Cabernet: King of Wines, Wine of Kings

Cabernet Sauvignon is definitely the king of wines and the wine of kings.  Unfortunately, most of the really good cabs require a lot of money and a lot of aging.  In the late 1990s, the noted scientist Dr. Carole Meredith from the University of California at Davis concluded from DNA testing that Cabernet Sauvignon is the result of a cross (most likely accidental) between Cabernet Franc, a red wine, and Sauvignon Blanc, a white wine.  It’s a relatively recent cross, too, most likely occurring within the last 400 years.  It appears that the earliest known cultivation of Cabernet Sauvignon occurred in the Bordeaux region of France in the 1700s.

Cabernet grapes are quite hardy and relatively easy to grow.  They are immune to many grape diseases and fairly resistant to frost.  They can produce amazing wines that are complex and impressive.  On the downside, they require a relatively long and warm growing season, the leaf canopy must be aggressively controlled and the grapes must be thinned.  If the season is too cool or too short, the grapes won’t ripen.  If the leaves are permitted to shade the grapes too much, the grapes won’t ripen and will have a quite vegetal taste.  If the grapes are not thinned, the vines will overproduce and the resulting wine will be thin and simple.

You can see why there are a limited number of places where Cabernet can be truly successful.  And you can also see why really good Cab might be expensive – low yields (from thinning the grapes) and high labor costs (from cutting leaves and thinning grapes) result in higher costs per bottle.

Really superior Cabernet Sauvignon has great, complex flavors, typically black currant, black cherry, blackberry, ginger, mint, eucalyptus, green olive, asparagus and tobacco.  But it also has lots of tannins.  Tannin is the astringent component of wine that typically comes from the skins and seeds and makes your tongue feel dry and as though it is tanned leather.  The tannins can be tamed by winemaking techniques, most notably oak barrel aging.

Regardless of the winemaking techniques, a truly great Cabernet Sauvignon needs time in the bottle to calm the tannin.  You’ve probably heard stories of French Bordeaux that has been opened and declared fantastic 50 or 100 years after it was bottled.  While this is the exception rather than the rule, my experience tells me that good Cabernet from a reputable producer need between 5 and 10 years in the bottle before it is ready to be enjoyed.  These wines are the ones that you typically find for between $30 and $75 per bottle.  While it’s not always easy to be patient, I usually find that on those rare occasions when I spend that much on a bottle of wine, I intend to save it for a special occasion anyway.

The wines that fall in to that category are some French Bordeaux (though talking about Bordeaux requires so much space that we will save that for a future column), many Napa Cabernets and some Sonoma wines.  These include some of my favorites (recommended because they are great from year to year and even when the growing conditions are not perfect): Beringer Knight’s Valley ($25), Conn Creek Napa ($25), Beaulieu Vineyard Napa Tapestry ($42), Heitz Cellars Napa ($40), Mount Veeder Napa ($34), Arrowood Sonoma ($36) and Whitehall Lane Napa ($40).

Fortunately, winemakers recognize that most people who buy wine want to drink it within a couple days.  They also recognize that most people don’t want to spend $50 or more on a bottle.  Thus, we now have several good Cabernet Sauvignon choices available in the under $20 price range.  Look for wines from Washington, the Central Coast of California and Australia.  Although they might not be quite as complex as their more expensive cousins, these wines will still have many of the hallmark flavors describe above.  Thanks to creative winemaking techniques, these wines will be quite drinkable within just a couple years of the vintage (the year on the bottle that indicates when the grapes were grown).

Some that I recommend (and that I have found in local stores) include Five Rivers (Central Coast of California, $15); Trapiche (Argentina, $13), Gnarly Head (California, $12) and Columbia Crest Grand Estate (Washington, $12).

King or not, you can enjoy the wine of royalty with any of these wines.