Chateau Climens (375ML half-bottle) 2003

Professional Ratings

• 96 Wine Spectator
  Loads of honey, maple syrup, dried apricot and spice. Full-bodied, medium-sweet, with a refined, spicy character. Pretty wine. Masses of botrytis. This is refined and long, a racy wine compared with the power and muscle of so many others. Beauty among the beasts.
• 90 Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
  Ex-chateau bottle tasted blind in Sauternes. The Climens ’03 has always been a capricious Barsac: brilliant out of barrel but found wanting under vertical conditions. Here, amidst a blind horizontal, it fell somewhere between the two! This bottle offers a sweet ripe bouquet of candied orange peel, dried honey and fig that is missing a little delineation (as discerned on previous bottles.) The palate is ripe and rounded on the entry with a touch of spice that lends it a pleasant edginess. Mango and pineapple form the middle whilst the finish is composed and focused with commendable precision and citric acidity. To repeat comments I have made before, this is a decent Climens, but Berenice Lurton has made far superior wines in recent years.