Patrick Baudouin, 2017 Anjou Rouge ‘La Fresnaye’
Cab Franc du Jour #128
Having spent his childhood and much of his adult life in Paris, a life as a vigneron was neither the obvious nor the intended path for Patrick Baudouin. It was the wines of the Foucault brothers of Clos Rougeard and Marc Angeli that ultimately inspired him to choose the vine, and in 1990 he returned to his native Anjou to establish his domaine on the parcels his great-grandparents had acquired in the 1920s. Following the philosophy of traditional viticulture and winemaking and rejecting modern techniques as the Foucaults did, Patrick quickly established himself alongside Jo Pithon, Vincent Ogereau, and others as part of a new generation of vignerons leading a renaissance in the Coteaux du Layon region that would eventually ripple across all of Anjou.
Today the domaine comprises about 13.5 hectares of vines, the majority planted with Chenin Blanc alongside about 3 hectares of Cabernet Franc. That Cabernet Franc takes the lead in two of the domaine’s reds, the Côteaux d’Ardenay and La Fresnaye, and plays a supporting role in the cuvée Les Touches. The parcels are spread across three communes in the western part of Anjou: Saint-Aubin-de-Luigné, Rochefort-sur-Loire, and Chaudefonds-sur-Layon, with a small parcel of Chenin Blanc in Savennières as well. The domaine has been certified organic since 2002.
Cabernet Franc in Western Anjou
It has been some time since a red from Anjou has been featured here, and there is good reason for that. While Cabernet Franc remains the most planted variety in the Anjou-Saumur region, accounting for around 41% of plantings, this is fundamentally Chenin Blanc country, and Cabernet Franc requires very carefully chosen sites to succeed for red wine production. The reasons come down to the growing environment and, above all, the soils.
Western Anjou sits in the rain shadow of the Haut-Bocage Vendée, the remnant of an ancient mountain range that was once as high as the Alps and has since weathered down to just a few hundred metres over hundreds of millions of years, enough elevation to help block Atlantic precipitation. As a result, western Anjou receives only about 600 to 700mm of rainfall annually, making it one of the driest parts of the Loire.
The soils here belong to what is known as Anjou Noir. Around the village of Thouarcé, the ancient rocks of the Massif Armoricain take over from the limestone soils of the Paris Basin, and what dominates is a complex array of schists, slates, and sandstones: dark, dense, brittle rocks with poor water retention, particularly compared to the limestone soils that prevail to the east.
Cabernet Franc is not a drought-tolerant variety, and the combination of well-draining schist soils and lower rainfall can leave the vines vulnerable to hydric stress. That stress can disturb the balance of the vine, leading to excessive pyrazines in the fruit, and because of Cabernet Franc’s inherent structure and rusticity, water stress tends to amplify those qualities, producing wines with harder, more austere tannins. Site selection, therefore, is everything.
Saint-Aubin-de-Luigné and La Fresnaye
The parcels for La Fresnaye are in the commune of Saint-Aubin-de-Luigné, one of the six principal communes that make up the Coteaux du Layon appellation. The commune is geologically complex, with vineyards on both sides of the Layon River. The north side is dominated by St-Georges schist and Carboniferous sandstone, while the left bank to the south is largely Brioverian schist, with a narrow vein of St-Georges schist running through the centre of the southern portion.
La Fresnaye comes from about 0.9 hectares of vines in the lieu-dit of the same name, situated roughly 1.5km south of the Layon River at an elevation of around 58m above sea level, with a very slight northerly orientation. The vineyard is split between two distinct soil types. Approximately half is influenced by St-Georges schist, a grey schist with a shallow topsoil of clay-sandy silt before reaching the schist bedrock. The other half is colluvium, likely of schistous origin, with a similar clay-sandy silt topsoil over a deeper subsoil of the same texture, giving the vines in this portion somewhat greater water reserves to draw on. Around half the vines were planted in 1997, with the oldest block dating to 1950.
In the Cellar
Patrick takes a low-interventionist approach throughout. The fruit is hand-harvested and destemmed before fermenting in tank with indigenous yeast, with maceration by infusion and total skin contact of approximately 30 days. The wine is then aged in older Burgundian oak barrels for about nine months, with minimal sulphur used throughout the winemaking process and at bottling.
Wine Details
Producer: Domaine Patrick Baudouin
Appellation: Anjou Rouge
Commune: Saint-Aubin-de-Luigné
Lieu-Dit: La Fresnaye (La Fresnaie)
Soils: clay-sandy silt (limon-argilo-sableux) over grey schist (St-Georges series), colluvium
Alcohol: 12.5%