Climens 2006

Proprietor Berenice Lurton continues to turn out one of the utterly profound wines from the Barsac Sauternes region. The 2006 is not up there with their perfect 2001, but it is a beautiful wine and stands out as one of the top wines of 2006. Medium gold, with a slightly more advanced color than I am used to seeing in a young Climens, the wine displays waxy honeyed pineapple and delicate marmalade and citrus notes with a restrained use of new oak. The wine cuts a full-bodied swath across the palate with terrific acidity, freshness, and moderate sweetness. This is a beauty, but perhaps on a much faster evolutionary track than some of their greatest vintages.

Tasted at the Sauternes 2006 ten-year on horizontal in Bordeaux. The 2006 Climens still feels youthful on the nose, a car revving its engine but yet to release the handbrake. The palate is medium-bodied with harmonious, honeyed marmalade and quince-tinged fruit, plenty of botrytis and perhaps here, a little more advanced than the aromatics. They will catch up in time to complete the gorgeous, quite ravishing yet tensile Climens from Bérénice Lurton and her team.

Tasted as usual from many different barrels before the final assemblage although we did taste several pre-assemblages, including two samples which differed by just 10% in terms of their ingredients and yet tasted completely different. Spooky, and partly a question oak age, but still very elucidating. 16 days and 4 stages of harvesting, 13 September - 4 October. The total harvest was less than half that of 2005 but within the average for the last 10 years. Near catastrophe when there was a violent wind storm on 5 October, causing a 36-hour power failure and they had to get an emergency generator to operate the press right through the night. To quote Bérénice Lurton: ‘We end up having a strong nervous system in Sauternes!’If Yquem was a big step above the rest, Climens was at least half a step above the rest. Very complete and dense with wonderfully smooth texture if in some cases a little lighter than some years with a distinctly green tang to some lots. Still some astringency but very fine tannins. Good concentration and good acidity too.

Full gold with orange highlights. Fruit salad and floral aromas, along with sexy oak tones of nuts, marzipan, spices, vanilla and toasted almond. Enticing, opulent and concentrated, with lovely inner-mouth aromatic quality and bright acids to frame the sweet fruit salad flavors. Finishes with a restrained sweetness and lovely lift and perfume. This very long and aromatic wine boasts a tight, chewy core of fruits and spices and very good energy on the back end. But it's also remarkably easy to taste today.