Château d'Yquem

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Château d'Yquem from 1973 and 1999 Château d'Yquem from 1973 and 1999
Château d'Yquem from 1973 and 1999

The Château d'Yquem [ ʃaˈto diˈkɛm ] is one of the world's most famous wineries . It mainly produces noble sweet wines ( Sauternes ), which are among the most expensive wines.

The 100 hectare winery was privately owned by the Lur Saluces family for centuries and is located in Sauternes , a small town south-east of Bordeaux . It is the only Bordeaux winery to enjoy the official status of Premier Grand Cru Classé Supérieur on the occasion of the classification of 1855 ; it is also an honorary member of the Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux, founded in 1973 .

history

The lock.
coat of arms

Through the marriage of Henry Plantagenet , later King Henry II of England in 1152, with Eleanor , heiress of Aquitaine , a large part of western France came under British rule. The fortified property that dominates the Ciron valley also belonged to the English from the 12th century.

With the end of the Hundred Years War in 1453, the region around Bordeaux came back under the control of the French crown. The merchant Ramon Felipe Eyquem acquired the château as a fiefdom from Archbishop Arthur de Montauban (1467-1478) on October 10, 1477 from Guilhem Duboys, seigneur de Juillac. The purchase price is said to have been 900 gold francs ( Franc à pied ). His grandson Pierre Eyquem , Mayor of Bordeaux from 1554 to 1556, bequeathed it to his son, the famous philosopher Michel Eyquem de Montaigne . One year after his death, the property was leased to Jacques de Sauvage by contract dated December 8, 1593, who expanded the manor buildings to include a chapel and a north wing by the beginning of the 17th century. The Sauvage family established the good reputation of the winery. Elevated to the nobility, Léon de Sauvage acquired the estate as property in 1711. Through the marriage of his granddaughter Françoise-Josèphe Sauvage (1768-1851) with Louis Amédée de Lur-Saluces (1761-1888) on June 6, 1785, the winery came into the possession of the Lur-Saluces family, who ran an iron forge in the community Uza-les-Forges had become rich.

After Louis Amédée died as a result of a riding accident, his widow ran the winery. During the French Revolution , she was imprisoned twice as a nobleman, but, unlike many other wineries in the Bordelais, was able to keep her estate in family ownership. In a letter from May 1787, Thomas Jefferson certifies the wines the rank of first-class Sauternes.

The manor house of Château d'Yquem.

When her son Antoine Marie Henry Amédée de Lur-Saluces (1786-1823) married Marie Geneviève Françoise Joséphine de Filhot in 1807, this brought the wineries Château Filhot and Château Coutet into the marriage. In 1826 Françoise-Josèphe had a barrel cellar built and concentrated the estate's activities on viticulture. After her death in 1851, her grandson Romain Bertrand de Lur-Saluces took over the fortunes of Château d'Yquem.

Today's Count Lur Saluces sold the estate to the luxury goods group Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy in 1996 , initially remained an employee as Directeur Général and was retired in 2004. He was succeeded by Pierre Lurton, the former head of Château Cheval Blanc , one of the best Saint-Émilion wineries. In 2008, 16 Bordeaux wineries joined forces , in addition to Château d'Yquem as well-known as Château Suduiraut , Château Olivier and Château La Tour Blanche, with the aim of growing their own clones of the Sémillon grape variety when the vines were becoming scarcer .

Manufacturing

The vineyards of the Château d'Yquem in Sauternes.
The west side of the Château d'Yquem.

The noble sweet wine produced at the castle today is based on a method developed in the Rhineland ( Trockenbeerenauslese ) and Hungary ( Tokajer ) in the 18th century to individually handpick grapes infected with gray mold rot (botrytis cinerea). The cultivated vines consist of 80% Semillon and 20% Sauvignon Blanc . Working on Yquem knows some peculiarities and differences to other wineries:

  • The reading is done multiple times on the same fields: one does not reap a field of medium maturity from, you do not reap grapes as a whole but selected in the harvest in several (up to ten) read passages from the grapes of the individual berries out that just the have the right degree of maturity.
  • In bad years, when the weather wasn't good enough, Yquem doesn't bring out any Grand Vin , the “great” sweet wine under the name of Château d'Yquem . The grapes are then sold to other goods or traders, or they are available for the dry white wine "Y" (pronounced Igrek). Certain vintages of Yquem wines therefore do not even exist. The goods then forego many millions of euros in sales revenue - with ongoing costs - because they do not want a wine to go on sale that does not meet their own high expectations and those of customers. In the 20th century, this happened nine times (1910, 1915, 1930, 1951, 1952, 1964, 1972, 1974, 1992), and so far once in the 21st century (2012).
  • Yquem leaves the young wine to barrel aging for four years in oak barrels , oak barrels of 225 liters, a year more than any other Sauternes estates, and twice as long as the quality wine estates do this before the wines are bottled and get the sale.

The wines at Yquem Castle are subject to very high quality standards ; accordingly laboriously produced, that makes the wine so expensive. You only get about 1250 bottles per hectare, which corresponds to a yield of just under 9-10 hl / ha. The high sugar content and the complex aroma of the wines are accompanied by a high acid content. Due to the laborious work and the special properties of these wines, they have an extremely long shelf life; even bottles well over a hundred years old promise great enjoyment.

literature

Web links

Commons : Château d'Yquem  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Renaud Camus: Demeures de l'esprit II La France du Sud-Ouest. Fayard, Paris 2008, ISBN 978-2-213-64554-4 , chapter 3.
  2. ^ Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson, Gutenberg Project

    “Of white wines, those made in the canton of Grave, are most esteemed at Bordeaux. The best crops are, 1. Pontac, which formerly belonged to M. de Pontac, but now to M. de Lamont. He makes forty tons, which sell at four hundred livres, new. 2. St. Brise, belonging to M. de Pontac; thirty tons, at three hundred and fifty livres. 3. De Carbonius, belonging to the Benedictine monks, who make fifty tons, and never selling till three or four years old, get eight hundred livres the ton. Those made in the three parishes next above Grave, and more esteemed at Paris, are, 1. Sauterne. The best crop belongs to M. Diquem at Bordeaux, or to M. de Salus, his son-in-law; one hundred and fifty tons, at three hundred livres, new, and six hundred livres, old. The next best crop is M. de Fillotte's, one hundred tons, sold at the same price. 2. Prignac. The best is the President du Roy's, at Bordeaux. He makes one hundred and seventy-five tons, which sell at three hundred livres, new, and six hundred livres, old. Those of 1784, for their extraordinary quality, sell at eight hundred livres. 3. Barsac. The best belongs to the President Pichard, who makes one hundred and fifty tons, at two hundred and eighteen livres, new, and six hundred livres, old. Sauterne is the pleasantest; next Prignac, and lastly Barsac: but Barsac is the strongest; next Prignac, and lastly Sauterne; and all stronger than Grave. "

    - Thomas Jefferson
  3. ↑ Jane Anson: Bordeaux: Semillon shortage threatens future vintages. ( Memento of April 14, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) at: Decanter .com , April 8, 2008.
  4. ↑ Website of the winery accessed on October 23, 2017 ( Memento of the original from April 28, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / yquem.fr