Charles Joguet, Cabernet Franc, Chinon "Les Charmes" Loire Valley, France 2017

Charles Joguet's Les Charmes offers a straight, crisp and generous fruit wine. With a lively color with aromas of violets and spices, Les Charmes is full of supple, crunchy tannins.

Les Charmes is from a selection of parcels from vines located on the Left Bank of the Vienne. The Cabernet Franc vines are 35 years old and the terroir is clay-limestone, facing north. The wine is vinified in wooden vats and aged for 6 months in French oak barrels. Charles Joguet's wines are certified organic.

The vines at Domaine Charles Joguet are on two main types of soil: gravelly terraces, which give light and fragrant wines that are called "Easter wines" or "spring wines", and clay-silica and clayey-limestone slopes, which offer wines with good aging potential. Depending on their terroir of origin, certain wines can be enjoyed as early as their youth or, on the contrary, can be left to reveal themselves fully for many years to come.

Charles Joguet was a young painter and sculptor when he abandoned a budding art career to assume direction of the family domaine in 1957. He soon began to question the common practice of selling grapes to négociants, as his own family had done for years.

The Joguets owned prime vineyard land in between the Loire and Vienne Rivers, with some of their finest found on the left bank of the Vienne, just outside Chinon, in Sazilly. These very lieux-dits had been recognized for their character and defined before the Renaissance — some even date back to the Middle Ages. Charles realized that he was sitting on what would be considered in other regions as premier cru and grand cru vineyards. To sell the grapes off or to vinify these individualized plots together would have been madness.

Separate terroirs, he believed, necessitate separate vinifications. Over the course of his tenure, Charles took the risks necessary to master the single-vineyard bottling with an artistry that A.O.C. Chinon had never before seen. In so doing, he realized the true potential of the land.

Cabernet Franc is the king grape variety of Touraine, where it is commonly called "Breton". Generally planted in terroirs with a temperate climate, the Loire Valley suits it wonderfully and allows it to express its aromas and finesse. It offers wonderful fruity and floral aromas, ranging from wild strawberry, raspberry and redcurrant to violet, clove and peony. In great wines for laying down and cellaring, a unique aromatic palette: truffle, undergrowth and musk.