chateau dyquem 1er grand cru classe sauternes

Château d'Yquem

Château d'Yquem, 1er Grand Cru Classé, Sauternes, 2020

Name: Château d'Yquem, 1er Grand Cru Classé, Sauternes
Brand: Château d'Yquem
Price: 1930.33 GBP

97/100

The Wine Independent

94.5/100

Vinous

Available Vintages

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Last Few
2020
3x75cl
DP
£965.95
2020
6x75cl
DP
£1,930.33

Justerini & Brooks Tasting note

Produced from 75% Sémillon and 25% Sauvignon Blanc with 135 g/L of residual sugar and a pH of 3.79. The 2020 Yquem is supremely elegant, a taut, refined, effortless wine of length and poise. Initially this is quite an extrovert showing plenty of exotic fruits such as pineapple, mandarin and orange peel. It’s airy and graceful, yet there’s wonderful intensity and vitality on the palate. Although focussed and direct, we were impressed by the breadth to the flavours: hints of spice, brioche, marmalade, apricot and lemon zest. This wonderfully crystalline Yquem is already expressive and a joy to taste, however, we have no doubt this is a wine of real finesse and botrytis character, which will evolve and develop gracefully over many decades.

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GUARANTEED PROVENANCE

Provenance in fine wine

When it comes to purchasing wine, provenance is of upmost importance. A wine’s history – where it’s sourced from and how it’s been stored – can have an enormous influence on the eventual enjoyment it provides. At Justerini & Brooks, we can trace nearly every case back to the domaine, estate or Château it originally came from; we ship from over 200 wine producers throughout the world.

Wines not bought directly from the vineyard are either sourced from trusted suppliers, with whom we share the same philosophy and rigour in buying, or from our own network of Cellarers customers. These customers’ wines are stored in optimal conditions in Octavian Corsham and, in the vast majority of cases, have been stored by us since the wine was first shipped. We do not purchase wine from auctions.

We feel it is equally important to for our customers that the case they buy and leave in storage with us is exactly the same case they subsequently have delivered. This may sound obvious and straightforward, yet we are one of very few merchants to have taken measures to ensure this.

We have created a system where every case is independent, thereby ensuring a trail of ownership and peace of mind for every customer.

The Journey

Justerinis ensures that every case of wine stored with Cellarers (Wines) Ltd has a unique identifier and customer’s name, almost unheard of in the industry as it is expensive to administer. These details are printed and placed on every case which is logged and recorded under your account name and kept in the world’s most renowned storage facility, Octavian Corsham.

This information is sent from our systems to the warehouse every day to ensure the trail of ownership is verified and upheld.

While customer reserves are stored in Corsham, our physical stocks are kept in Hoddesdon, further providing a geographical separation between customers’ wines with Cellarers and Justerinis’ own stock.

Further Reassurance

Cellarers (Wines) Ltd is a legally separate limited company from Justerini & Brooks which currently holds approximately £450 million worth of customer reserves. It is fully insured to catastrophic loss. Many merchants will state that wine in their care is fully insured, but in reality this is on an individual case basis with insufficient cover for total loss as this is prohibitively expensive. The cover provided by Octavian and Justerini & Brooks is unmatched.

Cellarers (Wines) Ltd is audited by PwC every year.

Critic Reviews

94.5/100

Neal Martin,

Vinous

The 2020 Yquem has a slightly more Germanic nose than its peers, with a touch of petrol behind the veneer of dried honey, apricot and saffron. The palate is well balanced, with just a little oak to be subsumed. It’s very poised. Well-judged acidity drives through the harmonious finish. Give this three or four years in bottle for that wood to be assimilated, and you will have a sophisticated Sauternes on your hands (and a score in line with the one tasted at the estate in 2023). Tasted blind at the annual Southwold tasting.

drinking window 2027 - 2048

date of review 11/2024

97/100

Lisa Perrotti-Brown,

The Wine Independent

The 2020 Château d'Yquem a blend of 75% Sémillon and 25% Sauvignon Blanc. It has 135 grams per liter of residual sugar and a pH of 3.79. Pale lemon-gold colored, citrus and baking spice notes emerge slowly from the glass, rising to offer well-defined scents of candied ginger, orange blossoms, allspice, and almond tart, leading to a flamboyant core of peach cobbler, ripe, juicy pineapple, jasmine tea, and apple butter with a waft of saffron. The palate is full-bodied and characteristically rich, yet possesses impressive tension and therefore stunning harmony. Layers of exotic spices and fragrant white flower accents fill the palate, leading to a long finish with lingering chalk and mineral nuances. It’s a showy Yquem that is gregarious in youth but is reserving that extra something for those with the patience to wait twenty years or more.

drinking window 2025 - 2055

date of review 03/2023

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Specifications

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Region:

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Grape Variety:

Semillon Sauvignon Blanc

abv:

13.5%

allergen information

This product may contain sulphites. Full allergen information is available upon request, please call our Customer Relations Team on +44 (0)20 7484 6430.