Domaine Grosbois Chinon "Gabare" red 2021

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Domaine Grosbois Chinon "Gabare" red 2021:

RVF Guide to the Best Wines of France 2025 (August 2024) : 90/100 RVF. Gabare sets the tone for the floral and vegetal character of Loire cabernet franc in 2021. It has a great finesse of texture on the palate.

Robert Parker's Wine Advocate (Y. Castaing, June 2024). 89/100. Matured in concrete tanks and 100% destemmed, the 2021 Chinon Gabare is derived from 12 plots of vines at the hill’s bottom and planted on clay and sandy soils. It possesses a fresh, floral bouquet of dark wild berries, violet, iris and mulberries, followed by a round, juicy, elegant, lively palate with a gourmand, ethereal finish. Don't hesitate to cellar it for a few years.

Technical sheet written by the Domaine :

Nicolas and Sylvain Grosbois grew up by the river and wanted to pay tribute, with this cuvée, to the people of the water, boatmen, fishermen, and the flat-bottomed boats called "gabares", which marked their childhood imagination.
It was these boatmen who built the walls of the vineyards and homes in the region when the river did not offer them work, signing their presence with graffiti still visible today.
This is the signature cuvée of Domaine Grosbois, which comes from twelve plots that have never been restructured since the 15th century: the vines are located on the heights of the domaine, on scree of clay-sandy millarge, this characteristic yellow tuffeau of Chinon, as well as two islets in the valley composed of gravel on limestone.

The 2021 vintage
After a disrupted start to the season, difficulties were encountered with a frost period lasting 5 to 6 consecutive nights followed by a very dry and hot summer, good rainfall in September allowed the vine to complete its ripening cycle.

Viti-Vini
• Organic and Biodynamic, "For us, it’s a given".
• Natural cover cropping and agro-ecology.
• 100% cabernet-franc, "We believe in the unique grape variety, as in the foundations of the appellation in 1937".
• Planting density: "Initially 4500 vines per hectare, and gradually, with replanting, 6000 vines".
• Yields: 47 hectoliters per hectare.
• Manual harvesting, total destemming, sorting table.
• Indigenous yeasts, 22 days of maceration.
• Vinification without sulfur, slight addition at bottling, in accordance with the charter of Vins Méthode Nature.
• Aging for 11 months in concrete tanks, "a mineral envelope, a true cocoon to preserve the purity and freshness of cabernet franc".

Tasting
• Nose: Fresh peony, delicate balance of cabernet franc on a cool vintage. Touch of licorice.
• Palate: Which unfolds with roundness and delicacy, we find the amplitude of the licorice of cabernet franc with smoky notes.
• An hour of decanting reveals the full extent of this cuvée very slightly reduced upon opening.

The opinion of the Grosbois brothers
• NICOLAS: "A magnificent expression of Chinon on a cool vintage, I am very proud of it.".
• SYLVAIN: "A cabernet franc with enveloping and generous structure, spontaneous and explosive. An ideal cuvée to enjoy with lamb navarin".