Chateau Elan Wine Comp Layout

Château Élan Bianco Named Specialty Sweepstake Winner at San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition

Set among the countryside of northern Georgia, Château Élan Resort lends itself beautifully to a wonderful weekend or midweek getaway filled with walks, spa treatments, golf, and wine tasting directly from the estate’s vineyards. Set on a remarkable 3,500-acre property, Château Élan Winery is responsible for creating a renaissance in southern grape growing. Great care has gone into creating exceptional wines born of the revitalization of a native-grown muscadine grape. Château Élan wines are hardly limited to this varietal. Winemaker Simone Bergese draws from more than 25 grape varieties to create several wines that are considered among the finest in the eastern U.S. Bergese is heralded for taking a minimalist approach to creating award-winning wines, allowing the fruit from the 20-year-old vineyard to take precedence and involving grapes from other vineyards in Georgia as well as from famous stock in California. You can arrange wine tastings at Chateau Élan, or simply order wine directly from the winery’s website. Here are four Château Élan labels that have sommeliers and amateur wine enthusiasts talking and, in the case of Bianco Port, bestowing “Best in Class” at the 2022 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition Sweepstake Awards.

Bianco is a unique wine that can be described as white port. Blended with 30 percent muscadine grapes, this award-winning wine celebrates a fruit that is extremely well-adapted to the southeastern climate. The white Carlos and red Noble varieties are each hardy enough to withstand the unique growing environment as well. Bianco Port is blended with 70 percent Chardonnay grapes grown in California’s Lake County. This wine is fortified before completing the fermentation, leaving a considerable amount of residual sugar and an alcohol content of 19%. Its color is an intense amber, and the flavors are powerful toffee notes with suggestions of caramel, honeyed in texture, and earthy in its evocation of nuts, smoke and alcohol. Bianco embodies Bergese's sustainable winemaking style by having extremely low sulfites, no additives and no filtrations, enhancing the regional character through a traditional old world style approach. Bianco won the Specialty Sweepstake Award at the 2022 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition.

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The Velvet Reserve 2020 provides a bejeweled ruby color that reflects the Petit Sirah and Zinfandel origin grapes that arrive from the Château Élan California vineyard in Clarksburg. Providing a hint of oak with robust cassis and strawberry tones, Velvet offers your palate a balance of strength and smoothness that complements both rich and simple foods, making it a brilliant accompaniment to, say, a charcuterie board. This young, vibrant variety will surely satisfy the palate on any day or evening. The deep red hues of this variety connote great consistency in a wine that can be opened right away or cellared for a few years. Swirl this wine in your glass and you see the moody hold against the glass as the Montepulciano body breaths and presents a surprisingly well-balanced nose when poured young. Simone has created a wine of remarkable persistence that takes you on a journey filled with red fruit, plum, and blackberry accompanied by spicy suggestions of cinnamon and black pepper and overlaid with toasted scents of vanilla, coffee, cocoa, tobacco, and hazelnut. This robust wine offers a soft complexity with a slight tannin suggestion that is never too aggressive. This is a wine you and your friends will come to appreciate like a warm embrace.

By StoryStudio on March 4, 2022 11:19 AM

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