This Cabernet Franc was picked to go with steak and stuffed mushrooms, knowing the steak would have no flavor beyond salt and pepper. It worked well.
The wine is a bit earthy/duty smelling when you first open it. It’s a deep red with a tinge of orange on the edge – or that could have been the light in my house. It had a light fruit scent I couldn’t place.
It had a blackberry spice flavor to it when first tasted (away from the steak). It was warming in that I wanted to keep drinking it. I feel like it mellowed since I first tried it in the tasting room. It’s not a fruity wine.
The steak made the wine sweeter – bringing out the fruit sugar flavor. The tomatoes acid went well with the wine and neither was overpowered by the other. The weakest part was the stuffed mushrooms, and I preferred the wine with the steak.
The wine has an almost rusty tinge of flavor – not in a bad way – more like you know which pan your gran used to bake the brownies because the corners are rusted and that always comes off on the brownie, but you can’t help eating them anyway sort of of flavor.
As a joke, my partner in wine tried it with the salmiakki chocolate I brought back from Sweden. Salmiakki is Finnish salted licorice and very much an acquired taste. But the wine went well with it and killed the licorice flavor for me and brought out the salt and chocolate.
I tried it with lemon toffee chocolate and it made the wine refreshing. My partner says “like a summer shanty.”
Final Thoughts
The wine was perfect for the food pairing. The wine got better as it breathed, so I probably should have decanted it, but I enjoy looking at the label while I drink.
Oddly my partner in wine decided that since the wine went so well with the lemon toffee chocolate, he’d mix a bit of his homemade limoncello (sorry Marianne) into it. It was good, drinkable, but I am not one for the new craze of wine cocktails.
Overall, a great Thursday night wine. Drinkable on its own, but better with food.
