Chateau de Fargues 2004 Sauternes Half Bottle

Chateau de Fargues 2004 is a mature, powerful and intense wine with layers upon layers of flavour. Rich yellow, stone and tropical fruit dominate with pineapple, mango, apricot and orange notes followed by candid fruit, marmalade and sweet dried fruit. It’s unctuous and almost liquor like to drink, but fresh and elegant. It’s a wine to sip and savour over a period of time.

Chateau de Fargues is both famous and unheard of. The estate has been owned by the Lur-Saluces family since the late 16th Century but only produced its first wine in 1942. For this reason, the wines are unclassified and don’t often get mentioned alongside the famous names of the region, but the Lur-Saluces family, until 1999, also owned Chateau d’Yquem, which made the Chateau famous by association. Fargues has lived in the shadow of d’Yquem, but most would agree that it has always and continues to produce wines of a similar quality. The Chateau remained in the hands of the Lur-Saluces family when d’Yquem was sold to LVMH in 1999. It has gone from strength to strength, but without LVMH’s marketing budget, you’ve probably never heard of it!

Fargues has always been run autonomously to d’Yquem, even when the ownership was the same. The vineyards have a different microclimate to d’Yquem which sees the grapes ripen a week later and the poor soils result in low yields. The wine is aged for 3 years before release, the traditional way of doing it. It’s a wine worth getting to know.