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In the second of our series on classic grape types, Bill Knott examines this supremely flexible, top quality grape, now grown around the world.If the Chardonnay grape has a red opposite number, it is Cabernet Sauvignon. Both are responsible, in Burgundy and Bordeaux respectively, for some of the planet's best wines, yet both are so flexible they are now grown across the full winemaking world.

Cabernet Sauvignon's reputation rests principally on its pre-eminence in Bordeaux, particularly in making the long-lived wines of Graves and the Mdoc. Sometimes used alone, but more frequently mixed, in varying proportions, with Merlot and Cabernet Franc, it's the grape that gives claret its spine. The clusters which hang from the vines in autumn are unmistakable: tiny, dark blue, insensitive berries, which contain strangely massive pips. It is these pips which give Cabernet Sauvignon almost all of its tannin: that 'stewed tea ' personality which furs up the gums but softens over time to provide complicated, well-structured claret. The skins give the classic deep red color.

Ripening Cabernet could be a problem in Bordeaux, because of the quantity of sunlight being less trusty than further south. Growers will generally hedge their bets by employing both early and late kinds to guarantee a good crop. No such issues exist in warmer climates, and the New World has taken full benefit of this. Every South American winemaking country has big plantings, particularly Chile, which produces a headier, juicier Cabernet than the occasionally stern Bordeaux wines. The difference between new and old World is very blurred in Eastern Europe, where Bulgaria and Romania, particularly, have been planting Cabernet since the late 1950s, uprooting traditional, local types to make room for the newcomer. As anyone that has drunk the last bottle of Bulgarian Cabernet at a party will avow, their quality is trustworthy but never great. Good value nonetheless, is peerless, and some of the single-estate wines are beginning to call into question Eastern Europe's reputation as the Skoda of the wine world.

Outside France, Cabernet's best successes have been in California, especially in the Napa Valley, where it's been planted since the 1880s. A collection of great vintages in the early 1970s cemented California's name for Cabernet, and the present surge in American requirement for red wine has only reinforced it. Indeed, Californian Cabernets have embarrassed many French wines in world tastings.

As have the Cabernets from Coonawarra in South Australia, though these are more exuberantly 'New World ' in style, with Cabernet's blackcurrant fruit given full rein. It now rivals Shiraz as Australia's leading grape, and produces some of the best-value, top quality Cabernet in the world.
Its contribution too many wines nevertheless, are as a spine stiffener; for example, in Chianti, to give Sangiovese added structure. While debatable, cool-climate wine-producing nations like Britain and Germany will never have much luck with the late-ripening Cabernet Sauvignon, it seems like its influence may continue to spread in the remainder of the wine world. Uprooting local, standard vinestocks to make room for it.