2001 Château d’Yquem Sauternes: The Best Dessert Wine Choice for Winter Gatherings

The 2001 Château d’Yquem vintage is the best dessert wine choice for winter because it’s one of the most consistently high-rated wines and can be drunk now — or kept for the next century! [photo source]

With a history spanning centuries, Château d’Yquem has crafted some exceptionally fine wines in its time. However, few vintages stand out more than the lauded 2001 Château d’Yquem. This vintage established a new benchmark for high-quality sweet wines, and many Sauternes enthusiasts continue to praise it more than 20 years after its harvest. While this vintage will age beautifully for the next 75 or more, it’s also drinking well right now. This makes it the best dessert wine choice, as you can choose to either lay your bottles down for another few decades or open a bottle now for a special winter occasion.

If you’re looking for a memorable dessert wine to serve at your next event, you’d be hard-pressed to find a vintage better than 2001 Château d’Yquem. In this guide, you’ll learn why you should invest in the 2001 vintage as well as a few tips on serving this legendary wine to guests.

Why 2001 Château d’Yquem is the Best Dessert Wine Choice

When people think of the best dessert wine choice for a winter event, they typically look to rich fortified wines such as port. However, fine Sauternes is often a better option. For starters, many guests aren’t used to drinking white wines in the winter, so when you serve a fine white dessert wine, the moment is far more memorable than if you were to serve them yet another glass of ruby or tawny port. Another reason why Sauternes is a perfect winter wine is that it’s just as rich as fortified wines but has tropical fruit flavors the red fortified wines don’t contain. These tropical notes are a refreshing contrast to the traditionally heavy and spiced desserts on display at most winter parties.

The 2001 Château d’Yquem vintage is an especially fine choice to serve at the end of a winter gathering due to its exceptional quality and ideal drinking window. In 2001, the weather in Sauternes was warmer than usual, which produced especially ripe grapes. However, the high sugar content in the fruit was balanced out with 4.5 grams of sulfuric acid per liter – more than is typical in Sauternes vintages. The resulting wine is deeply concentrated in flavor but retains a lively freshness from the acid. For this reason, critics consistently give this vintage a perfect score and some even lament the fact that they can’t rate the wine above 100 points. Renowned critic Lisa Perrotti-Brown has reviewed the vintage at least a dozen times since its release, and in one review for The Wine Advocate she wrote, “It is among a very small clutch of incredible wines that crash through the 100-point ceiling and rocket beyond the stratosphere!”

The 2001 vintage has been drinking well for the past few years already and will continue to do so until 2055, at a minimum. Since the finest Château d’Yquem vintages can take decades to reach their ideal drinking windows, selecting an older wine, like the 2001, is a better choice for your party than buying a bottle of another more recent top-rated vintage, like 2016 Château D’Yquem. The 2016 still needs a little more time in storage before it approaches peak maturity. The best way to enjoy wines from Château d’Yquem is to purchase a mix of young bottles and older vintages so you can drink the older wines while you wait for the young wines to mature.

If you want to impress your guests with one of the greatest Sauternes vintages of all time, now is the time to buy a bottle or two of the perfect 2001 Château d’Yquem. This is a rare wine that will inspire awe in casual wine drinkers and experienced French wine collectors alike from the very first sip.

How to Serve This Fine Vintage

Now that you know why 2001 Château d’Yquem is the best dessert wine choice, it’s important to give this legendary wine enough space to shine. If you’re planning on serving this or any other fine Sauternes vintage for a winter event, here are a few tips to keep in mind:

Tip #1: Select the Perfect Dessert Pairing

The 2001 Château d’Yquem vintage pairs well with nearly any dessert because it’s exceptionally sweet and rich. Few desserts would overpower such a concentrated wine. However, it’s still important to select desserts that complement the wine. The best desserts to pair with this vintage are:

• Apple kuchen: Apple is a prominent note in the 2001 vintage, so this dessert will bring out some of the nuanced spices present in the wine.
• Croquembouche: The caramel complements the lightly toasted nut flavor in aged Château d’Yquem.
• Mille-feuille: This dessert generally isn’t too sweet and is quite delicate in texture, which allows the wine to be the star of the evening. The absence of competing fruit notes in the dessert also makes it easier to identify some of the nuanced tropical fruit flavors in the wine, like pineapple and mango.

Or, you can choose to serve the 2001 vintage on its own. The wine is sweet enough to be a dessert in itself, and as one of the most lauded Sauternes vintages of the century, it may be best left to stand on its own.

Tip #2: Serve the Wine Warmer Than Most White Wines

The best temperature to serve 2001 Château d’Yquem at is around 55 degrees Fahrenheit, or a few degrees warmer. Although most Sauternes should be served around 44 degrees, reviews have mentioned that they prefer to drink this vintage around cellar temperature. If you were to serve this wine too cold, some of the nuanced flavors might not come through. However, ultimately, it comes down to personal preference.

As for whether you should decant the wine or not, this isn’t necessary for the 2001 vintage. Older vintages from this estate don’t require much, if any, decanting, as there’s essentially no sediment in the wine and too much oxidation during the decanting stage can negatively impact the flavor profile.

Tip #3: Share Your Thoughts

If you’re serving the wine at a winter gathering, then your guests will likely want to talk about all of the nuanced flavors they’re discovering with each new sip. It might be fun and helpful to jot a few of these notes down on your phone or a piece of paper while you and your guests talk about what you taste. Not only is it interesting to see how similar or different everyone’s tasting notes are, but later on, after the party is over, you can compare these notes to other Château d’Yquem vintages. For example, if you most enjoyed the dried apricot and peach notes in the 2001 vintage, it’s a good idea to seek out more recent vintages that contain these notes. Mobile apps like Vincellar make it easy to keep track of the flavors and vintages you most prefer.

You don’t have to plan a serious wine tasting event around the 2001 Château d’Yquem vintage. However, because this wine is so legendary, it warrants some special treatment. This wine has the power to elevate any event at which it’s served, so it’s important to make the occasion feel as special as the bottle.

More Investment-Grade Vintages to Consider

Since the 2001 Château d’Yquem vintage is one of the best dessert wine choices on the fine wine market today, it may be worthwhile to invest in a full case. This way, you can serve a few bottles at upcoming winter events and lay down the rest for another few decades. This is a vintage that will likely continue to grow in value over time, so it’s a great option both for drinking and for reselling on the secondary market. If you choose to buy more than one bottle of the 2001 vintage, it’s wise to invest in professional storage services or hire a wine cellar expert to help you organize and barcode your bottles.

You should also consider buying other fine Château d’Yquem vintages. The 2001 vintage is notable because it’s drinking well and is among the highest-rated wines in the estate’s history, but there are many other recent vintages that, while they still need some time to reach maturity, are worth investing in today. Here are a few other vintages you should keep in storage over the next five to 15 years, minimum:

With so many fine vintages on the market, it can be difficult to decide which Château d’Yquem bottles to add to your collection. This is why it’s helpful to talk to a sales assistant with expertise in Château d’Yquem investments. The experts will not only find the perfect wine for you to serve at your next event, but they will also identify bottles you should invest in long-term. Whether you want to drink a legendary vintage like the 2001 at your next party or you’d like to pass this wine down through the generations for your grandchildren to enjoy someday, there are excellent resources available that will help you make the most of this once-in-a-lifetime wine.

Whether you are starting your high-end wine collection or adding to an established portfolio, Vinfolio is your partner in buying, selling, and professional storage. Contact us today to get access to the world’s finest wine.