That’s the bottle I picked up just for the hell of it due to a deal from a local shop. I probably won’t hate it, but don’t have much invested in it anyways.
My cellartracker handle is ‘cabfrancophile’, though I’ve moved much more into Nebbiolo and Syrah over the last 5-10 years. CF is great when it hits the sweet spot, but it’s a narrow window that most vintners are unfortunately not even targeting.
Many producers think of it as a way to produce a Cab S with a different varietal on the label. Which then results in the sort of unbalanced wine that appeared often in this tasting. Treating CF more like a Pinot Noir (less ripeness, less extraction, judicious use of oak) tends to yield better results.
Reading this, I think of a connection to all the threads about how wine consumption is down.
Perhaps a big part of why wine consumption is down is there’s a lot of wine which while technically sound from a laboratory standpoint is just not a good drink. (I know some of these notes are from wines which may not be technically sound.)
Maybe that’s why younger generations tends to natural wines, many are at reasonable price points and at least they are not like these wines
The have a problem in the Maremma, as Sangiovese hasn’t been a reliably good performer there. So they look to other grapes.
Maybe Cab Franc can work there, but they still need time to understand it? Syrah seems a better possibility, but maybe with a little more bravery, another grape will emerge to shine there, perhaps even a grape that got discarded decades ago due to lack of productivity. I have a soft spot for those grapes that make it back after such treatment.
Because they used to plant grapes based on what types of grapes grew best somewhere and now they do it based on planting international grapes with name recognition.
I think if you look more closely at history, you will find a lot more politics, economics, and happenstance in how different grapes ended up in different places.
That said, the market is fast and furious these days so people are clearly making short-sighted decisions that we can all deride. Doesn’t mean there aren’t also thoughtful people making wise decisions that will broaden our mental conceptions of what ‘belongs’ where.
You mean recently? Lots of economic and cultural status for current French winemakers to hold onto what they have. But going back in time: Grenache, Mourvedre, Ugni Blanc
How many producers of classified wines and other top Bordeaux are planting to new grape types.
I tend to be a fan of classically made wines, whether in Burgundy, Bordeaux, California, or Tuscany. I am more sympathetic toward guys using non-traditional grape types for $10 wines than for$50-100 wines
Do we have to go through this again. The word ‘classic’ has very little meaning. It would be more accurate if you wrote: “I tend to be a fan of the wines I drank as a young/middle-aged man”. Those wines had very little to do with the wines from 60-100 years before that, so we should not expect them to resemble wines 60-100 years into the future either.
It’s always a moving target.
Don’t get me wrong, I also cringe when I see some American wineries planting what I find a mishmash of European varieties that I don’t associate with the same terroir zones. I’m not saying all experimentation is great.
But let’s not pretend everything was Set in Stone until the newfangled disruptors arrived. Culture is always in flux.
I don’t have a strong view on Cabernet Franc in Tuscany, but let’s see. Chenin and Gruner in the Mosel have me intrigued.
What I’d want to see in a region struggling to find the right grapes (e.g. Maremma), are producers running a nursery of plantings, and doing small batch vinifications to decide which are worth pursuing (and learning how to get the best out of them in the vineyard and winery).
Maybe they are, and cab franc in this style is what they came up with?
The ‘economic and cultural status’ was of course what I was getting at; as the prestige of Italian native varieties and wine types has increased, the need for the adoption of non-native varieties has decreased markedly. People started planting Bordeaux varieties in Tuscany largely because Sangiovese-based wines had little cachet; now they do.
I agree completely with this. Actually I think Cabernet Franc has made some excellent wines in coastal Tuscany, I am less fond of the other Bordeaux varieties there. As you suggest, there is a fundamental difference between planting something because you think it would sell (Chardonnay in Sicily, for example), and planting something because you think it will make great wine in that area.