Whenever I come out of the cellar with a malicious smile, my wife has her reservations. There I usually bring a so-called "trouvaille" from the cellar, which almost always only pleases me or is particularly interesting for me. Mostly it's old wines, which my wife doesn't like very much anyway.
This time, too, it's like this. "What do you have in mind again?". Of course something I found in the cellar, maybe even an experiment, is my answer. This kind of experiment is not at all what she loves when it comes to being served a good wine with dinner.
This time, however, I am lucky, although I have to reveal a lot of "unknown" or let's say little known facts afterwards. A wine from the Loire. That's where some scepticism starts, although we drank wonderful wines on our last Loire trip, but often not very simple ones. Rather wines to enjoy quietly than to drink vigorously. Then the second surprise: a Cabernet Franc, a grape variety we know mainly from the cuvées in Bordeaux. But pure Cabernet Franc wines? I do remember a great wine from this grape variety, from the southern Rhone. Well - Cabernet Franc is known to be the queen - but also the diva - of the Loire. And finally, I hardly dare to say it: It is a so-called organic wine. At a tasting, I happened to hear quite terrible judgements from a participant (unknown to me), they went as far as: "undrinkable".
Now, when someone says "undrinkable" of wine, I am always quite excited and usually quite taken with it. Often it's something special, not a dime-a-dozen wine, not mainstream, more like a wine to think about and enjoy, to explore and learn about. "Inedible" is usually the helpless expression for the other, little-known, new.
I was then quite surprised when my wife did not make that face that always means "don't like it!", it is the more subtle - well known to me - expression for the famous thumb pointing down or up. This time there was no need for a thumbs up or a face contortion, a simple "wow" was enough. Indeed, the wine arrived, with both of us. Still a little reserved on the nose, but already divining depth; on the palate, diverse, sensual, playful, but also - especially after a hearty sip - wild and rebellious; then tame again, subdued. Indeed, it is not a wine for so incidentally. If the wines from the Loire alone have hardly any reputation and renown in our country, this single-varietal, biodynamically cultivated and vinified wine certainly does not. One must approach it carefully, put oneself in the landscape where it comes from and love independence, then this wine is a source of pleasure.
With the long finish, this feeling of pleasure is prolonged into the night. Until we have long forgotten what food was on the table, but we could not forget the wine, its expressiveness (and of course its name).