This week I’ll be writing about Cabernet Franc. There are 52 different varieties of grapes that I want to grow, (when I have my land) Copper Grapes. I know, I know. Most vineyards have 5 or 6 grapes. Most wine purveyors sell the wines that are the highest acclaimed. Some vineyards may have as many as 12 different varietals and focus on blends. But, I want to help people figure out what our SoCal appellation does best. I want to give Ventura and L.A. Counties an identity. To do that, I have to find out which grape grows best in SoCal. There are more than 6000 varieties of grapes in the world. I want to help people figure out what is best for their own SoCal backyard. For that, I need to grow a variety of different wine grapes. Many people plant grapes based on what the public knows instead of what is best for the location or soil. But the location of the land that I want has good visibility and with a captive audience, I can sell the wines and not be dependent upon wine club memberships or distributors. Imagine a place of Viti-Tourism, where people learn about more obscure grapes that do well in SoCal. With 52 weeks in a year, I can spend a week talking about each unique grape. Each day will have a variety of content; once a week I’ll talk about where you can find these grapes growing and the wines that are most expressive of the grape. I’ll include maps and climate info so you can see where the grapes do well in similar climate. Other days I’ll have great pairing ideas with recipes and fun trivia, quotes, paintings where you see the wine grapes and I’ll reference songs and movies (with wine in them) for you to check out.
I chose to start with Cabernet Franc because it’s the king of grapes. It’s the father of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Carmenere. Many winos talk about Cabernet Franc’s flavor profile, but I’ve never found descriptions accurate when comparing to other Cabernet Francs grown in SoCal. I have read a lot of different timelines of when it originated. I believe it originated much earlier than when other wine experts say. Remember DNA analysis of grapes just started in 1998. In Chile, people thought they were planting Merlot, when after analysis, it turned out to be Carmenere. There’s so much to discover.
The consensus is that it did originate in the warm Basque region bordering Southern France and Navarre, Spain. If it’s warm there, with coastal influence, why would people plant it elsewhere? Well, Cabernet Franc can handle it. It can handle pretty much any soil, any climate, any amount of rainfall and withstand most diseases that you can throw at it. Clones play a part in choosing the exact strand of Cabernet Franc to plant. Most clones come from Loire Valley, a cooler climate where it has earned high acclaim. However, through UC Davis, there are clones that come to us from Italy (I’m guessing these have a 20 year patent because they require permission to grow them). There are specific clones that do well in the Tuscan soils where warm Mediterranean Super Tuscans have up to 20% Cabernet Franc to make some of the blends (depending upon the house). Give me a Bolgheri (often a blend of a Sangiovese, Cab Franc and occasionally a touch of Montepulciano) and I’m a happy camper. I’d take that over a Napa Cult Cabernet Sauvignon any day.
A brilliant attribute of UC Davis Viticulture is that they have specifically given Cabernet Franc microshoot therapy. Lamens terms – okay so us humans get colds and flus…no biggie, right? (Exception being 2019-2020). Well, grapes have about 60 different grape diseases. Plants tell us when something is wrong. Much the way we get a runny nose, plants will sometimes have a pale lemon green appearance instead of dark veridian green and in the case of Cabernet Franc, is prone to leaf roll. When Cabernet Franc is sick, the tips of the leaves roll in. UC Davis has genetically modified it so that it won’t get sick so easily and leaves won’t roll. When it rolls, photosynthesis is limited and then there’s less of the good stuff getting to the grape. It’s much kin to us getting The Shot. Except, I trust UC Davis a lot more with grape vines (since they’ve been in the viticulture business for more than 130 years), than I do our government with vaccines.
But I digress. Cabernet Franc was one of the first grapes allowed in the Bordeaux region. In France, the grapes have to be indigenes to a region to be allowed in that region. You can’t just grow whatever you want wherever you want unless you’re in Southern France and calling the wine an IGP (Indication Geographique Protegee) meaning that the wine has quality and meets the European Standards but doesn’t fit into any region’s box or labeling criteria.
