Winemaker Notes
A brooding colour announces a wine with great depth. The substance, which is for the moment a little closed, is ample, powerful and chiseled with aromas of spices and black fruit. Exceptional length.
Exceptional wine for long term cellaring, 2019-2025.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Loaded with intense fig, blackberry coulis and currant paste flavors at the core, this is studded with smoldering charcoal, roasted cedar and bay notes and pushed by a prominent graphite spine. Shows terrific grip and drive, boasting a muscular and deep finish. Best from 2016 through 2023.
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Wine & Spirits
Kevin Fontaine makes this wine from vines planted during the 1930s in a vineyard of white limestone and clay. It’s a vivid Chinon, the formidable chewy richness brightened by high-toned acidity that details the rustic edges of the wine and casts them in an elegant light. Still young, almost primary, this needs bottle age to show its full potential.
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