For the last few days, I’ve been struggling to describe why this wine is so good. I could tell you about the balance of silky red fruit and brisk, herbal notes, or how it manages to be both light in weight yet meaty enough to almost taste a little like steak. There’s the finesse of the tannins, the refreshing acidity …
And there’s its sheer value – so much wine for only around $20.
But there’s something more to it, something that makes it feel so much more special than all the other good bottles I’ve bought lately at $25 or less, and it hit me when I read what Allison Slute wrote about the 2020 Les Granges on her Cab Franc Chronicles blog.
‘The day that the wine was delivered to my apartment was a Friday, and I had a hell of a week with the death of my grandfather only 5 days before. I remember standing in my kitchen, exhausted, and opening a bottle, with no clue of what I was going to make for dinner that night, but as soon as the wine graced my lips it was as if someone swooped in and gave me the biggest hug and said, “it’s all going to be ok”.’
My situation was different – no one died – but my apartment building had gone up in flames. I was standing in the kitchen of our new, sparsely furnished rental, drinking out of a stranger’s glass, wondering how in the heck we were going to put our lives back together.
Baudry’s Les Granges offered a sense of warmth and wholeness that I’d forgotten existed.
How do I know that any bottle drunk under such circumstances wouldn’t have tasted just as relieving? Because I opened four other bottles before I got to this one, in a sort of manic desire to prove that beauty still existed in this world, and that it didn’t necessarily cost an arm and a leg. A Portuguese one – nice at another time, but too astringent for a nervous system already on edge. A Syrah from British Columbia: warming and generous but fiery, in danger of starting an emotional conflagration by the end of a glass. A basic Rioja: too simple, not enough structure, nothing to lean on. Ditto the New Zealand Pinot Noir. The Baudry was a last-ditch effort, opened with some trepidation as my husband hates pyrazines, those peppery notes common in grapes such as Sauvignon Blanc and Cabernet Franc grown in cool climates like the Loire. And I couldn’t recall off the top of my head what the 2023 vintage was like in Chinon. Would it be tart and green-peppery?
A quick whiff said no.
There’s no bell pepper here. It’s more like the scent of fir trees wafting over a lake of sapid berry fruit; later, as the wine warms in the glass, it develops a meaty depth and savour, recalling the green peppercorns on a steak au poivre. That, in fact, would have been a perfect match, but so was a handful of salted peanuts and some takeout bahn mí.
When I emailed the Baudrys to find out more about the vintage, Matthieu, son of founder Bernard, replied, ‘2023 was a generous vintage in spite of the mildew pressure we had in spring and summer. Yields were good and the vines did not suffer at all from weather conditions. No heat, no hydric stress and not too much rain …’.
This sort of even-tempered vintage is especially good for this particular cuvée, he explained, as Les Granges comes from 30- to 40-year-old vines growing in sandy, gravelly alluvial soils. ‘No clay and no limestone, that’s the reason why the wine looks easy, light and very approachable’, he wrote.
‘But’, he continued, ‘I think that the 2023 climate was very convenient with that specific soil. The terroir is very sandy and the vines don’t like extreme weather.’ The Baudrys also use their own compost to feed the vines, and gently plow in the late spring/early summer to keep down the competition with grasses. Without stressors such as drought, and with enough warmth, the fruit ripened well, past the pepper stage, into the fir-forest/herb-garden realm. At the same time, it didn’t get too hot, and the grapes kept their nerve, their acidity lending lift to the wine and their firm tannins keeping it structured.
Of course, vintage isn’t everything. It helps that the Baudrys have deep experience in Chinon: from the two hectares Bernard Baudry started with in 1975, they now farm 32 (79 acres), all but 10% planted to Cabernet Franc. (The rest is Chenin Blanc.) Bernard has always farmed in an organic manner, something they worked on getting certified after Matthieu joined him in 2000; the vineyards have been certified organic since 2006. 'We have started with biodynamic methods two years ago, with a group of winemakers in the Chinon area', Matthieu added.
Together, father and son have mapped all their soils, dividing the vineyards by soil types and bottling them as different cuvées – a sort of liquid Master’s thesis on Cab Franc’s myriad expressions in Chinon. There’s Les Grézaux, a cuvée from gravel; Clos Guillot off clay and yellow limestone; La Crois Boisée from sandy clay over white limestone; Mollières from clay and limestone …
Those cuvées are more expensive than Les Granges, but Les Granges gets the same level of care in the vineyard. Since 1990, all the vines the Baudrys farm are from their own mass selection, and everything is done by hand. In the winery, fermentation happens with ambient yeasts; the biggest difference is that Les Granges is fermented in stainless steel and then aged in concrete tanks (nine months for the 2023) rather than oak in order to keep the purity of its expression.
And maybe that’s what spoke to me so strongly: there’s no make-up here, no pretence, nothing hiding. It’s pure and honest, generous and giving, with a reassuring grip and lasting resonance, and all at a very reasonable 12% alcohol. If it’s a master-class in Chinon you’re looking for, try all of Baudry’s cuvées, side by side. But if you’re just looking for one good wine to brighten your evening, to remind you that it is, in fact, going to be all right, Baudry’s Les Granges is your wine.
Domaine Bernard Baudry is imported into the UK by Lea & Sandeman, who are offering it at £19.95 – or £17.95 as part of a 12-bottle case. In the US, where it’s imported by Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant and Louis/Dressner Selections, it can be had for as little as $18. It’s criminally affordable in France (Wine-Searcher.com shows prices starting at €12.60 for a 75-cl bottle). The Baudrys list another 34 markets on their site, so there’s a good chance you can snap this up wherever you are.
All winery and vineyard photos kindly supplied by Matthieu Baudry.
To learn more about Chinon, see the entry by Pascaline Lepeltier in the 5th edition of The Oxford Companion to Wine, now available to members on our site. Members can also explore the range of Loire Cabernet Franc through our tasting notes database.
