2005 Pierre et Catherine Breton Bourgueil Les Galichets Loire Valley France. 12% alcohol. 100% Cabernet Franc. Chambers Street Wine, $21.99. Lyle/Asimov bottle. Imported by Louis/Dressner, New York.
Deep red color, deep hue, lovely fruit and spice aroma, excellent fruit tastes with very good spice notes and a mineral background, medium mouth feel, smooth tannins, beautifully balanced with fruit and mild acidity, long single note finish of blended fruit, spice and earthen and mineral notes. Delicious -- a very easy drinking wine with no oak. 4*.
Notes:
http://www.louisdressner.com/Breton/
Bourgueil from Pierre and Catherine Breton
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 [i.e. Les Galichets] 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.
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, according 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.
Regards, Bob
