Db’s Bordeaux correspondent Colin Hay made his annual pilgrimage to Yquem, talking to Lorenzo Pasquini and Annabelle Grellier about the 2021 vintage and release strategy, a wine of “staggering purity and freshness”. ‘Yquem Day’ – a term, I believe, first coined in the pages of this very column – marks for me the vinous start of spring, the last great release before the en primeur campaign to come. This year it falls on the 21st of March and brings with it the release of the sublime 2021 vintage through La Place de Bordeaux. The vintage is an exceptional one in Sauternes – as, indeed, it is in Barsac. But it is not one without significant challenges. And those challenges are now in a sense compounded by the very different prevailing market conditions, arguably the most difficult in well over a decade. Both influence the release strategy of LVMH this year, with the likely effect that a truly exceptional expression of Yquem will be offered to the market at price significantly below that its sheer quality would clearly warrant in a more conducive and benign economic context. To be clear, the final price has yet to be set. But this is the message emanating from LVMH on the eve of the release and the clear impression, too, of those lucky négociants in the pool to whom I spoke. With the château set to hold back a little more stock in this most age-worthy of vintages and with a derisory
This Article was originally published on The Drink Business - Fine Wine
