Chateau d'Yquem Sauternes 2005
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Product Details
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The 2001 vintage of this wine was ranked #10 on the Wine Spectator's Top 10 Wines of 2005
Lovely, brilliant, golden-yellow color. Concentrated nose of apricot compote, dried fruit, and figs with vanilla and floral (jasmine and acacia blossom) aromas. The bouquet opens up after swirling in the glass to reveal extremely fresh citrus zest overtones that emphasize the wine's subtle refinement.
2005 Yquem starts out deliciously suave and caressing on the palate, with perfect balance. The fresh acidity and elegance complement the wine's restrained power, giving it incredible class.
There are strong flavors of gingerbread, orange nonette cakes and licorice followed by a gorgeous acid tang that underpins the wine's beautiful, long aftertaste on a par with the chateau's most illustrious vintages. The tremendously varied and complex flavors all seem to vibrate on the same wavelength, melting into a subtle whole.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The pale to medium lemon-gold colored 2005 d'Yquem opens with a provocative, mineral and earth-tinged nose of chalk dust, wet pebbles and dried wild mushrooms over a core of warm apricots, green mango, honeyed toast, ginger and pink grapefruit plus wafts of honeycomb, orange blossoms and saffron. The palate confirms the wine is still a little closed and shut down, offering achingly gorgeous glimpses at the tightly wound, intricate layers structured with a racy acid line and wonderfully creamy texture, finishing incredibly long and perfumed. This decadent flavor bomb still needs a good five to seven years in bottle before it is set to go off, but oh what a spectacle it will give then!
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Wine Enthusiast
This isn't sweet, but just so wonderfully rich. It’s the concentration of botrytis that makes the wine. The texture is velvet, but with a spicy bite to it. Apricot, honey and marzipan all contribute to a wine that will age over decades.
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Wine Spectator
This has a deliciously pure feel, with juicy, inviting green plum, ginger, heather, creamed pineapple and Jonagold apple flavors all melded together and gliding through the lengthy finish, which echoes with lilting flowers and dried citrus notes. Best from 2015 through 2045.
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James Suckling
What an incredible nose of flowers, honey, spices such as clove, and sandalwood. With time, decadent aromas of apple tart and crumble develop. Full and very round on the palate, this is medium sweet with a velvety texture. Flavors of honey, apple and pear tart appear on the long finish. This is so beautiful, hard not to drink now but will greatly improve with more time.
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Château d’Yquem is an extraordinary place, at the very heart of Sauternes, with a hundred hectares of vineyards are planted on a mosaic of different soils. All the conditions are there to grow exceptional grapes and achieve the finest noble rot, the famous botrytis cinerea.
Through a sublimation process, the grapes reach a level a richness in taste and aromas that is simply unique in the world. Yquem preciously protects its selective harvesting secret, carried out by a team of devoted highly experienced local pickers, who have received their ancestral knowledge from the generations that came before them. Therefore, only the best grapes sublimated by botrytis cinerea are picked, because this is the golden rule at Yquem: never look for simplification, or shortcuts, and accept the risk of losing everything.
This is the price to pay to achieve excellence.