jamie goode's wine blog: An excellent Loire Cab Franc

Thursday, April 10, 2008

An excellent Loire Cab Franc

Isn't Eurostar great? Such a painless way to travel, especially if you travel business class and make use of the lounges. The move to St Pancras as the London terminal means that Paris is now very close indeed: it's no more difficult to get there than it is to reach, say, Manchester or Leeds. And probably about the same sort of price.

We finished our tasting of Loire wines at Sopexa's offices by early afternoon yesterday. We came up with 30 or so wines that we'd selected to be ambassadors of Cabernet Franc, and - though I say it myself - I think we did a great job. 2006 and 2007, the vintages represented, weren't the easiest, but the wines we chose are all really good. The tasting process itself was relatively painless, and we all respected each others' palates enough to make the discussion of each wine's merits a very constructive one.

At the end of the tasting, Sam Harrop pulled out a wine that he'd brought along from Domaine de la Chevalerie, a producer whose 2007 wine had made it into the ambassador selection in our tasting. This was a really smart wine from the 2005 vintage, and it was nice to drink it with our late lunch.

Domaine de la Chevalerie 'Chevalerie' 2005 Bourgeuil, Loire, France
Deep coloured, this has a lovely focused, tight nose with rich, spicy, dark fruits, and just a subtle hint of reductive funk. The palate is concentrated with lush, sweet fruit backed up by rich spicy elements. A generous ripe style with lovely focus, this is a gorgeous expression of Cabernet Franc. 92/100

Today, I've spent the day with the kids and a couple of their cousins in Thorpe Park. It is Chav heaven. If you are a good chav, you go to the great theme park in the sky, where the queues are short and the fast food is supersized at no extra cost. I took some motion sickness pills with me in case I had to go on any of the extreme rides, but fortunately this wasn't necessary. My elder son really, really loves Thorpe Park. Is there any hope for him?

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3 Comments:

At 2:50 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I've had no success in tracking down a UK outlet for Domaine de la Chevalerie 'Chevalerie'.
Do you know of one Jamie?

malcolmwilliamson

 
At 3:28 PM, Anonymous Doug said...

Hi Malcolm,

At the risk of self-advertising (we)Les Caves de Pyrene have just become the agent for Domaine de la Chevalerie.

D

 
At 3:48 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Leon Stolarski wines sell some of this Domaines wines too.

 

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