As we hope is evident when you read our daily offers, we’re genuinely excited about every wine on SommSelect. But there are some wines, like today’s pitch-perfect 2015 Chinon from Olga Raffault, that leave us tongue-tied: How many superlative adjectives before we strain credulity? How many exclamation points is too many?
Rather than overthink it I’ll just say this: Certain combinations of vintage, producer, and price are just extra-special. This wine delivers more authenticity, complexity, and pure joy at $22 than any serious wine lover has a right to expect. As many of you are well-aware, Olga Raffault is a region-defining property producing elegant, complex, aromatic Cabernet Franc that ages for decades. Somehow, their prices have remained amazingly approachable despite what some of Raffault’s Loire Valley contemporaries are now charging for their wines. It’s amazing: Everything one could possibly ask for in a red wine—perfume, minerality, ripe fruit, balance, energy—is here. Find some room for a few cases if you can: It is always a good choice, and it’s only going to get better.
This, by the way, we’ve learned from experience—every once in a while we receive small allocations of ‘library’ wines from Olga Raffault, and they always deliver. There are many great producers in Chinon but Raffault has earned a singular reputation for quality and consistency in the appellation. Ten-year verticals of Raffault Chinon grace top Michelin-starred wine lists around the world, and most sommeliers, wine writers, and collectors would agree that these are among the greatest Cabernet Francs in the world. We also like to stress that Raffault Chinon is as close to a bankable, “sure thing” investment as exists in wine—once these wines hit the 15- to 20-year mark, they triple and quadruple in value. The unprecedentedly low price of this 2015 vintage is a risk-free, no-brainer opportunity to begin or continue to grow your own cellar vertical. While this bottle has years of maturation and improvement ahead, it is still perfectly delicious straight from the bottle. Whether you’re drinking it today or stashing it away, there is simply no way to lose with Raffault Chinon.
Though Olga Raffault passed away a few years ago, her granddaughter, Sylvie, is carrying on the family’s impressive farming and winemaking legacy. Sylvie stays faithful to the traditional style. There is nothing modern or trendy about Raffault—this is Old School wine. Grapes at the estate are farmed with no herbicides or pesticides, then hand-picked and fermented in whole clusters with no destemming. The resulting wine is transferred to large, ancient, neutral oak barrels for aging until bottling, and then more years of aging until release. This bottling is a Chinon version of a “village” wine, incorporating several different vineyard sources. The generosity and warmth of 2015 brings this vineyard’s gravel and limestone terroir to life with a vivacity and depth I haven’t encountered since 2005. This is a special, once-per-decade vintage for this wine.
This 2015 shows off the generosity of the vintage in both its deep purple and density of fruit on the nose. The nose exhibits lots of black raspberry, black plum, mulberry, damp violet, graphite, underbrush, green herbs, mushrooms, crushed white rocks and even a little cassis. The wine shows no perceptible oak influence: it’s all about pure, fragrant fruit, mineral savor, enlivening acidity, and quite velvety tannins. It is superbly balanced wine, considerably more fruit-driven and with a longer, more fragrant finish than your typical bistro Chinon. While it is supremely drinkable now after about 30 minutes in a decanter, I can see this aging 5-10 more years with ease if kept well (don’t be fooled by its relatively soft tannins; the acid and balance of this wine are what will preserve it; Raffault wines have a sterling track record for aging). Crack a bottle soon and serve it at 60 degrees in Burgundy stems; it will pair well with foods you might otherwise serve with Pinot Noir, including chicken and fish. Check it out with the “quick” coq au vin recipe attached, or really anything: I can’t think of a dish this wine wouldn’t go with beautifully. Cheers!
