The other Cabernet

In most wine lovers’ books, Cabernet is shorthand for Cabernet Sauvignon, one of wine’s global superstar varieties. However, there is another Cabernet, rather less celebrated, that deserves more recognition – and which might just be on its way to coming out from the shadows: Cabernet Franc.

With such similar names, you might imagine that these two Cabs are related, and you would be right. It might surprise you to know, though, that it is Cabernet Franc that is the genetic daddy, and Cabernet Sauvignon the young pretender.

Cabernet Franc is an ancient variety that seems to have originated in the Spanish part of the Basque country and at some point it headed north to Bordeaux, where it retains a stronghold. Once there it got together with Sauvignon Blanc and the result was Cabernet Sauvignon.

Bordeaux is all about blends, so Cabernet Franc is usually found in a supporting role there and is rarely the headline act, even if its influence is key. Further north, in the Loire Valley, Cabernet Franc gets to sing solo in famous red wine appellations such as Chinon, Bourgueil and Saumur Champigny.

New World winemakers have not, it has to be said, fallen over themselves in their rush to plant Cabernet Franc. But those who have tried, and got it right, are making some delicious, fresh, perfumed and juicy wines that could be stars in the making.

Here are some of my favourite Cabernet Francs, ranging from their French homeland to the foothills of the Andes.

Les Nivières Saumur Cabernet Franc 2014 - £8.99, Waitrose

This is an ever-reliable Waitrose stalwart that demonstrates the variety’s appealingly fresh, sappy red fruit character. This is a perfect summer lunch wine (come on sun!).

Domaine des Roches Neuves “Terres Chaudes” 2013 – around £22 from Les Caves de Pyrène (Guildford) and other independent merchants

This is the other face of Cabernet Franc – here there is elegance, but also ageworthiness and power from a leading organic and biodynamic estate in Saumur-Champigny.

Pulenta Estate Gran Cabernet Franc 2011 - £22.95 from Winedirect.co.uk, £28 from Harvey Nichols

This Argentinian beauty is the New World Cab Franc that really made me sit up and take notice. This is ripe but so refined, with elegant, layered fruit that unfolds on the palate. A stunner, and a great demonstration of what a bright future this variety could have in Argentina. For a more wallet-friendly introduction, search out Bodega Atamisque Serbal Cabernet Franc 2015, £11.99 from New Forest Wines, Fareham Wine Cellar and The Guildford Wine Company.

If you are still in any doubt as to the quality and pedigree of Cabernet Franc, then I suggest you pick up a bottle of legendary St-Emilion producer, Château Cheval Blanc 2000 (47% Cabernet Franc, the rest Merlot) next time you’re browsing the shelves of Hedonism Wine in Mayfair. I tasted it at Cheval Blanc three years ago and it was quite sublime – and a bottle can be yours for a smidge under £1300.

Vines on Waltons' Mountain: Virginia wine

If you are of a certain vintage then Virginia and the Blue Ridge Mountains will mean just one thing:  The Waltons.  I can still hear that rather melancholic signature tune and picture John-boy and Jim-bob in their dungarees, doing some shucking or another mysterious American rural poor activity. 

Now, however, we have to adjust to the fact that Virginia produces more than just wholesome family dramas and has embarked on a mission to make wine. 

As so often happens, what we think of as the New World newcomer actually has a long history of vine-growing:  Virginia’s wine journey had its beginnings in the 1600s.  Its most famous historical influence is Thomas Jefferson, the French wine-loving US president who brought vine cuttings from Bordeaux to his home in Monticello in the 18^th century.  However, the modern-day incarnation of its wines really only began around 40 years ago, so its wine-makers are still getting into their stride when it comes to matching the best sites to grape variety and establishing their signature style. 

 

Virginia ranks as the US’ 5^th largest wine producing state but, with just 0.5 million cases produced annually, they are still a small player in the market.  Domestically most of their production is consumed locally – Virginia is lucky that “local” also includes the thirsty capital, Washington DC. 

A company called New Horizon Wines began importing Virginia wines into this country in 2009 and now sell around 2,000 cases a year here – putting us in the novel position of being Virginia’s number one export market. 

