Olga Raffault, Chinon, Les Picasses

Though Olga Raffault passed away a few years ago, her granddaughter, Sylvie, is carrying on the family’s impressive winemaking legacy. Sylvie stays faithful to the traditional style and classic approach that has historically drawn top sommeliers to the family’s wines. Grapes at the estate are farmed without herbicides or pesticides, then are hand picked and fermented in whole clusters with no destemming. The wine is then transferred to large neutral oak barrels for aging before bottling with minimal sulfur. These are deep, savory, perfumed wines hailing from top crus like Les Picasses in the subdistrict of Savigny-en-Véron. The pedigree and consistency of the estate goes back decades, so it is unsurprising that in Paris, London, and almost every metropolitan wine mecca, Raffault is a recognized as a top producer of Chinon.The 1989 “Les Picasses” is perfectly mature and still has a decade or more of life. The color is a dark garnet with a lot of oranging extending to the rim, displaying