drying the local white grapes Trebbiano Toscano and Malvasia in the winery and not pressing until somewhere between November and March.
Rutherglen is an historic wine region in northeast Victoria, Australia, famous for its fortified Topaque and Muscat with complex tawny characteristics.
Sweet and unctuous but delightfully charming, the finest Sauternes typically express flavors of exotic dried tropical fruit, candied apricot, dried citrus peel, honey or ginger and a zesty beam of acidity.
Sémillon, Sauvignon Blanc, Sauvignon Gris and Muscadelle are the grapes of Sauternes. But Sémillon's susceptibility to the requisite noble rot makes it the main variety and contributor to what makes Sauternes so unique. As a result, most Sauternes estates are planted to about 80% Sémillon. Sauvignon is prized for its balancing acidity and Muscadelle adds aromatic complexity to the blend with Sémillon.
Botrytis cinerea or “noble rot” is a fungus that grows on grapes only in specific conditions and its onset is crucial to the development of the most stunning of sweet wines.
In the fall, evening mists develop along the Garonne River, and settle into the small Sauternes district, creeping into the vineyards and sitting low until late morning. The next day, the sun has a chance to burn the moisture away, drying the grapes and concentrating their sugars and phenolic qualities. What distinguishes a fine Sauternes from a normal one is the producer’s willingness to wait and tend to the delicate botrytis-infected grapes through the end of the season.