Gift set: Cépage Cabernet Franc

Anyone who pushes open the door of a wine cellar in Chinon or Bourgueil will, sooner or later, be told the same story: in 1631, Cardinal Richelieu, having just established his lands as a duchy-peerage, had several thousand vine cuttings of the region's most renowned grape variety sent from Bordeaux to his steward, Abbé Breton, who was in charge of the Saint-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil abbey. The latter planted them around Chinon and Bourgueil; the resulting wine was so good that even today, the grape variety is still nicknamed "le breton" in both Touraine and Anjou.

A lovely story—except that it is probably false, or at the very least incomplete. For as early as the 16th century, Rabelais was already referring to a "good Breton wine" regarding the wines from the region of Vernon, nearly a century before the Richelieu episode. Cabernet Franc was therefore already present and appreciated in the Loire long before the Cardinal got involved. As for its true origins, they reportedly date back to the Basque Country, before a slow migration toward the Bordeaux region and then the Loire.

Its scientific consecration came much later: in 1997, a team of geneticists from the University of California, Davis, demonstrated that Cabernet Franc is one of the two parents of Cabernet Sauvignon, the other being Sauvignon Blanc; a delightful turnaround for this grape variety, which was long considered a mere supporting actor to its Bordeaux offspring.

In the Loire, Cabernet Franc has actually achieved what Bordeaux never allowed it to do: become a star variety in its own right, rather than just a blending component. In both Chinon and Bourgueil, its expression varies radically depending on whether it grows on the sands and gravels of the banks of the Loire and Vienne rivers, producing supple, fruity wines to be drunk young, or on the tuffeau limestone and clay hillsides, where it gains structure, tannins, and aging potential, sometimes for several decades. In Saumur-Champigny, still on that same tuffeau limestone characteristic of the Saumur region, it delivers a third version, somewhere between crunchy fruit and minerality.

A grape variety from elsewhere, burdened with a name that lies about its origins, but which has, over the centuries, become the most faithful red signature of the Loire Valley, as evidenced by this case: