Beaucanon Cabernet Franc Napa Valley 2014

The de Coninck family has made wine in Bordeaux for nine generations, back to the 1740s, and their move west was early and deliberate: Jacques de Coninck arrived from Saint-Émilion in 1978 to hunt for vineyard land, and Beaucanon has produced estate-grown Bordeaux varieties in Napa Valley since 1986. His children Louis and Chantal run the property today, with Louis, trained in Saint-Émilion cellars from age eighteen, making the wines. Cabernet Franc, the estate's specialty, grows on a gravelly alluvial fan where Atlas Peak meets Oak Knoll, densely planted and cropped low at roughly three tons per acre, and ages in French and American oak. The house style is concentrated and balanced young with real capacity to improve, and this 2014 arrives having done the improving already, carrying more than a decade of bottle age.