2023 Lo-Fi Cabernet Franc Coquelicot Vineyard Santa Barbara County

Lo-Fi Wines is headed by Michael Roth and Craig Winchester, friends from college who built the label around a minimalist philosophy: no additions outside of a small amount of sulfur, whole-cluster fermentation, neutral vessels only. The name Lo-Fi is the entire operation in five letters — low-intervention winemaking that lets the fruit speak.

This 2023 Cabernet Franc is Roth's first release under the Lo-Fi label, sourced from the organically farmed Coquelicot Vineyard near the Santa Ynez River in Los Alamos. Three acres, two of them Cabernet Franc, tucked into Santa Barbara County's inland valleys where morning fog and afternoon heat coax aromatics out of the fruit. Whole-cluster carbonic maceration for twelve days, native yeast, neutral wood and concrete for six months. Made entirely without sulfur.

Cabernet Franc in California often gets the Loire comparison, and this one earns it — the herbal snap of Bourgueil, the vegetal lift of Chinon, but with a generosity of fruit texture that's unmistakably West Coast. Bold green pepper up front, roasted tomato, fresh tobacco, a flicker of mole negro spice. Soft red plum and dark cherry roll through the middle, finishing savory and herbal. Chill it down and the fruit brightens; let it warm and the wild sage and tobacco take over.

This is $29.99 for a wine that drinks against bottles twice the price — early-picked, whole-cluster Cab Franc with the kind of savory complexity that usually costs you $60 in the Loire or $70 from Napa hillsides. The kind of bottle that makes you rethink what California can do when a winemaker refuses to overwork the fruit.