Cabernet Sauvignon

The History of the Cabernet Sauvignon Grape Variety

Cabernet Sauvignon is a crossing between two other popular grapes, the red Cabernet Franc and the white Sauvignon Blanc, and was created in the 17th-century in Southwest France’s vineyards.

The grape soon gained popularity for being a resilient varietal, often providing extraordinary wine of noticeable structure and age-worthiness. Cabernet soon found in Bordeaux’s gravely soils the perfect stage to show off its charms, where it lends its robust personality and affinity for oak to the region’s blends.

Cabernet soon became the most critical ingredient in the French ‘Claret.’ The style was welcomed by the British, and it’s thanks to this love affair that the grape travelled to the rest of the world. California’s victory over the French wine in the popular blind wine tasting called the Judgement of Paris of 1976 helped consolidate Cabernet’s reputation, even when grown outside France.

Now, Cabernet Sauvignon is the flagship red grape in many countries and wine regions worldwide, and its popularity has just increased throughout the centuries.

Wine Regions

The most significant French wine region championing Cabernet Sauvignon is Bordeaux, where the grape is blended with its ever-reliable stablemates Merlot and Cabernet Franc. The most significant appellations are Bordeaux, Bordeaux Superieur, Graves and the Medoc. There are also substantial Cabernet plantings in France’s southern region, Languedoc, where it is the base for many approachable wines.

The most significant French wine region championing Cabernet Sauvignon is Bordeaux, where the grape is blended with its ever-reliable stablemates Merlot and Cabernet Franc. The most significant appellations are Bordeaux, Bordeaux Superieur, Graves and the Medoc. There are also substantial Cabernet plantings in France’s southern region, Languedoc, where it is the base for many approachable wines.

Cabernet Sauvignon has gained recognition in Italy’s Tuscany, where it is the main ingredient in the famous Super Tuscans that challenged Italian winemaking traditions.

California is by far the most significant source for Cabernet Sauvignon outside France, and its most prized renditions come from Napa Valley. There are significant plantings in Washington, too, where the grape is gaining increasing fame.

We might know Chile for its rare Carmenere grape, but it’s Cabernet Sauvignon which renders the most successful results. The same can be said about Argentina, where Cabernet plays second fiddle to Malbec.

Australia has found in Cabernet the right grape to second the country’s flagship wine grape, Shiraz and Cabernet is both bottled as a mono-varietal and as part of exciting blends with Shiraz.

South Africa has found in Cabernet’s reliable marketability a building block for the country’s wine industry, and this is the case in many other countries around the wine belt. From China to Mexico, from Bulgaria to Spain — Cabernet has a special place in the global wine trade.

Wine Styles & Tasting Notes

Cabernet Sauvignon can be a source of inexpensive red wine that rarely sees oak ageing — wine meant to be drunk young with no complications. Still, the most significant Cabernet bottles are built to last.

Cabernet is a concentrated wine grape that accumulates large amounts of tannins, the gritty particles that cause that feeling of dryness on the palate. It’s these tannins that allow the wines to be astoundingly age-worthy — the finest Cabernet Sauvignon examples can age and evolve for decades.

Wine made with Cabernet is also recognised for its unique scents and flavours, including a characteristic black currant aroma, often mingling with spice scents, undergrowth, tobacco leaves and sweet vanilla coming from the French oak barrels where the wine spends over a year.

A unique herbal undertone, inherited from the vegetal Sauvignon Blanc and Cabernet Franc, can give Cabernet aromas redolent of bell peppers, which can be pleasing or off-putting.

Cabernets from warmer climates, most likely found in the New World, are often bottled as mono-varietal wines and display riper fruit and less herbaceousness. The extensive use of oak is also stressed, making the wines quite complex on the nose and palate.

Food Pairings

Cabernet Sauvignon is the quintessential steak wine. With high tannin levels that bind with proteins and fat molecules in the food, Cabernet is the right pairing for fatty steaks, hearty stews, grilled meat, roasts and barbecues. In Bordeaux, Cabernet blends are the traditional pairing for duck, a fatty bird, while in California, it is best paired with a Rib-eye — the more marbled, the better.

Cabernet’s vegetal scents and smoky undertones make it compatible with grilled vegetables, and like any other tannic wine, it’s best served with mature cheese rich in fat and protein.