Beaten Acre Cabernet Franc 2022

We planted Cabernet Franc in 2010 because Wren had drunk a Chinon on a wet day in Saumur and decided, on no evidence, that the Ladderback wall was the same kind of place. For five vintages it was not. The fruit came in green, the wine tasted of cut pepper and very little else, and in the winter of 2017 we booked a digger to pull the block out and replant it with Pinot.

The digger did not come. It rained for nine days and the track up to the block was a river. By the time the ground dried out it was March, the buds were swelling, and Tomás said we should give it one more year and prune it hard. 2018 was hot. The wine was very good. The block has been called Beaten Acre ever since, and it is not quite an acre.

The last fruit in

Beaten Acre ripens last on the estate, every year, by a margin. In 2022 it was picked on the 21st of October, sixteen days after Coldfoot and with the first frost forecast for the following night. That brinkmanship is the whole style of the wine: we wait until the leafiness in the fruit turns from green pepper into blackcurrant leaf, and not a day before.

One big barrel

Twenty months in a single 1,200-litre foudre, which we bought in 2019 and which is the most expensive thing in the cellar apart from the press. At that size the wood contributes almost nothing in flavour and a great deal in time: the wine settles slowly, the tannin loses its edges, and the fruit is left alone.

In the glass

Blackcurrant leaf, crushed between the fingers. Pencil graphite. Bay. A cold ash note on the finish, like a grate the morning after. Firm, dry, savoury and not in any hurry.