A (Very!) Early Look at the 2024 Vintage for Loire Cabernet Franc

No.39 | Regional Reporting

There is an expression in the Loire that September can make (or break) the vintage. When I began reaching out to producers at the end of August inquiring about when would be a good time to visit during harvest to help and to catch some of the action, many said it was too early to tell and that given the way the vintage had gone, harvest was going to be later usual. By mid-September, many estimated that they would start harvesting Cabernet Franc between the 3rd to the 7th or so of October and that harvest would last a couple of weeks. So, I booked my flights to be in the region between the 12th and the 18th with the hopes of seeing a broad spectrum of the harvest in action. Well, as the saying goes, the best laid plans of mice and men… and suffice it to say, Mother Nature had other plans.

The 2024 Vintage, in Brief

After a relatively mild and unassuming start to the vintage, I just happened to be in Chinon in mid-April as the vignerons were going through a few sleepless nights on frost watch, as seems to be the case most springs in recent years. While many of France’s wine growing regions were severely impacted by the frost events of mid- to late-April, the Cabernet Franc appellations of the Loire came away virtually unscathed. An optimistic beginning to a vintage that would soon take a different turn.

Through May and June, rain was in the forecast nearly every other day, and while the figures vary by region and commune, over quarter of the year’s average rainfall came during an 8-week period. The rain not only impacted flowering and fruit set, but the water-logged soils made it difficult to get tractors into the vineyards to do necessary treatments to prevent mildew. So with the onset of milder temperatures through July and August, mildew pressure was at an all-time high, which severely impacted yields across the region.

The cooler, rainy and overcast conditions continued through much of July and August, and many vignerons who farm organically had to do upwards of 16 to 18 treatments of sulphur and/or copper to battle mildew pressure. Despite these challenges, as late August approached, many vignerons remained hopeful that September could still save the vintage, though harvest would be much later than normal.

Mother Nature had other plans, however. The rains continued, and while the fruit still slowly crept towards optimal ripeness levels, with the porous nature of the skins of the berries, there was only so much rain those ripening bunches could take before serious deterioration in quality and quantity would occur. With the vintage at stake, many were forced to call in the troops and pick their parcels earlier and quicker than anticipated - all the while dodging raindrops at every turn. In parts of Chinon, Bourgueil and St-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil, some began to harvest as early as the 26th or 27th of September, and finished in less than a week. The start of harvest in Saumur-Champigny and Saumur seemed to lag a bit behind these appellations, starting the first week of October. Regardless of the start date, harvest was swift in an effort to preserve as much quantity and quality as possible.

Some Key Themes of the 2024 Vintage

By the time I arrived to the region on the 12th, nearly every producer I had planned to visit had finished picking - way ahead of predictions at the beginning of September. And while I was initially a bit disappointed about missing some of the harvest action, it actually worked out much better in the end. Over the course of my week in the Loire, I spoke with producers across all the major Cabernet Franc appellations (Chinon, Bourgueil, St-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil, Saumur-Champigny/Saumur), and with the stress of the harvest behind them and the fermenting must quietly percolating away in their cuves, I was able to have a bit more time with the vignerons and have some good conversations to get a better sense of the vintage - the positives and the negatives.

Heterogeneity: At a Macro and Micro Level

If ever there was a vintage to articulate that the Cabernet Franc appellations of the Loire cannot be lumped into one simply category (at least climatically speaking), this would be the vintage. Even across a single appellation, the outcome of the 2024 vintage with respect to yield, ripeness levels and overall quality was quite varied.

For example, across Bourgueil and St-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil, when I visited Domaine Yannick Amirault, who has parcels in both appellations, Benoît Amirault shared with me that whenever it rained in 2024, the Bourgueil commune received more precipitation than both St-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil to the west and the communes on the east side of the Changeon River, such as Restigné, Benais and Ingrandes-de-Touraine. As a result, mildew pressure was extremely high across their parcels in Bourgueil, lowering yields significantly as a result, down to 25 to 30hl/ha in some parcels versus a normal 40-45hl/ha.

