2016 Cabernet Franc Pleasure Buttons
Osoyoos, British Columbia, Canada
This is our third release of our Laughing Stock Cabernet Franc collaboration and our 28th label release so far! As always with this British Columbia project we look to balance the intense nature of the southern Okanagan Valley while exploring the prettier side of this grape. Our hope is that by marrying this desert environment with select fermentation techniques we’ll create a unique expression of Cabernet Franc, a very pretty one.
The vineyard is in the south Okanagan Valley in Osoyoos. The vines are roughly 12 years old, farmed on a sandy bench. The 2016 vintage started early with very warm spring temperatures. While the vintage was destined to be a hot one, the summer temperatures through July and August chilled out. This relief of heat at the height of ripening allowed acids to be retained and phenolics to match alcohol levels. This is a great vintage for Cabernet Franc.
As with the previous two vintages we utilized whole cluster and whole berry in our fermentation. We layered the fermentation tank with alternating rows of clusters and whole berries, making a layered cake of sorts. The fermentation was quick with little post-fermentation maceration being used; our goal here to capture the freshness of the vintage before too much skin contact took effect. The wine was pressed and racked into an older 500L barrel and left to mature for 11 months.
The 2016 vintage is perhaps the prettiest vintage of this wine so far. The vintage itself yielded this inherent property all on its own, that cooler summer was perfect and deciding not to extract too much was the best choice for 2016. The wine shows high toned hibiscus, scorched sage leaf, market spice tea and faded bran. There is just a touch of tannin that adds a sense of slight rigidity, while the acid is plush and lush. With this gentle, focused structure the wine shines with a chill on it. Keep it in the fridge; decant and serve 20 minute later for a crushingly refreshing bottle of red wine. I’ve always thought of Cabernet Franc from British Columbia as a pretty wine, a wine that needs a touch of density, but no more. You can’t fight the intensity of any wine that comes from Osoyoos, but you can guide it to a point where it has levity and litheness.
This year’s label is a collage of several pictures of graffiti from Buenos Aires. A crumbling wall was being demolished and the art work on it was about to be lost. The tags and this beautiful women brought a smile to my face and pleasure to my day, so I shot it to save it. I pieced the images together to form a condensed collage and it made an easy label for this wine. It screams pleasure.
In order to get what you want you have to push the right buttons, that’s a fact. No one gets anywhere by smashing the wrong buttons. Mostly it’s always the charming, charismatic and agreeable people that gently use persuasion to coax their way into getting what they want. And with that in mind we’ve made a wine that presses all the right buttons …the pleasure buttons…to get what we want…your smile.
For allocation requests or a list of available retailers please contact us.