Sarah Ahmed – The Wine Detective

A few years ago, the prospect of starting my day tasting young Loire Cabernet Franc would have limited appeal.  Yesterday I spent the day doing just that, assessing over 100 wines for Interloire’s Cabernet Franc de Loire Project Ambassador tasting together with fellow judges Jamie Goode, Christine Parkinson, Nick Room and Joe Wadsack.  Far from time out after round one, there were very few lean and mean or over-extracted, aggressive wines.  Rather, I was struck by the quality of fruit and refined tannins.  True, 2008 and 2009 are both very good vintages for Cabernet Franc but what’s new is that, in the past, good years encouraged some producers to work their wines too hard.  This tasting was proof positive that one of Interloire’s key aims is working – producers are easing off extraction and use of oak to let the fruit fly and terroir talk.  Full marks to Interloire’s technical team and project consultant Sam Harrop MW!

Watch this space for details of the Ambassador wines, which will be shown to the trade at London International Wine & Spirit Fair in May.