Sometimes Cabernet Franc is so earthy that we wonder if they forgot to put grapes in. Sometimes Cabernet Franc tastes like the winemaker accidentally dumped a bag of pepper into the fermenter or filtered the wine through their flower garden. Cabernet Franc is a grape that doesn’t avoid the conversation. It is a straightforward variety. Jean-Maurice Raffault takes his Cabernet Franc at its word and doesn’t try to coax out more fruit or sand down the crunchy tannins. His wines are what they are. Never more so than in his Monopole vineyard in Chinon, the Clos d’Isore, an organically farmed plot facing north, away from the sun in an already cool region and full of eighty-year-old Cabernet Franc vines in pure limestone clay soils. His 2020 vintage shows a pure clay note on the nose, with accents of white pepper, crushed savory herbs, tomato leaf, dried blackberries, raspberries and crushed cherries. The palate is light and elegant and crunchy, fresh raspberry fruit in a bowl made of clay with intense tannic grip. While the impression of this wine stays firmly etched on a clay tablet all the way through the finish, there is a lingering note of potpourri and raspberry there too. Earthy wine lover’s alert!