Cabernet Franc: The Dark Days Are Over

BY REBECCA GIBB MW | OCTOBER 07, 2021

A film crew is in Chinon shooting an episode of the latest series of Emily in Paris, a Netflix show following the life of an American in Paris who spends an awful lot of time running around a romanticized version of the city taking selfies and sleeping with Gallic charmers. It’s frivolous viewing, but 58 million people watched the first series. In what should have been a PR coup for this part of the Loire, the second series sees Emily at Château de Sonnay in the Chinon-making village of Cravant-les-Côteaux. But it seems the Loire’s most important red wine appellation is not glamorous enough for the show’s makers: as I drive slowly past the set, I see that the sign on the manor’s gate has been changed to “Château de Lalisse, Épernay.”

It’s a bit of an insult for locals, but then Champagne has long been an aspirational drink thanks to more than a century of luxury marketing; Cabernet Franc, on the other hand, has hardly charmed its way into glasses in that time. Green flavors, tough tannins, reduction and Brettanomyces-laced wines were terroir, right? Not everyone agreed. In her 2004 Master of Wine dissertation on the export potential for the area’s reds, Julia Harding explained: “Cabernet Franc’s cause has not been helped by producers who defended a slight greenness as a badge of terroir.” Since then, the variety has had a makeover, but reputations are hard to shake. It’s time to shake hard. 

The cellars of Arnaud Lambert are hewn from Saumur’s tuffeau rock.

Cabernet Franc is not what it was. Few will mourn the passing of its former self. In many instances,  Cabernet Franc offers ripe, succulent fruit and resolved tannins, while the herbaceous and peppery characters that plagued it for so long have also been given the flick. Matthieu Baudry, who has taken over from his father Bernard at the family domaine, said: “When I started in 2000, there was a lot of Cabernet Franc that was underripe, but if you look at the past 10 years – not counting 2013, that was a bit difficult – the wines are no longer underripe nor are they overripe.” A warming climate has contributed to this evolving style, but that’s not the only factor; older vines are playing their part, as are the people who tend them. A generation of well-traveled and university-trained winemakers has taken the reins of family estates and shows a greater understanding when it comes to ripeness, extraction and maturation.

The leaps and bounds in quality are a consequence of both nature and nurture. On the nurture side, the Loire’s regional wine association backed a “Cabernet Franc Project” between 2005 and 2008, which served to highlight what drinkers wanted from Cabernet Franc – and it wasn’t leafy, chewy wines. The project brought Loire producers together and highlighted the causes of their problems: underripe grapes, high fermentation temperatures, overextraction in the winery, and excessive use of sulfur dioxide (SO2), to name but a few. The timing coincided with the return of this new generation of winemakers, creating an appetite for improvement that was accompanied by the skills and know-how to make it happen. 

Matthieu Baudry of Domaine Bernard Baudry makes transparent Cabernet Franc in Chinon, and also has good taste in music.

As a result, gone are the days of enthusiastic extraction leading to hard, drying tannins. “Infusion” is the current buzzword when it comes to maceration. It’s slightly comedic when a winemaker earnestly tells you they practice infusion as if they had invented the method, when you’ve heard it from every other winemaker over the course of a week. Today, producers typically start with a couple of punch-downs a day, early on in the proceedings, but as the fermentation progresses, it’s common to pull back to almost no maceration, just keeping the cap wet as required. Combined with moderated fermentation temperatures, this results in tannins that are more akin to tea that’s been brewed slowly with leaves rather than a tea bag that’s dunked vigorously and squeezed (hence the term “infusion”). There’s also been greater attention to terroir when it comes to tannin management. For example, vines planted on a variation of sand and gravel, typically situated closer to the river, produce lighter, earlier-drinking wines; maceration times are shorter and the process is gentler compared to wines from grapes grown on limestone and clay slopes.