No tasting note given.

Tasted blind at the 10-Year On Tasting in Sauternes. The 2005 Château Climens just soars from the glass with layers of clear honey, marmalade, nectarine and minerals all beautifully carved. The palate is medium-bodied with fresh, vibrant honeyed fruit that builds and builds in the mouth in tandem with a killer line of acidity. Even though it is a convincing, great Climens, you also have the impression that it is only just beginning to show what it is capable of. Bérénice Lurton and her team excelled in this vintage and it comes strongly recommended.

Toffee, dried lemon rind and tropical fruit on the nose. Full-bodied and very sweet, with a dense palate of candied fruit and a long, sweet finish. Very concentrated. The botrytis spice creeps up on the finish.

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.

The 2005 Climens is drinking nicely, wafting from the glass with aromas of orange oil, dried apricot and marmalade mingled with hints of honeycomb and petrol. Full-bodied, ample and fleshy, with an enveloping core of fruit, ripe acids and a seamless, textural profile, it's rich and dramatic, missing just a little cut to rank as profound—even if it nonetheless ranks as one of the finest sweet wines of the vintage in Bordeaux.

Mid gold colour; very closed on the nose, but a palate that is rich, elegant and refined, very sweet, but in no way sticky; a quiet power and real tenacity of flavour across the palate, with the property’s typical purity, a magnificent spicy complexity and splendid length. A great, complete Climens which will be deliciously accessible early, but keep and develop for decades.

Light fresh nose – not one of the most opulent but fine botrytis and well contained in a non ambitious style. ‘Pleasant’. Didn’t look great served blind. (JR)