The 2018 Château Clarke stands out with its aromatic complexity, featuring notes of toasted cedar, cocoa powder, cherries, and floral nuances. On the palate, the wine is smooth and almost sensual, offering a chewy texture balanced by fine powdery tannins. It showcases an elegant yet powerful structure with bright cherry and strawberry fruit, cool blue fruits, dried herbs, and a touch of tobacco and cola. Despite its fruit plushness, it maintains a tense, fresh profile, which suggests a long aging potential. With 70% Merlot and 30% Cabernet Sauvignon, this wine is muscular and well-built, making it an excellent candidate for aging and will evolve beautifully over the next 15 years.

Decanter | D 93
Published: Oct 3, 2023
Drink: 2023-2038

Fragrant toasted and floral nuances on the nose; cedar, cocoa powder and cherries - aromatically lovely. Clean and clear, smooth and almost sensual on the palate with a soft chalky plushness to the fruit - chewy but with fine powdery tannins that gives both the flavour and the texture. Satisfying and direct, calm and elegant. Really quite juicy but the acidity is well balanced to the frame which is structured and powerful. Feels muscular and well built, expansive yet defined with sleekness overall. Bright cherry and strawberry fruit, wet stone, liquorice and chalky tannins, cool blue fruits, dried herbs, tobacco, cedar and cola, lots going on here. Quite a serious take on the vintage - straight and tense despite the fruit plushness but keeps its freshness, this will be long lived with great ageing potential. 

Closure: Cork
Alcohol: 14.00%
Body: Full
Oak: Oaked
Grapes: 30% Cabernet Sauvignon 70% Merlot

Jamessuckling.com | JS 92
Published: Mar 3, 2021

Lots of spiced plum and chocolate on the nose with blueberry and hazelnut. It’s full-bodied with firm, smooth tannins. Polished. 70% merlot and 30% cabernet sauvignon. Drink from 2024.

Edmondderothschildheritage.com

Indissociable from the Edmond de Rothschild family, its values and its passion for wine, Château Clarke has benefited from expert attention and creative vision for 50 years. Although the first traces of viticulture date back to the 12th century, this Médoc jewel has just completed 3 years of extensive work, enabling it to attain the status to which its origins had destined it. Thanks to the dedication and investment of a family, thanks to the excellence of its terroir finally revealed, thanks to the expertise of its teams, Clarke is now ready to meet the tastes and challenges of the 21st century.
1973. When it all began.
A visionary, a builder and a wine enthusiast like his illustrious family, Baron Edmond de Rothschild (1926-1997), co-owner of Château Lafite Rothschild, had a secret dream: to own an intimate, discreet, little-known vineyard, which he would turn into his masterpiece. In a titanic project, he restored the estate, created new facilities, redesigned and replanted the entire 55-hectare vineyard. He also relaunched Château Clarke's Le Merle Blanc, a white wine born at the end of the 19th century, long before the fashion for white Médoc wines was revived. Château Clarke thus became the cornerstone of the winemaking adventure. The estate was passed on to his son Baron Benjamin (1963-2021) and his wife Ariane, who reinvented Baron Edmond's legacy and set about completing the metamorphosis of the estate and its wines into Médoc icons.

The proximity of the Atlantic Ocean gives the terroir a freshness that is reflected in the wine's aromatic radiance. A terroir that is highly conducive to the cultivation of the Merlot grape variety, in a region more traditionally known for the production of Cabernet Sauvignon. Château Clarke thus possesses a highly original Médoc character.