Cabernet Sauvignon: The King

Learn About Cabernet Sauvignon

You are a tremendous red wine, Cabernet Sauvignon. A real wine lover’s red wine. You have all the right angles and acid in a big red wine and can make an expert wine drinker salivate at your rich tannins. When you are fruit-forward and young, you might even make a great wine for beginners looking to expand their palate. It stands though, you are an admired red wine by many a wine drinker. World renowned, one might say. But it is without question you, Cabernet Sauvignon, have become the most noble of reds.

Your profile commands distinction. Whatever your structure, Cabernet, it is always firm and always yummy. It must be your distinctive black currant aromas. Maybe it’s the slight green bell pepper notes. Or perhaps it’s the fact that the older you are, the more leathery, the more cedar-like, the smoother you get and you can live a ripe old age. You are a wine collector’s wet dream.

Drinkable at a young age, most of your varietal found in the New World are supple, yet aggressive with somewhat of a tea leaf, green, herbal flavor; but oh my, are you reserved and acidic in your Old World counterpart from where you originate, Cabernet Sauvignon.

You popularity has steadily grown over the last 40 or so years, but you are still relatively new to the world of wine. Born of Sauvignon Blanc and Cabernet Franc in the vineyards of Bordeaux, you are easy to cultivate and can adapt to an endless clime from cool to hot, sand to gravel, to just rock. It doesn’t matter. And you maintain your hearty characteristics across the global landscape.

Your vines can grow old and this will produce less fruit but with more extract making your wine dark, purple and jammy. Your thick skins make you exceptionally resistant to disease, you bud late which protects you from frost, but you are late-ripening exposing you to disaster in rain-heavy areas.

Because of your heavy tannic nature, you are slow to mature, Cabernet. Young, you are acidic and “dumb”. Yes, dumb is a wine term meaning flat, flavor-lacking. You may have a green, weediness about you as well. Winemakers, though, have made efforts to liven you up and make you a more approachable wine for beginners with canopy management to eliminate your green taste and replace that with a spice-driven, fruit-forward yumminess.

After a good seasoned stint in the bottle, however Cabernet, you are a powerhouse of bold, full-bodied charm. Caramel, coffee, cigar box, toffee, smooth as satin, these are what you bring to the mouthfeel and nose of your wines. All the wonderful flavors of dark fruits and leather, you make me hot just thinking about you.

Varietal Styles

New World
• Fruit-forward
• Cherries
• Milk Chocolate
• Oak
• Cigar Box
• Vanilla
• Supple

Old World
• Herbal, Earthen
• Currant
• Cocoa, Mocha
• Cedar
• Tobacco
• Lilac
• Black Peppercorn

Grape Styles
Black Cherry | Black Currant | Blackberry | Red Currant | Red Cherry | Chocolate | Cocoa | Mocha | Herbs | Black Pepper | Tea | Mint | Tobacco | Lilac | Eucalyptus | Pencil Shavings | Minerals | Cigar Box | Vanilla | Cedar |Moist Earth | Toffee | Coffee | Caramel | Barnyard

Be Sociable, Share!

•