2023 Lo-Fi Cabernet Franc Coquelicot Vineyard Santa Barbara County

One of America's best-kept Cab Franc secrets — until now.

Lo-Fi Wines is headed by Michael Roth and Craig Winchester, college friends who built the label around a minimalist philosophy: no additions beyond a small amount of sulfur, whole-cluster fermentation, neutral vessels only. The name says it all — low-intervention winemaking that lets the fruit speak for itself. Roth is also a consulting winemaker for Martellotto Wines, working alongside BHW founder Greg Martellotto, who's known Roth since the two shared production space together years ago — Greg even helped plant this vineyard.

Jon Bonné, former wine editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, named Coquelicot among the handful of wines actually redefining California Cabernet Franc when he went looking for the category's new guard. Roth put his own philosophy simply: "I love Chinon and Bourgueil, but a lot of them lack the fruit we get in California."

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.

It's the kind of red Europeans have understood for generations and Americans are only catching onto now — light enough to chill hard, confident enough to drink completely on its own, and food-friendly in a way heavier reds can't touch. Pour it next to grilled fish, a salad, or nothing at all.

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 $60 in the Loire or $70 from Napa hillsides. Roth could easily charge Napa money for fruit this good. Instead, he built Lo-Fi around one idea: fine wine at a fair price, made for everyday drinking, not for collectors to hoard. In a market that's forgotten how to do that, it's the kind of bottle that makes you rethink what California can do when a winemaker refuses to overwork the fruit.