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#393 Great Heart Cabernet Franc 2021

Just watch the tasting notes
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TASTING NOTES

👃🏼 The aromas carry lovely fresh blackcuyrrant and a touch of cherry, along with a lovely wave of freshly picked tobacco leaves.

[Han, I’ve never been to a tobacco farm. What the hell does that smell like?]

There is a very gentle push of red bell pepper, and a touch of violets.
👄  The palate carries such lovely distinctive notes of sweet blackcurrant, as well as an almost kirsch-like sort of cherry liqueur elements (as opposed to fresh cherries).
The wine is by no means big boned, or heavy; I’d say medium-bodied at most, along with some really delightfully refined chalky tannins.
[Han, what on earth are “refined chalky tannins”? Why can’t you just talk normally?]

VIDEO CHAPTER INDEX:

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00:00 – Trivia: Who is the biggest Fair Trade wine country in the world?
00:30 – Leading transformational wine brands in South Africa
01:09 – Intro to the wine of the day
01:42 – Intro to Great Heart Wine
03:10 – Meet winemaker Gynore Hendricks
05:21 – Tasting notes for the Great Heart Cabernet Franc 2021
07:14 – What are “refined” tannins?
07:47 – What is a “balanced wine”?
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WINE BUYING HACK: Cab Franc + Alcohol

Cabernet Franc is a fickle beast, that can present itself in a dauntingly wide array of styles. One bottle may be brimming with lumpy, flabby, sickly sweet, blueberry-and-black-plum vibes, while the adjacent bottle harbours herbally-green-enamel-stripping-raspberry-laced cabbage water. There be dragons here!
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HOW DO YOU KNOW WHICH IS WHICH?

There are plenty of systems that can help you navigate these perilous Franc-ish waters (Vivino being one of them) but if you want to make split second decisions, without giving off noob vibes, all one needs to do it take a gander at the alcohol level on the label.
As a general rule, the higher the alcohol levels, the riper (and blue-er) the fruit will be.
So a wine with an ABV (alcohol by volume) of 14.5% or higher is highly likely to be big and ripe, with notes of blueberries, sugar plum, and (if you’re lucky) some black cherry. There will most likely be absolutely no bell pepper notes.
Should you happen upon a Franc with and ABV of 13.0% to 13.0% (the most interesting category IMHO), there is a higher likelihood of a wine that features a mixture of pleasant vegetal notes, some herbs, and a lovely comboo of red berries AND black fruit.
Once you start exploring bottle with an ABV of 12.5% or lower, the risk of encountering acerbic sanguine cabbage water rise exponentially.
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OBVIOUSLY there will be exceptions…

This is not a hard rule, and some of the most skilled vignerons can (almost effortlessly) produce radiant red-fruited Cab Francs with not hint of cabbage. The Lokaia Call of the Void Cabernet Franc is a beautiful example. But for the most part this ABV rule will help you mitigate risk when exploring producers you’re not familiar with.
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If you have yet to sign up for your Monthly HanDrinksSolo Wine Subscription then you’ll have to hunt this wine down in your own time. But until then, here are my tasting notes & technical specs:
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TECHNICAL SPECS

🔬 Wine of origin Franschhoek. 100% Cabernet Franc.
Variety: 100% Cabernet Franc. The fruit is harvested from vineyards planted in fairly fertile loam soils on the lower eastern
slopes of the Franschhoek Mountains. The grapes were hand-harvested between 24 and 26 March 2021, and the vineyard yielded roughly 8 tons/ha, which translated (in this instance) into 40 HL/ha.
The fruit was destemmed, sorted and crushed into stainless steel tanks. Minimal SO2 was added and no further additions were made. The must was initially pigeaged (punched down) once a day. After about 4 days, fermentation began with native yeasts and the
cap was kept moist with one or two gentle actions per day, depending on extract and tannin development. Temperatures were kept below 28 °C, and fermentation lasted 7 to 10 days. The wine was left on the skins for a few week after fermentation, and was eventually pressed into French oak barrels for malolactic fermentation and maturation (11 months). The wine was unfiltered and unfined prior to bottling.
Alc 14.0% | Sugar 1.8 g/l | Acid 5.1 g/l | pH 3.67 |

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