Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
This stands out from the rest - white flowers, bitter orange, mandarin and smoked caramel are met at every step by lift and tension. A beautiful wine that keeps on delivering. Drinking Window 2020 - 2040
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James Suckling
This great Barsac is just beginning to open up and not only has incredibly fine mango, papaya and star-fruit character but also something mineral. Great concentration and textural complexity right from the tip of your tongue to the end of the extremely long, very pure finish. You can enjoy this now, but I recommend cellaring it as long as you can, because this has at least 50 years of ageing potential!
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Wine Spectator
Gorgeous, offering a range of orange, almond and brioche notes backed by lively citrus oil, green tea and ginger accents. Rich but tightly coiled nonetheless, with lots of energy lying in reserve on the finish. Needs some time. Best from 2022 through 2045.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Pale lemon in color, the 2015 Climens is just a little closed, offering up lovely lemon curd, lime juice and apple tart notes with touches of acacia honey and paraffin. Fine, fresh and elegant in the mouth, with great purity and poise, it finishes with amazing persistence.
Rating: 95+
Apart from the classics, we find many regional gems of different styles.
Late harvest wines are probably the easiest to understand. Grapes are picked so late that the sugars build up and residual sugar remains after the fermentation process. Ice wine, a style founded in Germany and there referred to as eiswein, is an extreme late harvest wine, produced from grapes frozen on the vine, and pressed while still frozen, resulting in a higher concentration of sugar. It is becoming a specialty of Canada as well, where it takes on the English name of ice wine.
Vin Santo, literally “holy wine,” is a Tuscan sweet wine made from drying the local white grapes Trebbiano Toscano and Malvasia in the winery and not pressing until somewhere between November and March.
Rutherglen is an historic wine region in northeast Victoria, Australia, famous for its fortified Topaque and Muscat with complex tawny characteristics.
Sweet and unctuous but delightfully charming, the finest Sauternes typically express flavors of exotic dried tropical fruit, candied apricot, dried citrus peel, honey or ginger and a zesty beam of acidity.
Sémillon, Sauvignon Blanc, Sauvignon Gris and Muscadelle are the grapes of Sauternes. But Sémillon's susceptibility to the requisite noble rot makes it the main variety and contributor to what makes Sauternes so unique. As a result, most Sauternes estates are planted to about 80% Sémillon. Sauvignon is prized for its balancing acidity and Muscadelle adds aromatic complexity to the blend with Sémillon.
Botrytis cinerea or “noble rot” is a fungus that grows on grapes only in specific conditions and its onset is crucial to the development of the most stunning of sweet wines.
In the fall, evening mists develop along the Garonne River, and settle into the small Sauternes district, creeping into the vineyards and sitting low until late morning. The next day, the sun has a chance to burn the moisture away, drying the grapes and concentrating their sugars and phenolic qualities. What distinguishes a fine Sauternes from a normal one is the producer’s willingness to wait and tend to the delicate botrytis-infected grapes through the end of the season.