Michel Bettane and Thierry Desseauve: Once again, the best of the best Sauternes, with perfect balance between sugar and alcohol, the perfect amount of botrytis, amazing length, and incomparable texture and flavor. 19.5

Michael Schuster: Pale gold; a typically fine, fragrant, honeyed nose: intense, citrussy, and vital. Beautifully balanced, concentrated Sauternes, with a lively balancing acidity; a lovely combination of intense sweetness and overall restraint; supremely elegant and beautifully “slender”; Yquem’s uniquely silken, liqueur-like texture, with a delicately fine botrytis complexity, gentle raciness of flavor, and great persistence. A fine-boned, poised, polished, graceful expression of Yquem, typical of the style of the year—very different from the absolute richness, succulence, and frisson of the great 2009 or the more sinewy excitement of the 2001, for example. Lovely wine, though. 18.5