Dry Sauternes

There are some cramped, unimaginative people who — I have been told — maintain that writing about wine is a bootless enterprise. Even more extraordinary, I have heard it rumored that there exist unfortunate sods who believe that it is a waste of time to gather with friends over food and wine while discussing the events of the day, the state of the republic, the repair of one’s soul. Fortunately, neither you nor I are acquainted with any such freaks, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this column and I would not be sitting down to write it. At the end of his brief, tantalizing book The Educated Imagination, Northrop Frye, the great Canadian literary critic (do you sense a passing adumbration of contradiction there?

It is my sense that the popularity of sweet wines like Sauternes, Port, Tokaji and all the German Auslese wines is on the upswing. I am here to tell you about the Next Big Thing: dry Sauternes. Yes, that’s right: dry Sauternes. The supersnazzy, superexpensive Château d’Yquem is the only Sauternes to boast the designation “Premier Cru Supérieur” from the 1855 classification of Bordeaux wines. That exclusive label — along with the probably apocryphal but oft-repeated story that Michel de Montaigne, born Michel Eyquem, had something to do with the property — helps account for its astronomical price. But Yquem has been making a blanc sec since 1959.