Loire Cabernet Franc: Who Do You Think You Are?

BY REBECCA GIBB MW | AUGUST 11, 2022

It’s been a long time coming, but the red wine producers of the Loire Valley have reason to be proud of their main red grape variety, Cabernet Franc. In last year’s article, The Dark Days Are Over, I covered major changes occurring in both the vineyards and wineries, leading to riper, refined and expressive styles that should make the vignerons proud. No longer does Clos Rougeard stand alone as the only Loire red worthy of fine wine lovers’ shopping basket. The domaine’s former owners, the Foucault brothers, led the way. There’s been a trickle-down effect, in part due to the Foucaults’ generosity in sharing time and knowledge with younger winemakers coming up the ranks. The wine equivalent of the Amazon-like algorithm, if you liked this, you’ll like that would now suggest a plethora of Saumur-Champigny top guns including Domaine des Roches Neuves, Antoine Sanzay and Arnaud Lambert. Further east, Bourgueil’s Domaine du Bel Air, Yannick Amirault, Domaine de la Chevalerie and Guiberteau would admirably fill several rows of any collector’s wine rack. And, in Chinon, a host of 40-somethings have now become part of the landscape: with plenty of experience already under their belts, they are currently making fine wines. The next 20 vintages are assured from Matthieu Baudry at Bernard Baudry and Bertrand Sourdais at Domaine de Pallus to Jérôme Billard at Domaine de la Noblaie and Pierre Alliet at Philippe Alliet, among others.

The vines that make Les Pensées de Pallus sit on sand and ironstone and are farmed organically. The wine spends 12 months in barrel and three years in bottle before release.

The very best wines are inimitable, elegant, terroir-driven and sensitively handled. They deserve to be discovered, in their own right, as superlative Loire reds, not a fresher alternative to Bordeaux Right Bank nor an affordable offering for Burgundy drinkers, which appears to be on repeat. Following four visits to the Loire in the first half of 2021, I was left wondering why Loire Cabernet wasn’t enough, why did it have to be benchmarked against other French wine regions that don’t make single varietal Cabernet Franc?

It reminded me of a speech made by Ted Lemon of Littorai Wines at the Mornington Peninsula International Pinot Noir conference in 2013. He made it clear that he thought comparisons to Burgundy were unhealthy for New World producers, but that holds true for Loire Cabernet Franc makers too. “Look inward,” he said. “Do not measure all things against the Old World. And above all do not see Burgundy as a measuring stick. We must be like Odysseus, lashing ourselves to the mast of the ship in order to resist the siren song of the maidens of Burgundy.” The job of vignerons, he claimed was to “craft wines which are the most honest, crystalline expression of their place and then let others decide if they feel that your efforts are worthy.” I’m not suggesting benchmarking should be banned; it provides a useful context in which to envision a wine, but the Loire is its own place.

However, the region’s self-confidence appears to be lagging behind its advances in viticulture and vinification. It may be a question of shaking off the past: based on a recent tasting of older Cabernet Francs, the oldest dating back to 1989, my takeaway was that I was glad I have decided to specialise in the Loire now rather than 10 or 20 years ago – back then the bad outweighed the good. That’s no longer the case.

If fine wine merchants are only interested in holding a Loire dinner if it’s Clos Rougeard and if sommeliers attempt to show off to their peers by posting shots of this cult wine’s bottles – as if it’s the only decent red to have come out of the Loire in the past 20 years – there’s an issue. There seems to be a general lack of knowledge when it comes to what’s good and great in the Loire. I was talking to a Master of Wine recently who joked that they usually whizzed through the Loire section of the Wine and Spirit Education Trust’s diploma because it was a gaping hole in their wine education.

Bertrand Sourdais is making superlative, ageworthy Chinon at Domaine de Pallus.