Catherine et Pierre Breton
Franc de Pied Bourgueil Cabernet Franc
Bourgueil, Touraine, Loire Valley, France
Tremendous performance out of this, easily the most impressive and also the most substantial Breton Franc de Pied I've had to date. I had previously viewed this bottling as a tier below the Baudry or Joguet FDPs but perhaps the vines have matured to the point where I should reassess (or maybe the wine itself is just maturing). This offers a powerful blast of complex aromatics right from the first sip, both earthy and savory and maybe even spicy, too. It's one of those wines where a lot of that personality moves into the background after a few minutes, so make sure you sample this one out of the gate instead of leaving it around to breathe all night. But from there the palate offers luscious fruit, significantly more concentrated and more layered than any prior vintages of this wine have been, with maybe a very fine bead of CO2 in there that you can barely notice through the fruit. You *can* get a sense through the fruit of some of the interesting things that were fleeting through those initial aromatics, savory root flavors and spice seasonings and what-not. But it's really the sense of power I find most impressive relative to prior vintages that were more in the camps of "elegant" or glou-glou. This is the kind of stuffing that makes you think it'll be virtually ageless and just coast forever on all that material, like the '59 Bordeauxs or something like that.
Tremendous performance out of this, easily the most impressive and also the most substantial Breton Franc de Pied I've had to date. I had previously viewed this bottling as a tier below the Baudry or Joguet FDPs but perhaps the vines have matured to the point where I should reassess (or maybe the wine itself is just maturing). This offers a powerful blast of complex aromatics right from the first sip, both earthy and savory and maybe even spicy, too. It's one of those wines where a lot of that personality moves into the background after a few minutes, so make sure you sample this one out of the gate instead of leaving it around to breathe all night. But from there the palate offers luscious fruit, significantly more concentrated and more layered than any prior vintages of this wine have been, with maybe a very fine bead of CO2 in there that you can barely notice through the fruit. You *can* get a sense through the fruit of some of the interesting things that were fleeting through those initial aromatics, savory root flavors and spice seasonings and what-not. But it's really the sense of power I find most impressive relative to prior vintages that were more in the camps of "elegant" or glou-glou. This is the kind of stuffing that makes you think it'll be virtually ageless and just coast forever on all that material, like the '59 Bordeauxs or something like that.
1 person found it helpfulMay 13th, 2015
