2018 Château Climens Asphodele

Château Climens makes one of France’s most admired sweet white dessert wines. Located in Barsac, the 74-acre estate is noted for its extraordinary terroir on the highest plateau in the region. Château Climens makes Sauternes that consistently win rave reviews and it is a First Growth of the Sauternes-Barsac. Robert M. Parker Jr. has written that Château Climens “produces the region’s most compellingly elegant wine.” Though the château has been making wines for several centuries, since 1971 it has been owned by the Lurton family, which also owns numerous other estates in Bordeaux. Unlike some producers of Sauternes who use a blend of several white grapes, Climens is made from 100% Semillon. The estate’s high location means it gets a mix of moist and sunny weather making ideal conditions for Botrytis Cinerea, or so-called noble rot, the fungus that causes ripe grapes to sweeten enough to be used for Sauternes. About 25,000 bottles are produced annually.

Bordeaux is the world’s most famous fine-wine producing region. Even non-wine drinkers recognize the names of Bordeaux’s celebrated wines, such as Margaux and Lafite-Rothschild. Located near the Atlantic coast in southwest France, the region takes its name from the seaport city of Bordeaux, a wine trading center with an outstanding site on the Garonne River and easy access to the Atlantic. Like most French wine regions, Bordeaux’s first vineyards were planted by the Romans more than 2,000 years ago, then tended by medieval monks. Aristocrats and nobility later owned the region’s best estates and today estates are owned by everyone from non-French business conglomerates to families who have been proprietors for generations. Bordeaux has nearly 280,000 acres of vineyards, 57 appellations and 10,000 wine-producing châteaux. Bordeaux is bifurcated by the Gironde Estuary into so-called “right bank” and “left bank” appellations. Bordeaux’s red wines are blends of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Petit Verdot, Cabernet Franc and Malbec. It also makes white wines of Sémillon, Sauvignon Blanc and Muscadelle. There are several classification systems in Bordeaux. All are attempts to rank the estates based on the historic quality of the wines.