Wine Advisor
Climens 2013
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Description
Tasting notes
Reviewed by: Lisa Perrotti-Brown
The 2013 Climens features a pale lemon-yellow color and expressive notes of candied citrus peel, honey-drizzled white peaches and brioche with wafts of marzipan and ginger. It has lovely harmony in the mouth, with a wonderful citrus peel intensity defined by great freshness, finishing with bags of depth and energy.
Reviewed by: Neal Martin
Cropped at ten hectoliters per hectare, this represents the first certified organic Chateau Climens. As usual, I have to conjecture how the final blend will manifest itself, a task becoming easier now that I have tasted through individual lots for several years. Clearly, the first tries contain zesty citrus fruit with crisp acidity and strong botrytis character, the second tries lending the structure and the Barsac/Climens character. I noticed a "marine" influence on the final tries picked on October 21 and 23, although here there is a slight attenuation. Putting all this together, I foresee an assured, perhaps slightly lighter but tensile Climens, with the more heavily botrytized fruit delivered toward the end. Quality is certainly on par with a very good vintage, the most impressive lots destined to form major components of the final blend. This ought to be a classic Climens. "We started the harvest on the 27th of September, which was not as late as we thought," Berenice Lurton told me. "The maturity was quite late due to the bad spring - or not even any spring at all - with poor flowering. During the summer, it could not catch up. The ripeness was quite late, but botrytis arrived quickly and we were prepared. We were incredibly lucky, because we finished the first picking under good conditions on the 3rd of October at 7.00pm, the night when a lot of rain fell at Climens. We stopped for eight days and then made a quick picking in a few plots, but there was not much to pick. The weather became fresh and humid, so botrytis was everywhere, but the problem was that it was not concentrated, so on Friday, the 18th of October, we inspected the vineyard and decided we could not pick. We were quite anxious, because rain was predicted. But exactly like 2012, we had a perfect weekend with a lot of wind on Saturday and a perfect Sunday that was enough to concentrate the berries on the first plots. We finished in a few days on Thursday at midday and then it started raining again in the afternoon. So the windows for us were amazingly small. There were sixteen lots in the beginning, and the first micro-blends were good so there are now eight lots. When we were blending, we could not really see what was from the beginning and the end of the harvest."
Reviewed by: Neal Martin
The 2013 Climens has a very fragrant bouquet with bunches of white flowers, buttercup, citrus fruits, honey and just a faint hint of oyster shell, all very well defined. There is a cold stone influence here that tempers its exuberance. The palate is very well balanced, spicy in the mouth, beautifully balanced with ginger and nutmeg infusing the honeyed fruit. This is a feisty Barsac, animated and energetic, a little "untamed" in its youth and very long. It is a great Climens that is going to age for many years. Tasted April 2016.
About the Producer
Château Climens is a wine producer located in the Sauternes village of Barsac on the left bank of the Gironde river, south of Bordeaux. It was classified as a first growth in the 1885 Classification of Sauternes and Barsac alongside other châteaux such as Guiraud and Suduiraut. Climens is one of only a handful of châteaux in Bordeaux that produces its wines from only one grape: Semillon. The wine is characterized by fresh citrus notes, white flowers and spice, which becomes more honeyed and concentrated with age. Semillon thrives on the limestone-rich soils in the vineyards. Botrytis develops on the grapes because of the misty mornings, humidity and warmer afternoons that are typical during the months before harvest. If the grapes are not of the highest quality, or if botrytis has not properly formed, owner Bérénice Lurton and her team will not produce their top wine, the grand vin Château Climens. They have been bold enough in the past to declassify an entire harvest of fruit – either selling the grapes off to other producers rather than bottling as their own or releasing wines under secondary labels. The grapes are harvested and brought into the winery, plot by plot, where they are gently pressed before fermentation in oak barrels. Maturation takes place in French oak barrels on lees for about 20 months. Wines from the best vintages can last decades – a recent tasting of the 1921 vintage revealed a rich, balanced and zesty wine. Château Climens has been owned by the Lurton family since the 1970s (when it was acquired by Lucien Lurton), and in 1992 the estate came under the control of Bérénice Lurton (his daughter). In 2010, Climens began to practice biodynamic winemaking and viticulture, and the 2014 vintage was the first to be entirely certified as biodynamic. Chemical sprays were replaced with natural preparations and plant infusions, from flowers such as chamomile and juniper which are grown on the estate and dried in the attics above the chais.
