OLGA RAFFAULT CHINON “LES PICASSES”
$34.99
Les Picasses is the most famous Chinon lieu-dit, close to the village of Beaumont-En-Véron on the north bank of the Vienne River. It is a slope with full southern exposure and chalky clay-limestone soils. Raffault’s mid-slope vines are at least 50 years old and are worked organically and harvested by hand. The fruit is destemmed with the berries left whole; they are fermented with indigenous yeasts in tank with a maceration of 25-30 days. The wine is aged for one to two years in 30-hectoliter oak and chestnut foudres; it is then aged in bottle for several years before release.
100% Cabernet Franc.
*ORGANIC
- Size: .750L
Out of stock
Description
Vinous
The 2018 Les Picasses offers ripeness alongside finesse and elegance. Sourced from a 35-year-old vineyard on clay-limestone, it offers a gently creamy mid-palate while remaining delicate in texture. Ripe strawberry fruit flavors meet wild herbs and the very merest note of pepper on the palate. Certainly now entering a drinking window, there is plenty of room in terms of both flavor development and its finely woven texture to allow this to develop over the coming decade.
94 points, John Gilman, View From The Cellar (July 2024)
“Since I tasted the first cuvée release from Domaine Olga Raffault from the 2018 vintage, I have been of the opinion that this estate handled the vicissitudes of the blazing summer of 2018 better than virtually anyone in the central Loire. The 2018 les Picasses is the most recent release from this vintage from Domaine Raffault and it is an outstanding young wine. It comes in at a very svelte (particularly for 2018) thirteen percent octane and offers up a pure and classic bouquet of cassis, dark berries, tree bark, a bit of saddle leather, gravelly soil tones, cigar wrapper and a topnote of distant bonfire on the breeze. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and classicallyproportioned, with a fine core of black fruit, excellent soil signature and grip, ripe, chewy tannins and great length on the focused and impeccably balanced finish. This is a proper young release of les Picasses from Domaine Raffault and it is going to need all of a decade in the cellar to start to blossom, but it is going to be a very long-lived and superb bottle of Chinon once it is ready to drink. 2034-2085. 94. 109 “
