Union Sacre Cabernet Franc

Let’s do the fun part first and the explanation second:

This is just a fun, juicy, frolicking, lively little “Chipie” of a red wine. It’s Cabernet Franc, so it’s got all those tart and tangy pomegranate, red plum and under-ripe blueberry notes that bring the wine just singing out of the glass. On the palate, it’s got California sun on its shoulders, and all the more juicy fun times for it – that warm sunshine rounds it out, over a supple-drinking midpalate with easygoing tannins. But at 13.1% alcohol, the warming sun doesn’t cover up any of the dancing, prancing zestiness of this red wine. Chipie (I am told) is French slang for a young girl who is misbehaving; and if you’ve got the snow-bound, cold-weather blues, then maybe it’s time for you to pop a bottle and start misbehaving – just a little.

The wine is from Paso Robles, California, but comes to us with a French sensibility. The winemaker, Xavier Arnaudin, hails from Alsace, France, and considers this wine to be a tribute to his native homeland. Yet he has a partner in crime - Philip Muzzy, a self-taught designer from Michigan, who helped form this project of Union Sacre wines that they embarked on together.

Their idea: Make wines for the table, for joy, with some wit and intelligent jokes, but never pretense, and not demanding. After all, Union Sacre harkens back to a French political term circa World War I, but they mean it here to describe two friends coming together to create something new. Looking at the bottle, the front label tells you what it is, and the back label tells you how it feels. And inside the bottle? It’s the prancy, rollicking minx I spoke of.

Or, maybe an even better summation – pretty much everyone that I have drunk this wine with (and at this point there have been many bottles!) has said, “Darn, that’s so yummy, I could drink it all day!” And indeed, that is what we have been doing. Join us!