Wine Grapes Information - Cabernet Sauvignon

Cabernet sauvignon is to red wine grapes what chardonnay is to white: successful, adaptable, widely traveled, and enduringly popular.

Championed by pioneers in the New World since the 1960s, cabernet sauvignon has put down roots in almost every winegrowing country. Despite this globetrotting, its homeland is undisputedly Bordeaux, its reputation established by the cms classes of the Medoc and Graves and the fine, long-lived wines from such chateaux as Lafite, Latour, and Margaux.

As its spread suggests, cabernet sauvignon is an adaptable variety, although it is not quite as forgiving as chardonnay. Because it ripens late, it fails to mature fully in climates that are too cool, producing thin-bodied, "green," herbaceous wines. It is rare in the Loire, even rarer, mercifully, in Germany, and needs nurturing in New Zealand. Equally, in too hot a climate, it can give jammy, simple flavors.

Those areas aside, one of the marks of cabernet sauvignon is that, wherever it is grown, it remains true to itself. A Pauillac (Bordeaux), with its mineral, cedary, cigar-box flavors, is very different from a Coonawarra cabernet sauvignon from South Australia, with its big, incisive cassis, menthol, and clove flavors. But through these regional styles cabernet sauvignon retains its distinctive personality.

This is partly a question of flavor: the blackcurrant, veering to sweeter black fruits in warmer regions; the cedar or pencils of Bordeaux; the mint or eucalyptus that often signal Coonawarra, Langhorne Creek, and Washington State; the green pepper that typifies cooler climates; and the chocolate and clove or licorice of warmer areas. But it is also a question of structure, the feel of the wine in the mouth, and it is the characteristics of the berries that determine this.

Cabernet sauvignon grapes are small, thick-skinned, dark, and bluish. They give deep-colored wines and, because of the high proportion of pits and skins to juice, wines that are naturally tannic and potentially long-lived. With assertive flavors and a tannic framework, the wines are suited to aging in oak barrels, especially French; so the flavors of new oak - vanilla, toast, spice, chocolate, coconut - are frequently part of the profile of the wine.

Another element is the blend. Even where it takes all the glory, cabernet sauvignon is often a blend with softer, juicier varieties, notably merlot and cabernet franc in Bordeaux. In the New World, it stands alone more often, but producers are increasingly trying out Bordeaux blends to add complexity.