Alain de la Treille Chinon 2020
-
Wine &
Spirits
Product Details
Your Rating
Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
This Chinon, with its bright intense purple color, offers complex aromas of
minerals and red fruits (blackcurrant & blueberry). The palate is juicy &
spicy, making it an ideal match for roasted meat, charcuteries and flavorful
cheeses.
Professional Ratings
-
Wine & Spirits
Noël Bougrier and his son, Nicolas, manage this expansive estate of 247 acres across the Loire Valley. Lionel Métaireau makes the wines, including this textbook cabernet franc. The violet color might catch your eye before you even smell the slightly herbal, red-fruited aromas. “Chinon is like Bordeaux light,” one taster said, describing how the flavors dance from plum skin to cassis, to game, earth and tobacco, all with a delicacy that speaks of the village’s cool conditions.
Cabernet Franc, a proud parent of Cabernet Sauvignon, is the subtler and more delicate of the Cabernets. Today Cabernet Franc produces outstanding single varietal wines across the wine-producing world. Somm Secret—One of California's best-kept secrets is the Happy Canyon appellation of Santa Barbara. Here Cabernet Franc shines as a single varietal wine or in blends, expressing sumptuous fruit, savory aromas and polished tannins.
An important red wine appellation in the Touraine district of the Loire, Chinon produces fanciful, light-bodied reds from the Cabernet Franc grape. Chinon also makes charming rosés from the same grape as well as white wines from Chenin blanc. But the reds give the area its fame. Often scented with fresh herbs, black tea and violets, Chinon reds show a lovely combination of fruit and acidity. However, styles have become more concentrated and ripe in recent years from improvements in vineyard management. Modern methods include planting grass between vineyard rows, using higher trellises and deleafing to increase sunlight to berries and therefore improve ripening. Even still, red Chinon is intended to be a light to medium bodied, refreshing wine to be enjoyed in its youth.
Fuller-bodied Chinons come from vineyard sites on the clay and tuffeau limestone slopes, usually from the southern exposed slopes of Cravant-les-Coteaux, and the plateau above Beaumont. Lighter styled wines come from the sand and gravel vineyards near the Loire or Vienne Rivers with the most refined examples coming from the area around Panzoult