Similarly, on the other side of the Loire River in Saumur-Champigny, Arnaud Lambert, who farms vineyards in both Saint-Cyr-en-Bourg in the southern part of the appellation as well as Montsoreau in the northeast corner of the region (as well as Brézé in the Saumur AOP), said that Montsoreau came away relatively unscathed with respect to mildew pressure, and yields and quality were favourable across his parcels in that commune.

At the micro level, within a given vineyard, there was a lot of variability in quality and yields depending on a site’s aspect, slope, topsoil, subsoil, how the vineyard was farmed and how diligent the vigneron was with respect to managing the canopy to help with air flow and circulation. This meant that when it came time to harvest, those that had time to pick by hand (a luxury for some in 2024) were able to be more vigilant with their sorting, often being able to sort once while picking and then a second time in the cellar when processing the fruit. When the pressure was on, with rainy conditions imminent, those vignerons that needed to call an audible and bring in the machine harvesters to pick what they could as quickly as possible would not have been able to be as selective for quality and ripeness levels using this harvest method.

Terroir Matters

It sounds cliché, but terroir can make a big difference in vintage like 2024. Many of the regions vineyards are blessed to have some impact of the tuffeau chalk, which is an excellent regulator of moisture. In warm and dry vintages, the tuffeau can hold onto and then release moisture to the vines as needed; conversely, in wetter years, it can act like a sponge and pull moisture away from the vines helping improve drainage.

With this in mind, in regions like Chinon and Bourgueil where the area of the côte or slopes are a bit more easily defined, it seems that these terroirs fared better overall in 2024. When I visited with Matthieu Baudry at his domaine in Cravant-les-Côteaux in Chinon, he noted that qualitatively, in terms of ripeness and yields, some of his best fruit came from sites on the slopes such as Clos Guillot, La Croix Boissée and Mollières, thanks in part to the regulating capacity of the tuffeau as well as the natural drainage provided by the slope.

Conversely, their parcels on the alluvial terrace were harder hit by mildew pressure in the late spring and into summer, and also faced challenges with ripening and the deterioration of quality over time with the excessive rains into the fall. Not all was lost though, as even across the alluvial terrace some sites fared better than others. Those lieux-dits on deep, sandier soils with gravels in the subsoil drained more reliably, than vineyards on sand with clay subsoils, such as the domaine’s parcels at Les Grézeaux, where it remains to be seen if there will be a Les Grézeaux bottling for the 2024 vintage.

Similarly, in parts of Saumur-Champigny or in select communes on left bank in Chinon (Ligré, for example) where vineyards with deeper, heavier clay soils are dotted across the landscape, these clays also had a greater risk of being water-logged by the excessive rain. These conditions coupled with mild weather that persisted through July and August, meant that these vineyards were also hit hard by mildew pressure, impacting yields. Moreover, with clay being a cooler soil overall, it was a bit more difficult to achieve optimal ripeness in some sectors with these soils.

The Declassification Decision

We have been spoiled in recent years with a very long stretch of great vintages, where allocations of our favourite cuvées parcellaires (single vineyard wines) are released with a degree of regularity that we can almost set our watch to. As the 2024 wines continue their élevage journey and vignerons diligently taste their cuvées over the coming months, the question of whether or not to declassify certain barrels or cuves will ultimately come up.

For those that aren’t familiar with this term, the idea is that a vigneron may choose not to bottle a top single vineyard wine, perhaps because the volume was too low to warrant a single bottling or that the quality just was not quite up to snuff as previous vintages, and instead blend that wine with other cuves for estate’s “Cuvée Domaine” (or similar wine) as a way of bolstering the quality of their fruit-forward, early-drinking wines.

Given the challenges of the 2024 vintage, a few of the vignerons I spoke to noted that it remains to be seen whether they will be bottling their top single vineyard cuvées. Paul Pisani-Ferry of Château de Targé in Saumur-Champigny noted to me that he will likely not bottle his “Le Gory” or “Clos du Moulin” for a second vintage in a row and that the wine for these parcels will be declassified and used in the estate’s “Tradition” cuvée.

