There was a thread recently in which Brian liked a California fruit bomb cab franc, I speculated that cab franc was austere by nature, so even its fruit bombs might be palatable, and Dale replied that Pride and Le Dome were anything but austere. The next day I ran across this bottle, purchased at Alejandro's shop in Buenos Aires last September. When I saw the 15% alcohol, I decided to give it a spin, given the 15% alcohol. A few days ago I posted on the two other Benegas bottles I had stashed away, but this is their top cuvée.
2005 Benegas Lynch Cabernet Franc Finca Libertad Mendoza 15.0%
100% Cabernet Franc from 80 yr old vines according to bottle, 100 yr old pre-phylloxera vines according to site. 2000 bottles made according to bottle, 1500 according to site (but no vintage specified). Winemaker: Federico Benegas Lynch. Winemaker consultant: Michel Rolland. 18 months in new French oak. Decanted vigorously, this lost some of its initial jammyness. Nose is quite alcoholic, with sour cherry and prunes. Hot in the mouth, with chocolate notes. Quite tannic. Surprisingly acidic before food, but the acid seems not of a piece with the rest. The oak, on the other hand, is well integrated, with just a whiff of vanilla. Marcia got some cab franc herbaceousness, I didn’t. This was enjoyable enough to drink and probably infanticide, though I can’t help being thrown off by the absence (to me) of varietal tipicity. I’d be mollified if, instead, I got some original expression of terroir, but I couldn’t detect that either. I’m sure both exist in the raw material, so perhaps it’s a bit of a waste to pick the grapes late and homogenize away some of the varietal and soil aspects.