Despite being raised by two people who worked in a liquor store, I'm not by any measure a sommelier or an expert on wine--I'm a bit of a bumbling novice, to be honest. However, I like to think that I can occasionally recognize an exceptional wine when it is en route to my eager little gullet. Although she would demur, I think my wife has a great intuitive sense for wines. However, our friends' tastes in wine are of the first water, well-informed and impeccable. Last night's round, peppery red, for instance, was the perfect complement to a very rare, once-in-a-decade treat of porterhouse steak.
But after dinner came the highlight: I had the pleasure of trying for the first time what is widely held as one of the most exceptional Sauternes to have ever been made: the 1976 Chateau d'Yquem. True to its reputaton, it was without question the best dessert wine I've ever tasted. Most dessert wines--like Astis and Muscats--have a golden color, but the d'Yquem had a rich, rosy caramel hue with a nose to match. The complex, honeyed cream notes clung to the palette like a perfume, and lacked that sharp, syrupy sweetness common with lesser dessert wines. I'm always interested in the lore behind a wine--its terroir--and the circumstances or happenstances that lead to its fruition. In the case of this wine, I was told that the main factor is a mist-fed fungus that eats away the outer skin of the grape which consequently shrivels the rest of the fruit before harvesting.
Our generous host added in an email this morning:
"Chateau d'Yquem, the only first growth Sauterne. We'll try it against another Y'quem that will show a still softer side, at some point in the future. I wait until I get into an old cellar to buy them, more for cellar aging than price, though both are a factor. But it happens with some regularity, and it's always special. As an artist friend once said to me, many years ago, over a '66 (another very good, but not perfect year), 'It makes me feel like a hummingbird.'"
So: has anyone out there had a similarly rare Epicurean revelation?
~W