CHÂTEAU CLIMENS

Good full golden-yellow. Musky, very fresh aromas of crystallized citrus peel, minerals and toasted bread. The palate offers incredible sappy concentration and a saline aspect, not to mention a penetrating quality rare for this fruit-driven year. In fact, this begins almost light, then builds inexorably toward the back, finishing with a tactile impression of extract and an extraordinary sweetness that almost reminded me of the Suduiraut that I tasted just before it. Should go on for decades. Rating: 94 Stephen Tanzer's International Wine Cellar (Jul 2008)

A five-star wine in the making. The final 'assemblage' was not made, so one could only taste elements of the wine. But even from this, the exceptional quality was clear. The total crop was 24 hl/ha; nearly twice the average for 1995-2004. This is indicative of the exceptional conditions in the vineyard throughout the harvesting. My notes keep retuning to words like intensity and freshness of the perfume, citrus/pineapple aroma, enormous, rich flavours with long, lingering freshness, finesse and sweetness and acidity balance. Rating: ***** www.decanter.com

As usual, Ch Climens was not assembled in time for the primeurs tastings but, unusually, (a) some lots had already been assembled, because the sugar levels on some were so high that they needed to be matched already to some in which the acidity would counterbalance them and (b) Bérénice Lurton did not herself conduct a cellar tour of unusual cask-by-cask length but stayed indoors with her three week old son Aurélien instead. As usual, each lot was informatively different, one particularly nutty, another more citrus and lively, a third more floral and explosive and a fourth extraordinarily high in acidity but it was clear that this was an unusually sweet, rich vintage for Climens but with much better acidity than the 2003. Not quite as thrilling as the 2001 but not too much short of it. 2015-35 Rating: 18.5 Jancis Robinson OBE MW - www.JancisRobinson.com