Sauternes – The Enigma!

Recent Releases

Given our relative success selling the latest 2023 vintage releases from Chateau d’Yquem and Chateau Suduiraut, some time considering this famous region seemed apposite.

These wines sold much better than we anticipated. Ok, our expectations were low as it’s a hard sell these days and there is little doubt the perfect scores attributed by leading critics helps enormously (more than it should, read more about that here).

Yquem was released at £260 per bottle (in bond), Suduiraut at the same price – but for 6 bottles – yes, you read that correctly!

Given the love and the labour, and the related costs, of producing these very highly rated golden nectars, and their positions not just within the Cru Classé classifications, but the wider wine world, these wines are crazy cheap. It is a very good time to be a lover of Sauternes!

A Category in Crisis

I think we’re all aware that Sauternes (and Barsac) is a wine category in crisis. We’ve heard excuses/explanations that blames drink driving (??), less formal dining, the fall in foie gras consumption and sugar avoiding diets. More often than not, Sauternes is served at the end of the meal, so this more sober society in which we are all supposed to inhabit may be to blame.

Or is it simply that tastes change? My AI bunny tells me that the demand for Sauternes from the US, its biggest export market, peaked fifty years ago, went into a decline but has plateaued more recently.

Is there not enough acidity in the wine for the modern palate, have desserts become less desirable also?

There is obviously more competition for the sweet spot for sure, most of which are cheaper, whether it’s from the new world or other regions of the old; there are countless options.

Overall, Sauternes clearly just doesn’t quite hit the spot for enough people, me included (although I always have some tucked away), and some I know just plain don’t like it. In conversation on the subject, a reader once wittily suggested to a well-known (unadmiring) journalist a title for an article: ‘Yquem – my own private hell’.

Whatever the reasons are, it is clear there’s a problem. Here’s a Liv-ex chart going back to the origination of their Sauternes 50 Index, in comparison with their Fine Wine 100, it sums it up well:

Last July Jancis published an article on the region and even suggested some wines as an investment tip. Until there is any evidence this tanker is turning, the recommendations she makes more sense for drinkers, not investors, in my view.

What’s next for the region?

Producers in the area are committing a lot more resource to their dry offerings. Currently there is no appellation at all for the dry whites, so the governing body there could certainly make a difference. Perhaps a look at Germany’s Grosses Gewächs system might be a fine place to start, given that success.

Certainly, a coherent unified approach from a collective body would be an advancement as currently the offering here feels rudderless, even though there are some fabulous wines, but maybe I’m wrong. I certainly hope so.

In the meantime, I will be placing my staff order for some Suduiraut, in bottles and halves. I intend to drink more of them at the beginning rather than at the end of a meal, and very much at the younger end of spectrum.

Miles Davis, 24th March 2026