The final wine of today’s Cellar Stocker proves it. Some places are just special.

You see, it’s highly unlikely you have heard of Château Lafon. But you’ve likely heard of its neighbor – The one and only Premier Cru Supérieur, undisputed King of Sauternes, a wine that commands hushed reverent tones,..

Château d’Yquem

Hold up. Yquem isn’t exactly Lafon’s neighbor… IT LITERALLY SURROUNDS IT!

Not figuratively. LITERALLY!

While d’Yquem has been a blue-chip wine for centuries, commanding north of $500 PER BOTTLE, this tiny, unknown property within their very terrior, whose grapes used to go into d’Yquem… only here at TWO-THIRDS OFF, for UNDER $35?!

Yeah, you read that right. AND 2024 is the last vintage they will produce. We suggest locking down a case and checking out before reading further.

…are you back?

This is the ultimate insider’s wine. Even we didn’t know this wine existed until recently. This past April our Agent Rôtie was on mission to Bordeaux and took a top-secret meeting with at Château d’Yquem, when Google Maps sent him a happy little accident. Rather than directing him through the main entrance, it sent him up a dirt driveway to a small house surrounded by glorious vineyards. Obviously, not d’Yquem… so he backed up, and found his way.

Upon arrival, he mentioned the SNAFU to his gracious host. “Oh, that’s Château Lafon,” they said, nonchalantly pointing to the tiniest pinhole in their impressive vineyard map.

“What?!”

Rewind a few hundred years. Jacques de Sauvage acquired the castle d’Yquem in 1593, and his family acquired the surrounding land over time, reaching roughly the same footprint they have now by 1711. But there was another prominent Sauternes family on the hill, named Lafon. As time went on, as d’Yquem swallowed the land around them, they never quite sold their last slice of land within the vineyard, most vintages contracting it to d’Yquem instead.

Decades turn to centuries, family names changed through marriage or sale, but the situation remained the same. In the 1920’s the Lafon family sold to M. Dufour. His grandson, Olivier Fauthoux, continued his legacy, leading to the wine before you.

The Lur-Saluces family – inheritors of d’Yquem – after a bitter family feud, sold a majority stake in the property to French luxury goods giant LVMH in 1996. That’s when the offers started coming in for this small piece of land…

Last year Fauthoux finally relented. 2024 is the final vintage of this rare find.

Pouring a brilliant golden hue, the wine is honeyed and complex, with hints of toasty oak complimenting ripe lemon and marzipan notes. It’s charming and rich, sweet but not too sweet. A prime example of what the Wine Independent was talking about when they said, “2024 was an excellent year for Sauternes and Barsac, delivering wines with the necessary acid backbone to inject vivacity into the dense flavor layers that define the best wines. Sugar levels run lower than those from recent hotter vintages, revealing better balance and more ‘drinkability.’”

It’s not as polished as the more famous wine that shares this terrior, but you can buy a case of Lafon for the price of a single bottle of d’Yquem!

Hope you stocked up before reading this far. Once it’s gone, it’s GONE!