2018 Beau Rivage Chenin Blanc William’s decisions in the cellar are inevitably influenced by the Cote de Beaune and Loire Valley and beyond. The wine is fermented in used barrels and demi-muid and matures on its lees. Chenin remains Clarksburg’s signature variety, retaining succulent acidity thanks to the cool breezes which flow in across the Sacramento Delta every evening. Sourced from mineral-rich alluvial, clay and silt soils. Fermented in used barrel and demi-muids Tasting Notes: The wine is outstanding, offering up a pure, youthful and complex bouquet of quince, green apple, beeswax, lanolin, dried flowers and a lovely base of chalky soil tones. On the palate the wine is bright, full-bodied and rock solid at the core, with excellent focus and grip, a lovely girdle of acidity and a long, nascently complex finish. This is still a young wine, and though it is tasty, it deserves a few years in the cellar to really start to blossom and show some secondary layers of complexity. Food Recommendations: clams, shellfish, white meat.