It’s time for fresh, juicy cabernet franc to take centre stage
Les Terrasses Saint Nicolas de Bourgueil, Loire France 2022 (£11, Tesco) For years, only one member of the cabernet family was known beyond the circles of serious wine enthusiasts. Cabernet sauvignon, still the world’s most widely planted grape variety, left its Pyrenean parent, cabernet franc, (DNA testing in the 1990s proved cabernet sauvignon is the progeny of cabernet franc and sauvignon blanc) in the shade when it came to reputation and recognition. Recently, however, cabernet franc has been enjoying a new lease of life, prized by growers for its ability, in the right conditions, to make red wines of fashionable freshness, elegance and crunch, many of which take well to drinking at cooler temperatures than richer, denser wines such as those made, certainly in warmer climes, from cabernet sauvignon. The Loire Valley is the wellspring of this genre of cabernet franc, with the red- and blackcurrants and pencil-lead shadings of the style nicely displayed in Tesco’s bottling from the Saint-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil appellation.
Raats Family Cabernet Franc Stellenbosch, South Africa 2020 (£23.50, The Wine Society) I was lucky to sample (blind) a selection of around three-dozen of the world’s most celebrated cabernet franc and cabernet-franc-based wines in a tasting organised by my colleagues at The World of Fine Wine magazine recently. The Loire inevitably fared well, with the immaculate, silkily stylish wines made by Charles Joguet in Chinon (such as Charles Joguet Chinon Clos de la Dioterie 2019; £255, case of six bottles, laywheeler.com) my favourites on the day. I was, impressed, too, by the red-fruited verve of South African bottlings from Raats and Gabrielskloof. But my top bottle came from a region that wouldn’t necessarily be my first pick for cab franc: California’s JFW La Jota Howell Mountain Cabernet Franc 2019 from the Napa Valley showed how good this variety can be in a riper, richer, denser style. Full of crème de cassis flavours, it’s a seamlessly polished, enormously pleasurable wine – and at circa £100 a bottle (corkingwines.co.uk), so it should be.
