Domaine Filliatreau Chateau Fouquet Saumur

The Loire Valley has always felt a little mischievous to me. Burgundy stares at itself in the mirror. Bordeaux keeps receipts. But the Loire? The Loire packs a baguette, disappears into the fog and somehow returns with the most refreshing bottle you’ve tasted all year.

Domaine Filliatreau’s 2021 Château Fouquet Saumur Rouge is exactly that sort of wine. This is Cabernet Franc at its most buoyant: energetic, savory and just wild enough around the edges to feel deliciously alive. Not the stern, graphite-heavy Franc that lectures you about structure. This one wants to dance barefoot in the kitchen while the roasted chicken rests.

The Filliatreau family has worked the chalky soils of Saumur for generations, farming organically and treating Cabernet Franc less like a grape to tame and more like a grape to listen to. The vineyards sit atop the tuffeau limestone that defines great Saumur—that pale, porous chalk that seems to inject wines with both levity and electric snap. You taste it immediately here. The fruit feels suspended in air.

2021 was a cooler vintage in the Loire, which turns out to be wonderful news for wines like this. Instead of excess weight or jamminess, Château Fouquet arrives all bright-eyed and nimble: tart raspberry, crushed cranberry, red currant, violets, and the sort of herbal freshness that makes you think of snapping green stems in a garden after the rain. Then come classic Franc notes—pencil shavings, damp earth, black tea, a little cracked pepper—all woven together with remarkable ease.

But what makes this bottle so lovable is its texture. There’s this gentle chalky grip beneath the juicy fruit, like biting into a just-ripe plum while standing in a limestone cellar. The wine feels playful but not simple, serious but never self-important. You can chill it slightly and drink it with charcuterie, roast salmon, mushroom tart, cassoulet, burgers or, frankly, an irresponsible amount of pâté and cornichons.

There’s also something deeply French about it in the best possible way. Not luxury-French. Not chandelier-French. It's Bistro-French. A half-finished bottle on a zinc counter while someone tears apart a loaf of bread with their hands kind of French. It reminds you wine is supposed to make dinner more fun, not more complicated.

And yet, because this is Saumur, because this is limestone and because Cabernet Franc can be impish, there’s plenty of depth beneath the frolic. The finish lingers with cool herbs, mineral dust and a savory whisper that keeps pulling you back for one more sip.

Which, coincidentally, is exactly what happened to my first bottle. It vanished with almost supernatural speed!