Owing to the screen size of your device, you may obtain a better viewing experience by rotating your device a quarter-turn (to get the so-called “panorama” screen view).
owlcroft logo
An Owlcroft Company
web site.


 Click to 
 email us. 


If you like this site,
please post a link to it!

This is…

That Useful Wine Site

Search, or just roll your cursor over the colored boxes farther below.
Advertisements appear before actual Search results;
click the “x” to dismiss Search-results block.

  Advertisement:


  Site navigation:

  Advertisement:


  Site navigation:

The Cabernet Sauvignon Grape


Quick page jumps:


About Cabernet Sauvignon

(Synonyms: Bidure, Bordeaux, Bordo, Bouchet, Bouchet Sauvignon, Burdeos Tinto, Cabernet Petit, Carbonet, Carbouet, Carmenet, Lafit, Lafite, Marchoupet, Navarre, Petit Bouchet, Petit Cabernet, Petit Cavernet Sauvignon, Sauvignon, Sauvignonne, Vidure, Vidure Sauvignonne, Petit Vidure)

Background

Map showing Bordeaux

Cabernet Sauvignon is a red-wine grape originating in Bordeaux, but now grown globally. It is widely considered one of the dozen and a half or so “Noble wine grapes” of the world; indeed, it is one of the three red-wine graps included when the lesit was only a half-dozen long. It is the informing grape of the classic Bordeaux blends (known in the U.K. as “claret”), and is the second-most planted wine grape in the world (surpassed only recently by another Bordeaux red, Merlot).

Americans are used to wines that are bottled and marketed by varietal name (which now requires that the wine must be at least 75% of the named type); but in most of Europe, the tradition has been to produce named blends, with laws specifying—usually quite tightly—what percentages of what grapes may be used. The principal Bordeaux grapes are Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc, though there are others. Cabernet Sauvignon is an assertive grape, and thus an excellent candidate for blending, not only in the traditional Bordeaux blends, but with many other important reds from round the world.

Cabernet Sauvignon wine is hard to describe, chiefly because the grape lends itself to many fairly different styles of vinification. Typically, it has distinct fruit (usually bramble fruits are mentioned, especially black currant) but with overlays variously described as “earthy”, “leathery”, or “woody”, and normally it is relatively heavy on tannins. It is a robust and, as noted, quite “assertive” taste. At times, it can also exhibit bell-pepper or green-olive tastes, sometimes to the extent of those becoming defects (the notorious “vegetal” Cabernets).

Cabernet Sauvignon is widely held to have a strong affinity for oak, and is usually aged in new oak barrels. While oak aging is common for many wines, some winemakers feel the trend has gone too far, with the oak taste overwhelming the actual wine taste (hence August Sebastiani’s now-famous remark “If you like the taste of wood, go bite a tree,” sometimes also recounted as “go eat some toothpicks”). The extent of oak use in the winemaking is one of the chief factors distinguishing one cab from another.

While Bordeaux red blends remain the most widely respected use of Cabernet Sauvignon, today many other regions are also producing excellent cabs (and blends), from California and Washington to Chile and Australia. It is, in the U.S., most people’s “go-to” red, at levels from the famous “Two-Buck Chuck” to three-digit per-bottle prices. Indeed, one criticism of the present world wine market is that a very few immensely popular varieties—notably Cabernet Sauvignon—are causing growers to rip out excellent traditional grape types, some of which are at risk of disappearing altogether, in favor of the highly saleable cab.

Besides the inventiveness of the winemaker, another big influence on Cabernet Sauvignon wines is the climate where the grapes were grown (true of all wines, but more so with cab). One reason blends became so popular in the Old World is that in many grape-growing areas the weather is highly variable, and in many seasons the grapes must be picked before their ideal time; thus, other, earlier-ripening types need to be blended in to make wine of the desired quality—to make up the “holes” in the cab. In the New World, where climates are typically much warmer, Cabernet Sauvignon regularly achieves full ripeness, though where the season is long enough but relatively cool, the infamous “bell pepper” quality can dominate the wine (Monterey County in California use to have that problem, now long since resolved by better clonal selection and growing techniques).

Another element that affects all wines but Cabernet seemingly more than most is soil. The type is especially good, if vinified with care, at expressing terroir (a taste clearly representative of its region of growth).

