Amirault’s old-vine Cabernet Franc from the heart of their domaine offers an outstanding combination of varietal character and Bourgueil terroir. Made from 60-year-old vines on clay-limestone soils, it’s tightly would and bound up at first, so give it a good decant if you’re drinking it now. Once it has time to open, the bouquet puts up a beautiful core of fruit tones, red merging with blue and black. Red plum, cranberry, blackberry, and black cherry intermingle with licorice, graphite, struck flint, soft underbrush, dark tobacco, and faint chalk tones. Lilac and lavender eventually add elegance and nuance. Reminds in some ways of a Right Bank Cab Franc. The palate is stern and brooding at first, like the nose, but it settles out with bracing, refined tannins, persistent acidity, and a great, sappy mid-palate. It’s less fruit-expressive than the nose at the moment, leading more with rocky minerality and touches of iron and cured meat. With some patience, it starts to show deep, tart black currant, blueberry, boysenberry, and pomegranate, with earthy inflections of camphor, petrichor, and graphite on the compact, medium finish. This needs a few years, and it will be singing beautifully on its tenth birthday, no doubt.
93-94 points, Andrew Kitz, B-21 Loire Buyer (Sep 2026)
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