François Morissette has a thing he likes to say: "I don't make wine for Ontario. I make wine for the world." It sounds a little arrogant, a little "okay, sure buddy," until you taste one and realize, oh. He's not wrong. His wines are worldly in the best way. Stylish, refined, impossibly pure.
This is the new vintage of Primesautier. Vintage 2024 was made with 100% Lemberger (AKA Blaufränkisch) from the Knizat Vineyard. How special was that wine? Let's put it this way: imagine blood orange doing something very sexy to cranberries. That was it. Plus a hit of guava, and acid so well-integrated it just felt like the wine was vibrating. A cheeky character, for sure.
But then vintage 2025 came around, and Pearl Morissette decided to stop buying grapes from other growers. Their new goal is to use exclusively the fruit they grow themselves. So they dropped the Lemberger and turned to Cabernet Franc from their own plantings for this wine. It's cool to think they didn't want to rebrand, or create a new label. They wanted Primesautier to continue being its own thing, just from a different place, a different grape. It makes me think of Primesautier like a person, growing from adolescence into young adulthood.
The 2024 was a cheeky, wild, unapologetic youngster that had to be met on its own terms. The 2025 Cabernet Franc feels more serious, less wacky, more mature, but still fun and uncomplicated. It leans more toward black, ripe fruit and less toward the pyrazinic roasted red bell pepper that their Furie normally shows. This could be your new favourite chillable red, just in time for fall. A Cab Franc worth meeting.
