Clos i Terrasses Clos Erasmus 2005
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Parker
Robert
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2005 Clos Erasmus is produced from three vineyard sites originally terraced by the Greeks. The current blend is 85% Garnacha and 15% Syrah with a long-term goal of making a 100% Garnacha wine. The wine was aged for 18 months in new French oak. It is super-fragrant with aromas of crushed stone, slate, cinnamon, baking spices, cassis, kirsch, blueberry, and wild black cherry. Perhaps a bit tighter than the 2004, on the palate there is a liquid minerality that must be tasted to be believed. Opulent, harmonious, and awesome are words which really cannot do justice to this extraordinary vinous achievement. In a perfect world, purchasers would have the patience to cellar it for 10-15 years but this will be a severe test of one’s ability to delay gratification.
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In 1988 Daphne Glorian, at the time employed by an English Master of Wine in his Paris office, was in the throws of epic folly and spent her life’s savings on 17 terraces of hillside vines just outside the village of Gratallops. Newly minted friends René Barbier and Alvaro Palacios encouraged her and together with Carles Pastrana and Jose Luis Perez, they pooled their talents and resources to make a new style of wine in a region rich in history and raw materials but without much of a proven track record for fine wines. In 1989 the modern Priorat was born: one wine but five different labels, each which would one day become known around the world: Clos Mogador, Clos Dofi, Clos Martinet, Clos de l’Obac and Clos Erasmus.
Today Daphne’s property goes by the name Clos i Terrasses in recognition of the Clos upon which her fame was established and the terraces that she farms. The estate is planted with 75% Garnatxa, 20% Syrah and 5% Cabernet Sauvignon.
The first vineyard, the original folly, is named Escalas. At 1.7 hectares, it is her smallest site planted on seventeen terraces carved out of a steep slope and surrounded by woods. North-facing, its seemingly inauspicious aspect creates the perfect conditions for ripening Garnatxa slowly and nurturing unusually vibrant Syrah, a variety which normally struggles in this hot and arid region.
In the early 1990s Daphne added Aubagues and Socarrats to her holdings. Aubagues is 2.5 hectares in size and like Escalas, it was replanted in the mid 1980s . It has a diverse exposure that spans two ridge tops, so the Garnatxa is grown to take advantage of the warmer parts of the vineyard with its deep soils while Syrah is reserved for the cooler, shallower, north-facing slopes. Even in youth, the Garnatxa from Aubagues is aromatic and inclined towards red fruit flavours.
Socarrats is the largest vineyard, totalling just over 3.5 hectares, where Garnatxa, Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon are planted up and over a hillside from southeast to northwest. Here her 2500 vines of Cabernet Sauvignon suffer each year, not being suited to the heat and llicorella soil. Each year Daphne resolves to graft them over until she tastes the wine they produce and each year they are granted a reprieve.
It may have begun in folly but through extraordinary effort and a relentlessness that borders on madness, Clos i Terrasses, much like the Priroat, continues to evolve and innovate. It is hard to imagine a world, only a quarter century ago, where wines like the five Clos did not exist but even more remarkable, is imagining what they will become in another quarter century under such talented stewardship.