She serves up hot claret (9)
I believe the answer is:
charlotte
'she' is the definition.
Both the answer and definition are singular nouns.
Perhaps you can see an association between them that I don't see?
'up hot claret' is the wordplay.
'up' indicates an anagram (letters get chucked up).
'hot'+'claret'='hotclaret'
'hotclaret' with letters rearranged gives 'CHARLOTTE'.
'serves' is the link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for charlotte that I've seen before include "Victorian novelist" , "... one of the Brontes" , "US city" , "Pudding; girl" , "Yorkshire novelist" .)