Wines for The Other Cabernet – Cabernet Franc Tasting

Below are the wines I will be talking about for our Cab Franc tasting.  Two of them are widely available and two of them are each only available from a single source.  If you have trouble finding these wines you can check wine-searcher.com and put in the wine you are looking for and they will give you a list of web sites that have it for sale.

1. Lazy Bones Cab Franc – Trader Joes pretty much has an exclusive on this wine so you will need to get to one of the Trader Joes that carries wine to get it.  Our local ones do not, but there are two 30 minutes away ln Virginia that do.  This was one of the wines that I highly recommended in my earlier Blog post on Red House Wines under $15.  I enjoy the $7 price tag more than the naked woman on the label.  It is a very good wine for that price and will give us a good intro to the Cab Franc grape.  Since you will be going over to Trader Joes to get this, you might check out both the Red House Wines and White Wines under $15 posts that I did for several other great buys that Trader Joes has.  None of them is even remotely related to “Two Buck Chuck”.
2. Chateau Laroque Cabernet Franc – This wine got me hooked on Cab Franc as a single varietal about 5 years ago.  It is widely available in the $12-18 range and one source noted below has it on sale for $10.  It Is a step up from the initial wine and a very good example of good Cab Franc at reasonable prices from France.  Chateau Laroque has many wines at different price points.  This one is their Cabernet Franc and the label tells us is from the Citi de Carcassonne.  Sources:
   • Wine.com carries it for $15
   • Saratogawine.com has it for $12
   • Empirewine.com has it on sale as of this writing for $10
   • For those local to the DC area, Calvert Woodly has it in stock for $11 and no shipping charges
3. Barboursville Cabernet Franc Reserve – My favorite Virginia winery makes an excellent Cab Franc and at $22-30 it is again a step up from the Chateau Laroque.  Sources:
   1. Wine.com carries it but at $31 it is the most expensive source.  Wineworksonline.com has it for $24.
   1. This is the only one of the four that is carried by Total Wine for $21.  Chain stores like Wegmans and Safeway that carry wines often have this one, particularly in the DC area.    Calvert Woodley also has it on the shelf for $22.50. 
   1. You can get it from the Barboursville web site for $25 and they ship to most states.
4. We will finish with the 2018 Griffin Creek Cabernet Franc from the Willamette Valley Vineyards in Oregon.  At this time it is only available from their website and the price is $55.  The link for it is: https://www.wvv.com/product/2018-Griffin-Creek-Cabernet-Franc?pageID=3095651D-FA06-E86B-D3F3-300668D7518B&sortBy=DisplayOrder&maxRows=999&&productListName=Browse%20All&position=24 .  For each of the wines we will be moving up to higher price points to see how the wines compare.  I will be recommending that you pour this one into the glass 30 minutes before the tasting starts so it really opens up and shows the rich flavor and silky tannins that it has.  Batting cleanup, I think it will be a great way to finish our exploration of Cab Franc. 

I am looking at the week of July 11 for this tasting to give everyone time to get the wines and avoid conflicts with people going away for the week of July 4.  Probably Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday of that week at 6:00 Pm Eastern for an hour.  Does that date/time represent a problem for anyone?