Winemaker Notes
This Cabernet Franc bottling is sourced from a small parcel of 110+ year-old vines, a good portion of which are ungrafted, and as you'd expect from well-tended old vines in a strong vintage, the wine is dense with promise. The fruit is very fine, almost silky, with intense minerality on the finish. Upon opening, it was quite closed but showed its potential the following day. Patience is needed—and will be rewarded.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2021 Saumur Champigny Les Mémoires, deriving from vines rooted in silex soils atop chalky subsoils, offers up aromas of plums, violets, peonies, spices and smoke intertwined with flinty notes. Medium to full-bodied, layered and crystalline, it’s deep and complete with structuring tannins and a more austere character than the Clos de l’Echelier. It should see out its 10th anniversary in fine form.
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.
Marked by great châteaux built with the same tuffeau limestone that is also responsible for the excavation of so many of the famed Loire caves, Saumur is famous for its Chenin blanc based sparkling wines. Inside the Saumur region, Saumur-Champigny creates some of the Loire’s greatest Cabernet Francs.