Cabernet Franc from the Loire Valley is finally receiving long overdue respect. Remarkably juicy, textured, versatile with food, and immensely age worthy, the Cabernet Franc wines of Bourgueil, Chinon, Saumur and St-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil are both a traditional staple and a rediscovered rage on the Paris bistro/wine bar scene. Chief among the best Loire red winemakers is Pierre Breton (whose last name is also the name for Cabernet Franc in the local dialect.)

Pierre and Catherine Breton’s wines are served at virtually every hot wine bar in Paris. Pierre makes several cuvées from various vineyard sites and his cuvée of plain Bourgueil is his most accessible wine, meant for immediate drinking pleasure. Breton calls it a “wine of fruit” for this precise reason, and vinifies it in stainless-steel. This wine comes from small yields of 32 hectoliters/hectare and is bottled unfiltered.

Pierre Breton, left, practices organic viticulture and uses only a minimal dosage of sulfur. The wine is classified as made from “organic agriculture”.

He makes two very special types of Bourgueil. The first, Trinch!, (In French, this is the sound of two classes clinking) is a wine for drinking immediately, chilled not cold. It is delicate and refreshing with an uncanny ability to go well with a range of food, but with salmon it is a perfect match. The second is called "Nuits d'Ivresse", or The Drunken Nights, is from a selection of fruit that is vinified completely without the use of any sulfur, accordinly to the vinifcation principals outlined by the late Jules Chauvet. There is a tiny amount added before the bottling to keep the wine stable in shipping, but it is so minimal as to be undetectable in testing.

His other cuvées are vinified according to their character (defined mainly by the soil and the vines’ age). Bourgueil les Galichets, from 50-year-old vines on gravely soil, Chinon les Moulins de Beaupuy (8 years) and Chinon Beaumont (50 years), from clay and limestone, are made in stainless-steel vats. Bourgueil Clos Sénéchal (15 and 30 years, clay and limestone over tufa) is vinified in steel vats and aged in barrels for 5 months. Bourgueil les Perrières (50 years, on clay and silica over limestone), Bourgueil Grandmont (35 years average, on clay and limestone) and Chinon les Picasses are fermented and aged in barriques for 20 months. The age of the oak barriques varies, and some new wood is used for the biggest wines.

In 2002, Pierre and Catherine released a bottling from vines that Pierre planted five years ago in one of his choicest spots of limestone clay. These vines are what are termed "Franc a Pied" or ungrafted onto American pest-resistant rootstock (or foot). He propogated these vines from cuttings from his own vineyards and has found that the formation of the stems, the shape of the leaves, the amount and spacing of the fruit are vastly different from the same palants the cuttings were taken from. More importantly, he has found that the fruit is remarkably different, too. The cuvée from these vines is called "Franc a Pied" and we have already sold out of the 2002. We look forward to the release of the 2003 late in 2004. At the same time, Catherine Breton, right (and the habit is ony a costume) , a non-native of Bourgueil, has began, on her own, a venture in winemaking of grapes from her family's estate in a land far, far away - in fact, only on the other side of the town of Montrichard, some 40 kilometers away - Vouvray. Her Vouvray Petillant NV under the name La Dilettante will be here a little later this year after the disgorgement.