Château Climens, 2014 Update
I allowed my hire car to slow a little as I sensed the approach to the turning into the gravel-strewn courtyard of Château Climens coming up, but it was already too late. I missed it, careering past, only coming to a halt on the road junction a few dozen metres beyond it. I shouldn’t have been surprised, or so disappointed. This was just what I did last year. And the year before that, too. Once again, I had missed the entrance of champions, the gateway into Climens solely for the well-organised and the attentive.
Accepting my fate, I turned the wheel to the left, and headed out onto the road in front of Château Climens, and then took another left, passing through the second gateway into the courtyard. This is the entrance of failure, of absent-mindedness, a gateway for those who spend more time thinking about the wines they have just tasted, or the wines they are about to taste, rather than paying attention to where they are going. I found myself wondering, for a moment, if the second entrance been made purely for this purpose, and I soon concluded it most certainly had. I locked the car and, trying to look like somebody who had just arrived via the entrance of champions as much as possible, I marched across the courtyard to the bureau.
The Tisanerie
I was five minutes early and so I had a few moments to myself before Bérénice Lurton turned up. I used my time wisely, perusing the wine magazines left nonchalantly on the coffee table in the waiting area, each one making some mention of Château Climens, or its proprietor Bérénice. This is, quite rightly I am sure, a much-written-about wine estate, leading from the front as one of the top estates in Barsac and Sauternes, run in a clearly dedicated fashion by Bérénice, adhering to a strict biodynamic philosophy, the domaine having been recently fully certified. And I was here not just for a taste of the 2013 vintage (already written-up, in my 2013 Sauternes & Barsac en primeur report) but also to take a look around the estate, especially the tisanerie, and to taste some older vintages.
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