Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine & Spirits
Baudry farms just over an acre of chenin blanc on clay and white limestone soils, producing a wine that’s pure umami. Give it time in the glass for oxygen to fill out the scratchy acidity and the bitter olive pit flavors. What emerges is a white with orange cream refinement, scents of goat milk and vanilla, still austere but fuller and more caressing. Decant it for scallops served over a creamy parsnip puree.
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Wine Spectator
This has hit its stride, with a solid core of steeped plum and black cherry fruit melded with smoldering charcoal, sweet tapenade and singed bay leaf notes. The long, fleshy finish reveals an echo of rosemary. Drink now through 2020. 30 cases imported.
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