Olga Raffault Les Picasses 2014
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#25 Wine Enthusiast Top 100 Wines of 2019
This 100% Cabernet Franc is the fullest-bodied, most structured and most complex of the Raffault reds.
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Wine Enthusiast
Chalk soil on the slope up to the plateau above the town of Chinon gives this organic wine its mineral texture, which is allied to great fruit and spice. Wood aging lends generous, ripe tannins, the layers of black fruits are impressive and have aged well. Enjoy this fine wine now.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Picked early, on the 1st of September, the 2014 Chinon Les Picasses is from limestone soils and was aged for 12 months in 50-hectoliter foudres. The wine is dark and offers a clear, fresh and concentrated bouquet of dark fruits and spices. Full-bodied, ripe and intense yet very fresh and vital in its chalky minerality, this is a very elegant, silky textured yet firmly structured, very promising Chinon with a long finish. Very fine tannins.
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The estate has terrific plots of land in the Savigny-en-Véron district hard by the Vienne riverbanks. The ‘les Picasses’ vineyard stands out from the rest: old vines of 50-ish years on a fairly steep slope from the riverbank that is alluvial clay with a chalk limestone base. The fruit is particularly expressive of dark fruits of cassis and dark cherries with a terrific mineral content and good acidity for structure.
The winemaking is most traditional. The grapes are, of course, handpicked and fermented in stainless-steel. The wines are then aged in larger, neutral oak and sometimes chestnut - a traditional barrel wood in the region
Cabernet Franc, a proud parent of Cabernet Sauvignon, is the subtler and more delicate of the Cabernets. Today Cabernet Franc produces outstanding single varietal wines across the wine-producing world. Somm Secret—One of California's best-kept secrets is the Happy Canyon appellation of Santa Barbara. Here Cabernet Franc shines as a single varietal wine or in blends, expressing sumptuous fruit, savory aromas and polished tannins.
An important red wine appellation in the Touraine district of the Loire, Chinon produces fanciful, light-bodied reds from the Cabernet Franc grape. Chinon also makes charming rosés from the same grape as well as white wines from Chenin blanc. But the reds give the area its fame. Often scented with fresh herbs, black tea and violets, Chinon reds show a lovely combination of fruit and acidity. However, styles have become more concentrated and ripe in recent years from improvements in vineyard management. Modern methods include planting grass between vineyard rows, using higher trellises and deleafing to increase sunlight to berries and therefore improve ripening. Even still, red Chinon is intended to be a light to medium bodied, refreshing wine to be enjoyed in its youth.
Fuller-bodied Chinons come from vineyard sites on the clay and tuffeau limestone slopes, usually from the southern exposed slopes of Cravant-les-Coteaux, and the plateau above Beaumont. Lighter styled wines come from the sand and gravel vineyards near the Loire or Vienne Rivers with the most refined examples coming from the area around Panzoult