Bordeaux 2015 Primeurs: Château d’Yquem
I tasted the 2015 vintage Château d’Yquem with the very talented winemaker, Sandrine Garbay. The growing season at Château d’Yquem began warm, with temperatures record in April, June and July at Château d’Yquem placing all three in the estate’s top ten warmest months. Flowering was very successful, as it was elsewhere. There were some showers in June, as noted on the previous page, and then the August rains kept the vines healthy and happy.
The fine weather prompted an early start to the harvest. Picking for the dry white wine began on August 25th, and proceeded on until September 4th – I will look at that wine in more detail in my AC Bordeaux instalment of this 2915 Bordeaux primeurs report. Picking for Château d’Yquem overlapped slightly with that for the dry white, beginning on September 3rd, this first tri continuing on until September 21st. After the first pickings on September 3rd and 4th there was some rain, lasting about a week, and it was only after this that harvesting really got underway though. It was a controlled and intermittent period of picking, with harvesters only going out every third or fourth day, starting on September 11th, with further picking on September 15th, 18th and 21st, all included in the first tri.
The rains returned on September 23rd and the skies were not totally clear once again until October 1st. It was during this period that more concentrated picking began, this being the second tri, with large volumes of botrytised and concentrated fruit coming in on five consecutive days from September 28th to October 2nd. Cooler than normal temperatures throughout this period helped to keep the fruit fresh and the botrytis clean. Thereafter there were a few days of calm as everybody waited to see what would happen next. The answer came on October 6th, with another few showery days, and picking began again on October 8th, and the work continued until October 12th (except for October 11th which appears to have been a day off), again bringing in large quantities of fruit, comprising the third tri.