 

Conditions on the Eastern seaboard of the US are somewhat challenging for vine-growing.  Anyone who has visited there in the summer months will know that hot and humid is the norm.  Coastal sites stay fresher, but poor transport links mean this area is under-developed in general, with few vineyards.  The central area has red clay based soils and a high concentration of wineries, though land use pressure from urban development is acting as a cap on new plantings and driving up vineyard prices .  The Blue Ridge Mountains in the north and west of the state are home to a cluster of wineries where the soils (shale, decomposed granite and volcanic), climate and elevation are all favourable. 

The state’s most popular grape varieties are Viognier for white wines, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot, alongside Bordeaux blends for reds.  French oak is favoured over American, setting them apart from the leviathan that is California, though a little of the tight-grained Virginian oak can be found.

 

It’s unusual, to say the least, to find Viognier as a signature white grape – outside of its home in the northern Rhône valley in France, it is generally a supporting actor rather than a lead.  Part of the reason for its popularity here is because its thick skins help to protect it from rot during the humid summers. 

 

While Virginia wines are not exactly commonplace over here, there are some available for you to search out.  Here are some of my favourites: 

Veritas Viognier 2011 - £19.50 from Prohibition Wines and Bedales

Here, vines from various sites help to give interest and 7% Petit Manseng (a decidedly niche grape really only grown in the very far southwest corner of France) adds its trademark acid structure and grapefruity tang.  Fermented in stainless steel and then given six months in old oak barrels, its intense, pure apricot aromas lead onto a relatively restrained and zesty palate with lingering spice. 

Barboursville Viognier Reserve 2010 - £17 from The Wine Society, also at Christopher Piper and Handford Wines

This was fermented and aged in stainless steel by a producer whose Viogniers are renowned for ageing (albeit for a modest 4-6 years).  The wine is fairly deep-coloured and the nose has an earthy, mineral dimension. The palate is big on texture, with a beginning, middle and end, and flavours of hay, straw and ripe mirabelle plum.  A big-boned but well-proportioned wine. 

One of the things that I particularly enjoy about these two is their fully dry nature and balanced alcohol, which is perhaps lacking in the commercial styles of California wine.   

On the red front, it’s always fun to see what varieties like Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot can do when allowed to shine alone, instead of being subsumed into a Bordeaux blend.   

Barboursville Cabernet Franc Reserve 2010 - £18.50 from The Wine Society, also at a range of independents including Oxford Wine Company

There is ripe fruit and plenty of oak, but good freshness too, despite the 14.5% alcohol.  Tannins are ripe, with no hint of greenness.  It has a rich ripeness, and is about as powerful as Cabernet Franc gets. 

White Hall Petit Verdot 2010 - around £20 from Christopher Piper, Prohibition Wines and Selfridges

There is not much Petit Verdot planted as yet but producers are growing in confidence with the variety and are working to achieve elegance and complexity in what can be an overwhelmingly powerful grape. The nose is a typical blend of ink, spice, pepper and quite toasty oak, followed by a ripe and dense attack and acidity backing up the structure.  It still feels very youthful, ripe and opulent, but remains rather immovable.   

This Petit Verdot, like Virginia as a whole, is one to watch for the future.  Perhaps in time we’ll come to associate the Blue Ridge Mountains with fine wines rather than pick-up trucks and dungarees.  Goodnight John-boy.

Cheval Blanc: the making of a thoroughbred

Warning:  arcane French wine labelling discussion alert.

In the rather stolid rubric of the St Emilion wine classification system, Château Cheval Blanc is a Premier Grand Cru Classé A.  Some French regions have Grand Cru as the very top of the quality tree; over in the Médoc in Bordeaux’s left bank, it is the five Premiers Crus who reign supreme.  In St Emilion, however, it looks as though a committee of strong-minded people couldn’t agree which way to jump and so went for both.  Then, because so many producers ended up being given the highest accolade of Premier Grand Cru Classé, they had to divide this top tier into the very top producers, of which Cheval Blanc is one of four, who are awarded an A rather than an ignominious B, to round off their official nomenclature. 

There are 14 Châteaux on the Premier Grand Cru Classé rung of the quality ladder, with another 64 properties at the next level down, Grand Cru Classé.  If you are sipping a bottle of red Burgundy labelled Grand Cru Classé, your nose (if not your wallet) should tell you that you are at the top of the tree, quality-wise.  But if you find the same thing on the label of your St Emilion, then  you are not supping such rarified nectar (and have not happened on the bargain of the century either).

If you, probably very wisely, skipped over those first couple of paragraphs, here’s a quick summary:  Château Cheval Blanc is a bit special.

Like most St Emilion producers, their wines are made from a blend of Merlot and Cabernet Franc – but unlike most of their neighbours, they have no limestone in their soils.  Instead they have plots with a mosaic of soils based on sand, gravel and clay – in this they have more in common with their near neighbours in Pomerol.

Cheval Blanc’s vineyards are made up of slightly more Cabernet Franc (58%) than Merlot, which accounts for the remainder.   This high proportion of Cabernet Franc also sets them apart from most of their St Emilion cohort, where Merlot tends to take the lead role.

Now, you might think that it was a pretty straightforward task to blend just two varieties to make a wine, but of course it rarely is.  

At Cheval Blanc grapes can end up in one of four destinations – as part of the “grand vin” Cheval Blanc; second wine, Le Petit Cheval; their 3^rd wine or, finally, sold off in bulk to be subsumed into generic St Emilion wines.

Château Cheval Blanc covers 39 hectares (that’s around 100 acres) and is made up of 44 different plots, each of which represents one of the two grape varieties, growing on one of three soil types:  sand, gravel or clay.  At a recent tasting in London, guided by Pierre-Olivier Clouet, the impossibly youthful-looking Technical Manager at the Château, I was able to taste samples from the different parcels from the 2012 vintage:  Merlot and Cabernet Franc from each of three soil types.  Now these wines are a long way from being finished and still have another year or so to age in barrel before their final fate is decided, from grand vin to bulk sell-off, so we were not really getting a sneaky peek at Cheval Blanc 2012 – but it did sort of feel that way.

It was instructive to taste how the same grape variety can perform so differently on the different soils.  Merlot grown on sand is earthy and metallic with a touch of green stalkiness.  Yet on clay and gravel soils that unripe, green note disappears and there is a rush of ripe berry fruits instead.  Cabernet Franc followed the same pattern, with the sandy soils producing the poorest wine, and clay proving to be the perfect growing medium.

Before we moved on, I couldn’t resist having a go at blending my own Cheval Blanc 2012 – the core being Cabernet Franc grown on clay, plus a proportion on gravel, with Merlot from clay soil completing the picture.  Pretty delicious I thought – I wonder if I’ll get the chance to compare it with the real thing?  Of course my slapdash sloshing of wines from one glass to another is a world away from the minute deliberations that actually determine the final make-up of the wines.  Pierre-Oliver told us that they have never made a perfect blend of Cheval Blanc, showing what a complex mixture of art and science go into the blending process.

Having looked at the bones of an as-yet-to-be-born wine, we then went on to taste the final result from previous vintages of Cheval Blanc and second wine Le Petit Cheval.  We were comparing wines from 2004 (a cool and wet vintage) with 2010 (a cool and dry one).  Incidentally it’s good to know that it isn’t just the UK that has had so much lacklustre weather in recent years.  I digress.

Le Petit Cheval 2004 was a beguiling wine, its tannins beginning to soften at nine years old.  Cheval Blanc from the same year was more imposing, with a solidly built structure underpinning the fruit, obviously a wine with a long future ahead of it.

The 2010 wines are clearly close to Pierre-Olivier’s heart and show great freshness and elegance, but it would be a crime to drink them any time soon.

And if you would like to squirrel a few bottles away for some special occasion in the future, what will they set you back?  It is both a blessing and a curse of those in the wine trade that we are often treated to tastings of wines which we could never afford to drink (or at least I couldn’t).  Deep pockets are required in this game:  Cheval Blanc 2010 is available for upwards of £750 a bottle.  My favourite wine from the tasting for current drinking, Le Petit Cheval 2004 is a snip at around £120.

I returned home and came down to earth with a bump and a glass of a 10 quid Argentinian red – very delicious it was too.