And because Cabernet Sauvignon is naturally high in tannins, it makes wines that famously can improve with bottle aging for decades. Modern styling, however, has tended toward more immediately accessible wines, because few wine drinkers nowadays have the interest in or capability for aging wines for very long periods (or, often, at all—studies show that a very high percentage of wines sold in the U.S. are drunk on the day of purchase).

Factoid: Cabernet Sauvignon is a relatively recent (17th century) cross between Cabernet Franc and the white Bordeaux grape Sauvignon Blanc.

Return to the page top. ↑


Some Descriptions of Cabernet Sauvignon Wines

Return to the page top. ↑

Some Cabernet Sauvignons to Try

(About this list.)

There is a plethora of decent Cabs out there at $20 or under, the majority from South America; the list below is almost (but not quite) a random selection of five from twice as many candidates.


Stark-Condé Cabernet Sauvignon
(Note: they have 5 Cab bottlings; this is their basic version.)

• This wine’s Wine Searcher “Reviews” page.
    CellarTracker has three separate listings for this wine:
• This wine’s CellarTracker review pages.
• This wine’s CellarTracker review pages.
• This wine’s CellarTracker review pages.
• Retail offers of this wine listed by Wine Searcher.
• Retail offers of this wine listed by 1000 Corks.



Los Vascos Grande Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon
(Don’t confuse this with their “Los Vascos Grande Reserve” blend: this is the Cabernet Sauvignon.)

• This wine’s Wine Searcher “Reviews” page.
• This wine’s CellarTracker review pages.
• Retail offers of this wine listed by Wine Searcher.
• Retail offers of this wine listed by 1000 Corks.



Santa Rita “Medalla Real” Gran Reserva Cabernet Sauvignon

• This wine’s Wine Searcher “Reviews” page.
• This wine’s CellarTracker review pages.
• Retail offers of this wine listed by Wine Searcher.
• Retail offers of this wine listed by 1000 Corks.



Penfolds "Max's" Cabernet Sauvignon

• This wine’s Wine Searcher “Reviews” page.
• This wine’s CellarTracker review pages.
• Retail offers of this wine listed by Wine Searcher.
• Retail offers of this wine listed by 1000 Corks.



Errazuriz “Max Reserva” Cabernet Sauvignon

• This wine’s Wine Searcher “Reviews” page.
• This wine’s CellarTracker review pages.
• Retail offers of this wine listed by Wine Searcher.
• Retail offers of this wine listed by 1000 Corks.

Return to the page top. ↑


For a Splurge

Curiously, we had trouble finding a good “splurge” choice. The problem is not any scarcity of excellent Cabs: it is that virtually all the Cabs nontrivially better than those listed above are into the three-digit price range, usually by quite a bit (since this is a prestige varietal). Fortunately there was one standout as to quality, price, and availability.

Our nomination is the Booker Vineyards “My Favorite Neighbor” Cabernet Sauvignon, which goes for $36 up to a wild $189 (but most offers are much closer to the lower than the upper bound).

• This wine’s Wine Searcher “Reviews” page.
• This wine’s CellarTracker review pages.
• Retail offers of this wine listed by Wine Searcher.
• Retail offers of this wine listed by 1000 Corks.

(Booker also has a “Harvey & Harriet” version of their “My Favorite Neighbor” that is almost as good and a few dollars less expensive.)

Return to the page top. ↑



  Advertisement:


  

  Advertisement:


  



Disclaimers  |  Privacy Policy

owl logo This site is one of The Owlcroft Company family of web sites. Please click on the link (or the owl) to see a menu of our other diverse user-friendly, helpful sites. Pair Networks logo Like all our sites, this one is hosted at the highly regarded Pair Networks, whom we strongly recommend. We invite you to click on the Pair link or logo for more information on hosting by a first-class service.
(Note: All Owlcroft systems run on Ubuntu Linux and we heartily recommend it to everyone—click on the link for more information).

All content copyright © 2024 The Owlcroft Company
(excepting quoted material, which is believed to be Fair Use).

This web page is strictly compliant with the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) Protocol v1.0 (Transitional) and the W3C Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Protocol v3 — because we care about interoperability. Click on the logos below to test us!



This page was last modified on Saturday, 30 October 2021, at 11:26 pm Pacific Time.