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Ask a Wine-Know: What is it about Cabernet?
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Anonymous user Tue May 29, 2007 09:09:52 PDT
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0 responses 0 comments What is it about Cabernet? I’ve been thinking about that for the last several days. A few nights ago 14 of us wine lovers sat down to an informal supper of good company, good food, and good wine.  As is our custom, each of us brought at least one bottle for tasting and evaluating.  All 18 bottles were Rhone varietals: the four whites were Roussannes and a Viognier, while the reds were all California Syrahs save one, an Australian Shiraz (their name for Syrah).
At the end of the evening, as hostess, I stood in the kitchen surveying the remains of the wine tastings, preparing to take the empty bottles to the recycling barrel. While there were some empties indeed, there was a lot of wine to be poured out or re-corked and sent home — more than is the usual case with this group of aficionados.
How come? Too big? Too strong? Too peppery? Too port-like?
There was not a bad wine in the bunch. There was not even a wine I’d rate as mediocre or average or dare describe as “vin ordinaire.” They were all good, many very good, and four or five got my exclamation as excellent!  Why weren’t  more of the bottles emptied, as was our usual custom?
The conclusion I came to was that they were not Cabernet Sauvignon, a wine that is our usual custom to bring.
Now dear readers, we don’t bring any better or any higher-rated cabs to our gatherings than these Syrahs. We play fair. So what is it about Cabernet that will cause the same bunch of people to want more?
First, a Cabernet is a Cabernet is a Cabernet. It looks like a Cab, it smells like a Cab, it tastes like a Cab. We’re not often fooled that it’s another varietal than what it is.
And it’s so familiar. To most of us wine lovers, Cabernet is what we learned on — it’s what red wine is supposed to taste like. Everything else is just a curiosity. We fell in love with wine because of Cabernet. We became connoisseurs of wine as we grew in our appreciation of Cabernet.  We approached the apex of wine snobbery with our first introduction to the great French Bordeaux.
I think we truly do judge all red wines by our relationship with the Cabernets we have tasted over the years. How did this all come about?
In my lifetime here in California, Cabernet Sauvignon has been the most widely planted red grape varietal. Indeed, it is rivaled only by Merlot in its world-wide plantings of dark-skinned grapes. Recent DNA testing by UC Davis scientists has determined that Cabernet Sauvignon is an off-spring of Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc, a “marriage” that probably took place in the fields of Bordeaux in Western France several centuries ago. It is not an ancient varietal in the wine world but a somewhat recent one.
It is a late-ripening varietal grown best in a fairly warm climate. The San Joaquin Valley is generally too hot for quality Cabernet. I remember an effort by UC Davis in the 1970s to develop a varietal called Ruby Cabernet here around Bakersfield but it seems never to have caught on, although I did drink the wine for a year or so.
Napa Valley of Northern California is the esteemed site of our finest and most expensive Cabs, often referred to as Cult Cabernets. This area is generally considered to be second only to the Bordeaux region of France in the production of the highest quality Cabernets. Many of us still take pride in the famous Tasting of Paris in 1976 in which a California Cabernet (the 1973 Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars) won a blind tasting by French wine critics over the great Bordeaux!
All the wine writers say that Cabernet fruit tastes like black currants. I’ve heard this all my life. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had little (none actually) acquaintance with black currants, so I can’t spot that taste. I’ve always said to my wine classes, “Taste. This is what a cab tastes like. Remember it.” 
That’s the benchmark of red wine. I will explain that one of the great characteristics of Cabernet is its ability to pick up the tastes of the earth in which it is grown and the oak in which it is encased for its first years. It also has the ability to age in the bottle and change remarkably over the years, much more so than any other varietal.
Most of us will never get much chance to experience the glory of really aged Cabs (mostly from Bordeaux), and what we prize in this varietal is its ability to be a cab whether it’s from Napa, Sonoma, Paso Robles, or Washington State. Whether it’s young or old, and since we drink them mostly young, we have come to appreciate its depth of color, its phenolic compounds (the elements that make wine good for us health-wise), its tannins that tell us we have something more than colored water in the glass, the body that fills our mouth, and the finish (aftertaste) that lingers long after we have swallowed it.
We can never get enough of it. Ergo, we drink more of it. Fewer half-emptied bottles left.

Coming Events
June 15 — A Bakersfield Friends of Wine Winemaker Dinner will present Rodney Strong Winery of Sonoma, a longtime fixture in the wine industry. To make reservations or for more information, call Klaus Hoeper at 871-6463.

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