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Cabernet Sauvignon
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When I first started tasting and learning about wine I really didn’t like Cabernet Sauvignon. At the time though, I was just glad that I could identify it.
In a blind tasting (where you don’t know what you’re tasting) I could pick out a Cabernet thanks to its distinctively dust-like, pencil shaving, green pepper aromas. I found it hard to understand why almost everybody else in the wine trade loved the wines of Bordeaux* and I didn’t.
I preferred the riper, generous, fruit and spice-filled styles of the Grenache and Syrah varieties of the Rhône. Was it me? Did I have a faulty palate? Was the dry, dusty, green character something I’d learn to love and appreciate over time like coffee and sprouts?
It wasn’t me. I had been presented with badly-made wines, wines that were created from grapes that were not fully ripe, whose winemakers were more concerned with making volume than with quality. These were not inexpensive (not to my student purse anyway) but they were not top-quality examples of the grape variety. I’ve since learnt that if Cabernet Sauvignon is picked unripe, or made by aggressive methods where the grape stalks and the pips are crushed releasing bitter compounds, the resulting wines are hard, green, tannic and ‘dusty’.
My first example of a well-made Cabernet came from the Lights Pass district of South Australia. This opened my palate to the wonderful, rich, blackcurrant and eucalypt flavours of Australian Cabernet, and this particular wine had a vanilla / toasty edge from ageing in oak barrels. I was now on a journey of rediscovery, of learning how Cabernet should taste, and why it so often doesn’t taste like it should.
I have noticed over the last few years that we’re finding less and less ‘green’ Cabernets arrive in our tasting room here in Southwold, probably due to a combination of better winegrowing and winemaking, as well as a warmer climate now in Bordeaux. There’s now, happily for me, less ‘dust’ and more blackcurrants.
Sarah Groves
*Bordeaux wines are often dominated by Cabernet Sauvignon, with Merlot predominant on the right bank of the Gironde estuary.
More examples of great Cabernet Sauvignon:
