There’s no shortage of eye-catching spectacles atSingleThread, the three-Michelin-starred restaurant inHealdsburg. Courses arrive shrouded in fresh flowers; a palate-cleanser sorbet course looked as if it were hiding in an enchanted forest. But to my eyes, the showiest element of the night was an enormous bottle ofdessert winethat sommeliers began bringing around to tables later in the evening.
这是一个2010 Chateau d 'Yquem six-l苏特恩白葡萄酒iter bottle — the equivalent of eight regular-size bottles. Sauternes is an area of Bordeaux that specializes in a particular kind of dessert wine in which the grapes are infected with “noble rot,” a type of mold that contributes an irresistible, honeysuckle-like flavor to sweet wines. This unctuous, golden liquid is most often seen in splits — 375ml bottles, equal to a half bottle of wine. I’d never seen a six-liter of Sauternes in my life.
And Yquem isn’t just any Sauternes. It’stheSauternes. The winery is famous for its meticulous harvesting protocol, in which skilled workers pick individual berries, one by one, rather than the way everyone else around the world does it, lopping off entire grape clusters. The harvesters are skilled, determining which berries are moldy in just the right way. Many people consider Yquem to be the greatest dessert wine in the world.
The wines, made fromSauvignon Blancand Semillon, are deeply sweet, with a denser, more concentrated weight than a dry wine. Yquem typically conjures smells and tastes like saffron, ginger, apricot, honey, caramel and candied orange. Dessert wines have largely fallen out of fashion, and Yquem is as old-school blue-chip as they come — there’s nothing cool or hip or natural about it. But trust me. If you have a taste for dessert wine (guilty!), it’s heaven.
A half-bottle of Yquem, from a young vintage, typically starts around $350, SingleThread wine director Chris McFall told me. So I could only imagine what a bottle sixteen times that size with 13 years of age might go for. McFall didn’t say what he paid for it, but K&L is sellinga 2015 six-literfor $2,899. A Swiss website is sellinga 2009 six-literfor the equivalent of $5,520 in U.S. dollars.
“It’s an expensive commodity,” McFall acknowledged.
Those who opt for SingleThread’s $500 reserve wine pairing (not in my budget, alas) get a taste of this big bottle with their dessert course, currently a persimmon situation with caramel, kumquat and saffron. The Sauternes basically mirrors the dessert’s gingery, caramelly, golden-fruit flavors.
But the real drama of this bottle isn’t its ability to pair with persimmon so much as its sheer enormity. “Bringing a six-liter bottle of Yquem to the table is a bit of an exclamation point,” McFall said. When it’s full, it’s so heavy and unwieldy that it’s difficult to pour; he sometimes uses a glass wine thief (the same instrument a winemaker uses to extract a taste of wine from a full barrel), but then he started worrying about glass getting into the wine.
So McFall just considers it a bicep workout. “The first time we did it, we made a sticky mess,” he said. “Now it’s become second nature for us — we just hold it super gently.”
Chateau d’Yquem doesn’t produce many bottles in this size, and McFall said that he communicates directly with the chateau, and its U.S. importer, in order to secure his stash every year. It’s easier to get younger bottles than older ones, though. When he has newer vintages in stock, McFall sometimes pours them with a savory course earlier in the meal that might have just a touch of sweetness, like duck liver parfait with truffle and pear cake. (Traditionally, Sauternes has been considered a great match with rich savory ingredients like foie gras and Stilton blue cheese.)
It's not often that I go to restaurants as fancy as SingleThread, and when I do, I seldom order the wine pairing. I’ve been disappointed by the pairing menus infine-diningsettings too many times, my heart dropping as I see a sommelier approach with a bottle of wine that doesn’t feel particularly special. You can often find something way more interesting by ordering off the bottle list.
But no one could order a six-liter of 2010 Yquem on their own — given its richness, few could even justify ordering a half-bottle. I found it heartening at SingleThread to see a wine pairing fulfill what I consider the exercise’s mandate: to pour you just a little taste of something extraordinary and rare, the sort of wine that can only be opened when the restaurant is sharing it with diners all around the room.
As huge as they are, the large-format Yquems don’t last long. McFall said the restaurant goes through a six-liter in about a week, typically. Unlike dry wines, Sauternes can last for a while after opening. “Like a lasagna, it tastes better after a few days,” McFall said. The one-week mark, typically the last day he has any wine in the bottle, is when Yquem tastes best.
Reach Esther Mobley: emobley@sfchronicle.com
