Domaine Yannick Amirault, La Source, St-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil, Loire, France 2022

This dense, deep, plum-coloured wine has rich black fruit characters. It’s well-structured and has a long finish, though it needs some time for the tannins to soften a little more. This is a powerful, concentrated wine with good potential to age attractively. The 45-year-old vines are planted on gravel in the best-drained and warmest part of the domaine. The grapes are handpicked into baskets and fermented in open vats for three to four weeks and then matured in wooden vats for six to 10 months. For many years Yannick Amirault’s domaine has been a by-word for quality.