2020 Olga Raffault Chinon Les Barnabes

Its Origins

Over many decades and five generations, Domaine Olga Raffault has gained cult status as unquestionably one of the benchmark producers for top-quality, traditional Chinon. These are beautifully balanced and complex medium bodied reds. The fruit is elegant and refined with extremely fine tannins, earthy but with plenty of acidity and a mineral edge. They drink wonderfully on release but are also capable of aging for decades. Olga Raffault has a very intriguing history, There are few women who have given their names to estates in the Loire Valley, but Olga Raffault is one of them. She took over the reins of the Domaine under tragic circumstances: She and her husband Pierre had operated this estate together until he died unexpectedly just before harvest in 1947. Without him Olga was left to run the business alone, assisted by Ernest Zenninger, a German prisoner of war who had found refuge and work at Raffault years earlier. According to the family, the "courageous and generous German" did not understand the war and  found meaning through the deep friendship that he wove with his ‘Protectors,’ the Raffault family. In return he made a promise to devote his life to Olga and her two children at the last moments of Pierre Raffault. Ernest became the winemaker at the Domaine and mentored Olga’s son Jean Raffault as he grew up. The two of them ran the estate as a team for decades, under Olga’s watchful eye, until Jean’s daughter Sylvie and her husband Eric de la Vigerie took over in 2000. Raffault has terrific plots of land in the Véron, a strip of land with sandy and gravelly soils where the Vienne River intersects with the much larger Loire. They farm 24 hectares with vines averaging over 30 years in age. Most of it Cabernet Franc with a minuscule one hectare of Chenin Blanc.   Raffault have a very minimalist approach both in the vineyard and the winery. The grapes are always hand-picked, only native yeasts are used, and they choose not to destem the bunches before fermentation begins in stainless steel. The wines are then aged slowly in larger, neutral oak and chestnut - a traditional wood barrel in the region.