13-06-2015
Château d’Yquem: a unique territory from which, with obsessive care, only the best grapes are selected to produce a true icon wine
On the occasion of Vinexpo the town of Bordeaux livens up with the greatest protagonists in the wine world, meeting here to share all the wine novelties from the planet. We move only 40 km from the region’s capital and arrive in Sauternes. It’s a region in Southern France, a small town, but most of all Sauternes is a name that leads us to think to the unmatchable sweet wine, among the ones with the greatest ageing potential in the world. It is a unique, golden nectar, only produced in this area, described as the «le raisin d’or», the golden grape, due to the preciousness of each bunch, since to make a glass of Sauternes you need the classic «pied de vigne». Compared to the chaos of Bordeaux, there’s a fairy-tale alternating of vineyards, castles and rural buildings. The most famous 100 hectares in the world belong to Château d’Yquem, the largest producer of this wine which since 1999 is owned by luxury giant LVMH. Yquem is the only wine region outside Bordeaux’s Mèdoc, classified in 1855 and left unchanged, with the specifically created Premier Cru Supérieur, an appellation created for this very legendary wine. On a good year, Château d’Yquem can produce around 120,000 bottles while in so-called unhappy years, production is zero. This was recently the case in 2012 when not even a drop was bottled.
A detail of the renovated staircase at Yquem
Sandrine Garbay, for twenty years now the oenologist at Yquem
Stories of men, women and bottles that enrich the galaxy of wine, in Italy and in the world
by
a graduate in Psychology, she was enchanted by the Identità Golose galaxy. While studying wine is her life, her gourmet vocation is an evolving discovery