If you are visiting us for the first time, Welcome! The Wine Spies feature one exceptional wine each day – and we only bring you wines that we ourselves seek out and love. Always, the wines are great. Sometimes even better than that, as is the case with today’s wine from Raymond Burr Vineyards.

Mission Codename: Days of wine and orchids

Operative: Agent Red

Objective: Send Agent Red to Raymond Burr winery to retrieve their well-reputed Cabernet Franc

Mission Status: Accomplished!

Current Winery: Raymond Burr Vineyards

Wine Subject: 2003 Cabernet Franc

Winemaker: John Quinones

Backgrounder:

Agent Red has been moping around Central Command, saddened by the fact that The Wine Spies have not sent him on a recent mission to retrieve a great Cabernet Franc (his favorite varietal). When we got a hot tip that Raymond Burr Vineyards (yes, that Raymond Burr) had an incredible Cab Franc, we sent Agent Red to investigate. Read his tasting notes and mission report below to see if today’s wine stops Reds whining.

Wine Spies Tasting Profile:

Look – Pale strawberry with perfect clarity, a bouncy surface, perfectly concentrated color to the edges and fatly clustered legs that crawl down the glass

Smell – Deeply aromatic and highly perfumed with blackberry, currant, violet and tomato stem with mixed nuts and a lightly tarred bell pepper

Feel – Very round and velvet smooth, the wine hovers over the tongue at first, and then something unique happens; it settles all around the mouth, gripping the tip of the tongue at first, and then the edges and rear and, finally, the inside of the cheeks. This happens with the wine held in your mouth. Once you swallow the wine, you get a whole different experience (see Finish).

Taste – A perfect balance of fruit, vegital and herbal characteristics (sometimes just one dominates the flavor of a Cab Franc), with layers of smoky plum, mushroom, violet, tomato vine, deep currant, blackberry and tar

Finish – This wine transitions from initial taste finish so beautifully. Once swallowed, the flavors of the wine actually deepen in your mouth and they continue to do so for what seems like an endless interval! Eventually, the flavors do tail off, albeit very slowly and very sweetly, leaving behind traces of minerally fruit and a hint of dryness.

Conclusion – I am crazy about Cabernet Franc in general, and so when I taste one of such distinction, I get all giddy. This is a very exciting wine to be sure, but don’t get me wrong; it is not a big and over-the-top killer. It it way classier than that, leaving me with a feeling a reverence for nature, the Cabernet Franc grape and for John Quinones, the masterful winemaker that crafted this unique gem of a wine.

Mission Report:

Ask anyone to describe Raymond Burr in a single word and, resoundingly, you will likely hear, Classy.

The veteran actor, for whom today’s winery was honorarily named, was also a cultivator of orchids, a war hero, a philanthropist and more. Most of all, he was cherished and loved by his close friends, who say that his warmth, humor and compassion made him a remarkable man.

When I was given the mission – finally – to seek out a new Cabernet Franc, I riffled through my mental Rolodex and recalled hearing great things about a Cab Franc from Raymond Burr Winery. In fact, it was in the most unusual way that I had come to hear of the wine in the first place.

On returning from a mission to Latin America, our flight got in to Miami too late to make our connecting flight back to California. the airline put us up in a swanky hotel and the next morning we found ourselves in a shuttle back to the Airport. I struck up a conversation with a young couple who were also on our inbound flight and, as always, I steered the conversation toward wine. We compared tastes in varietals and found that Cab Franc wines were among our very favorites. We traded recommendations and they assured me that Raymond Burr had a wine that I would be sure to love.

Now that I was finally assigned a Cab Franc mission I knew just where to go, so I called proprietor and long time companion to Mr. Burr, Robert Benevides. I used the direct approach and told him that I was very interested in sampling his wine and, if they passed the test, feature his Cabernet Franc here for our Operatives to enjoy.

I enjoyed this exceptional wine more with each sip. With enough time to stretch out in the air, the wine really opens up and loses the rough edges present on opening. For best results, decant the wine for a few hours – and enjoy at cellar temperature.

Aromas, flavors, acid and mouth-feel are all in harmony here and the finish is really very unique. If you love great Cabernet Franc, look no further Operative, its right here.

Finally, I remember hearing a story about Mr. Burr that sums up his life and his wines: While working with Errol Flynn, Flynn told Mr. Burr that if he died with ten dollars in his pocket he hadn’t done a good job. This inspired Mr. Burr to always share his wealth with all. His legacy lives on in today’s wine from Mr. Burr’s namesake winery.

Wine Spies Vineyard Check:

The location of the Raymond Burr Vineyards can be seen in this satellite photo.