Clarendelle Inspired by Haut-Brion Amberwine 2003
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Clarendelle Amberwine has a wonderful golden yellow colour, an intense fruit aroma with hints of dried apricots, ripe peach and pear combined with subtle note of pineapple and orange flower. The wine displays full ripe fruit and enjoys a beautiful balanced acidity with a long finish.
80% Semillon, 10% Sauvignon Blanc, 10% Muscadelle
Clarendelle, Inspired by Haut-Brion is created by Prince Robert de Luxembourg and named in honour of Mr Clarence Dillon, his great-grandfather, who acquired Château Haut-Brion in 1935.
A member of the eminent Domaine Clarence Dillon family of wines (Haut-Brion, La Mission Haut-Brion & Quintus), the style of the Clarendelle wines is dictated by an expression of the Bordeaux terroir which aims to produce subtle elegance in age-worthy wines.
Every year, we revisit the blends in order to reflect only the finest parcels of wine in each individual vintage resulting from long-term partnerships with local winegrowers, attentive to environmental issues. The red wines come primarily from the Saint-Émilion the Haut-Medoc, and the Pessac-Leognan regions (including the Domaine Clarence Dillon estates). The white wines come mainly from the Graves region (including Pessac-Leognan). Like the Haut-Brion wines, Clarendelle offers its assurance by representing an uncompromising quality and consistency with every vintage. We ensure proper aging of our wines in state-of-the-art, eco-friendly wine storage facilities that allow for the ideal aging conditions. This guarantees that our wines reveal their natural refinement and elegance over time.
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.
French wine is nearly synonymous with fine wine and all things epicurean, France has a culture of wine production and consumption that is deeply rooted in tradition. Many of the world’s most beloved grape varieties originated here, as did the concept of “terroir”—soil type, elevation, slope and mesoclimate combine to produce resulting wines that convey a sense of place. Accordingly, most French wine is labeled by geographical location, rather than grape variety. So a general understaning of which grapes correspond to which regions can be helpful in navigating all of the types of French wine. Some of the greatest wine regions in the world are here, including Bordeaux, Burgundy, the Rhône and Champagne, but each part of the country has its own specialties and strengths.
Pinot Noir and Chardonnay are the king and queen of Burgundy, producing elegant French red and white wines with great acidity, the finest examples of which can age for decades. The same two grapes, along with Pinot Meunier, are used to make Champagne.
Of comparable renown is Bordeaux, focused on bold, structured red blends of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc including sometimes a small amount of Petit Verdot or Malbec. The primary white varieties of Bordeaux are Sauvignon Blanc and Sémillon.
The northern Rhône Valley is responsible for single-varietal Syrah, while the south specializes in Grenache blends; Rhône's main white variety is Viognier.
Most of these grape varieties are planted throughout the country and beyond, extending their influence into other parts of Europe and New World appellations.