While this may seem like a bummer to some, I personally have a lot of respect for vignerons and winemakers who embrace the concept of declassification as it benefits both the consumer and the winery. The consumer gets a bit more bang for their buck in the early-drinking cuvée, and the vigneron is able to preserve the quality, reputation and often price of their top wines over time. It is a win-win, in my opinion. So I will not be disappointed if in 2024 some vignerons choose this route with some of their cuvées.

The Outlook

While it is still very, very early days, overall quality and quantity will be quite varied across the appellations of Chinon, Bourgueil, St-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil, Saumur-Champigny and Saumur for Cabernet Franc.

Mildew impacted yields, rain caused dilution, and the cooler temperatures and overcast conditions meant that some parcels just did not achieve the desired sugar ripeness when it came time to harvest.

Potential alcohols varied from 10.5% to upward to 13% depending on the appellation, commune and vineyard, and some producers will have had to chaptalize some of their fermentations in order to achieve the desired balance - a first for many since 2013, the last vintage that some said was most similar to 2024. Due to the lower alcohols and dilution of some parcels, some have chosen to make a bit more rosé in 2024 - not a bad trade off in the grand scheme of things. And with the lower sugars, higher acidities and lower pHs overall, fermentations should be healthy and there is likely to be less problems with brett, which has reared its ugly head with a bit more regularity in some of the more recent warm vintages.

For many I spoke to, if the mildew pressure hadn’t impacted yields to the extent that it did, the fruit load on the vines would’ve been too high for anything to ripen given the conditions that persisted through August and September. So the lower yields were a bit of blessing for many in the end. Over the course of my week, I tasted upwards to three dozen cuves across all appellations that were mid-ferment or just finished, and I have to be honest, there wasn’t any “green” to be found. The fruit profiles were ripe and the phenolic maturity was there despite the lower potential alcohols. So, I was pleasantly surprised by these initial tastings (and many thanks to the vignerons who indulged my desire to taste the ferments - many thought I was completely nuts!).

It is worth keeping in mind that viticultural and winemaking practices for across the region for Cabernet Franc have improved dramatically in the last twenty years. The vintage conditions that persisted in 2024 would’ve been seen as catastrophic in the 80s or 90s resulting in many green, thin, unripe wines. Today, there is a lot more attention to detail that goes into the farming, from pruning to shoot thinning, as well as ensuring that the canopy and yields are in balance. In the cellar, parcels are separated with quality in mind, extraction and maceration techniques are adjusted to reflect the fruit ripeness levels of the vintage, and press wine is not incorporated into the free run wine by default. The Cabernet Franc-loving public has benefited from these improvements with many good wines coming out of even the most challenging vintages.

Will 2024 go down as the vintage of the century? Not likely. Will there be a lot of average (and perhaps heavily manipulated) wines made by larger, more commercially-minded producers? Certainly. Will there be some very good, immensely drinkable wines that can be enjoyed over the short to medium term? Absolutely. It just may be a question of happily drinking the 2024s while we wait ever-so-patiently for the 2022s and 2023s to come around. Only time will tell, but I remain optimistic that some delicious, thoughtfully-made Cabernet Francs will come from the 2024 vintage in the Loire.

Final Thoughts

While it is still early days for the 2024 Loire Cabernet Franc vintage to show its true colours in the bottle, one thing became quite clear to me during my time in the region. And it is something that I have long preached: know the vigneron and know the vineyard, and the vintage becomes secondary. Great wines can come out of any vintage, it is simply a question of who is the vigneron(ne) behind the wines doing the work in the vineyard, day in day out, to grow healthy grapes to the best of their ability, and then respectfully transform those grapes into a wine that is reflective of place and time. Every vintage has something to give, something to teach us. The 2024 vintage in the Loire Valley will be one that many vignerons will be happy to put behind them, but the wines will live on and will be forever marked by their perseverance, resilience and belief in their land and this grape.