Muratie Amber Forever NV

Muratie Amber Forever is made from Muscat d’Alexandrie (Hanepoot) grapes harvested at 25° Balling and fortified with grape spirits at the critical time to leave plenty of residual sugar at 16.5% alcohol by volume, this irresistibly seductive dessert wine is redolent of life’s most luxuriant delicacies: rose petals, musk perfume, Turkish Delight, poached pears and honey-drenched peaches. Yet it’s not at all cloying thanks to refreshing acidity and a burst of alcoholic heat. During the 1940s, when Muratie was owned by George Paul Canitz, the novel Forever Amber was published by Kathleen Winsor. Set in seventeenth-century England, it told the story of the orphan Amber St Clare, who rose through the ranks of British society by sleeping with increasingly influential men (King Charles II among them). Canitz insisted (almost too emphatically) that his fortified sweet wine was named after this fictitious character but the truth is that the renowned painter and worshipper of wine, women and song had an Amber of his own. She was his model and muse and her picture hangs in the Muratie cellar to this day. ‘To happy days and glorious nights, Forever Amber,’ was his famous toast.