WINE OF THE WEEK: Les Terrasses Saint Nicolas de Bourgueil Cabernet Franc 2024, Loire Valley, France

£12.50/£10, Tesco

This is Loire Valley Cabernet Franc just as it should be, so hats off to the Bougrier family and winemaker Franck Chatelain of Caves de la Tourangelle, the producer of this Saint Nicolas de Bourgueil. It's all the more of an achievement in a year like 2024 because growing seasons don’t come much more difficult.

It wasn’t just the Loire Valley. Almost all France's wine regions, except parts of the far southeast, were badly affected. The problems were so widespread that the French wine harvest ended up being one of the smallest since 1945, the growing season having been variously rain-soaked, cold, hit by poor flower-set, millerandage (aka ‘hen and chicken’), mildew, rot, hail and high winds.

In the Loire Valley, it was particularly hard to get the red grapes fully mature and yet Les Terrasses Saint Nicolas de Bourgueil 2024 (benefitting from its sandy-gravelly terraces) is classically ripe, fresh and expressive, with raspberry and currant-leaf aromas, bright fruit, graphite-mineral notes, soft-focus tannins and lifted herbal freshness.

That’s how it comes across if you drink it at an appropriately cool 14–16ºC, but if you serve it warmer, it will begin to lose its definition and become soupy.

Pair it with the likes of antipasti, rillettes and other charcuterie, spaghetti with fresh pesto, vegetable dishes – such as broccoli with anchovy, butter-stewed radishes with a splash of balsamic and honey, roast asparagus with pancetta and parmesan and lightly miso-glazed aubergine – or with seared tuna, guinea fowl, or pink lamb cutlets with a smidgen of chimichurri. 12%. Empty bottle weight: 470g.

Les Terrasses Saint Nicolas de Bourgeuil 2024, Touraine, Loire Valley, France

£12.50, or £10 with a Clubcard until 13 July, Tesco

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