In the 1600’s Cardinal Richelieu brought the Cabernet Franc cuttings to Loire Valley, a cool climate. I’m big into history, so I’m going to go off tangent for a moment…. Cardinal Richelieu was a prominent person in his day. In some places he was well liked for seeking to restrain the power of nobility and the monarchy…kind of like a Republican wanting a smaller government. But Richelieu also made it possible that churches were exempt from taxes. So, Alexander Hamilton wouldn’t have liked him. But the Pope thought he was the bee’s knees. (The Pope probably had different metaphors.) This Richelieu dude was well travelled and brought those Cabernet Franc cuttings to a few places. Whether he brought Cabernet Franc to Rome or it happened earlier or later, it’s hard to figure. Cabernet Franc was somewhat wiped out in many places during Phylloxera. Going back to Julius Caesar, when Julius Caesar conquered Gaul (part of Modern day France that was filled with Barbarians- I know it’s hard to image a French person and Barbarian in the same sentence), he brought cuttings back to Rome and gave the cuttings to the people. We don’t know which cuttings he brought back but many people around Rome don’t know what’s growing in their own vineyards. The mentality of the Italian vineyard owners is very different from the French. They keep 80% Sangiovese, their indigenous grape, but the rest is a hodge podge. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if we found other children of Cabernet Franc. Grapes mutate. Although grapes are asexual (self-pollinating) they need a little help from bees for even pollination and veraison. Cabernet Franc seems to have more kids (crossings) than most grapes out there. There are more than 2000 different varieties of grape growing in Italy, west of the Apennines Mountains. I’m sure time will tell that Cab Franc has been there longer than the last 50 years when people started referring to these wines as Super Tuscans.
Here’s the hitch in the get-along. Some people say that Cabernet Franc was named after King Francis I (1494-1547) and thus concluded that’s when he was conceived. That may be how it got its name, but I dare say he’s been around a lot longer. I’m guessing for a while, they must have just called it “hey you”. Here’s why I think it’s not as old as dirt but pretty up there… It’s a warm climate grape that people simply planted in cooler climates. Why do you ask? Oh I’m so glad you asked. (I really hope someone’s reading this so I don’t have to call you Sybil.) Cabernet Franc needs a super long growing season. It’s the last grape that has flower onset and the last grape to develop berries and the last one to be ripe. In fact, sometimes, if there’s been a summer rain or early fall rain, sometimes it needs hanging time in the sun till mid October or end of October. In 2011, when Iceland had that Super Volcano and caused summer rains throughout the world, Cab Franc wasn’t ready until November. You have to harvest your grapes before the first frost. If the first frost is early October, your crop is ruined. If you know that there’s going to be a frost, you harvest your grapes early. When you harvest your grapes early and the seeds are still green, it throws the acid off and gives off more pepper, green bell pepper and tomato leaf notes. Yummy? Not! So it had to be warm when this grape travelled to different places. They wouldn’t have taken tomato leaf soup in an amphora and said, “Taste this, it’s great!” That’s a horse that wouldn’t have gotten out of the gates, and yet, it is well travelled. It wasn’t warm in the 1400’s or 1500’s. They had a few warm decades, but frequently, wars were lost because the legions couldn’t travel in the muck in their heavy armor. The River Thames had years when it would freeze for 14 weeks and then flood. They had a lot of summer rains and the time period is often referred to as a “Little Ice Age”. Imagine years without a warm summer. And yet, that describes the 1300’s through the 1600’s. Cabernet Franc wouldn’t have been popular and people wouldn’t have replanted it. Granted, people often mixed wine with spices and honey Mead and then diluted it with water. Yet, the 1400’s is the timeline that many people believe it was conceived. But Cabernet Franc was well travelled and different people have different flavor profiles for it.
Let’s go back further to Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine….my favorite queen in history (no offense to the dearly departed Queen Elizabeth II, that was a remarkable woman). Duchess Eleanor (1122-1204) inherited Aquataine when her father passed, the region we all know and love as Bordeaux). But back then, women didn’t typically own land. So, she married the man who would become King Louis VII, making her Queen Eleanor. (Between you and me, she married down). She owned more land and was smarter than her spouse. She went to Rome a few times, bringing her wine and grape cuttings to the Pope to ask for an annulment. When Louis VII was upset that she only had female heirs, it was finally he who wanted a divorce. The Pope then granted the annulment and allowed that her lands be returned to her. Imagine having the Pope as your divorce lawyer, you get what was equal to 1/5 of present-day France. Best divorce settlement in history! But that made her a target and she got kidnapped by some guy who wanted to lay claim to her land. She sought the aid of her would be second husband, the future King Henry II of England. For many years after her death, the two countries fought over the land and whether it should be part of England or part of France. But the two countries had one thing in common. They were both drinking Bordeaux (wine from the land between the waters) because that’s what she brought to both countries. Now the region Bordeaux didn’t get its official wine classification until 1855 when Emperor Napoleon III decreed it. But prior, the people still called it the wine from the land between the waters. We don’t know for certain what grapes were growing in Bordeaux at that time, but Cabernet Sauvignon wasn’t conceived until sometime in the 1600’s. (Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc had a baby in Bordeaux and that baby was named Cabernet Sauvignon. Okay, remember I said that they were asexual? Well, a bird or bee visited the flowers of both grapes and voila…or it could have been the wind causing the pollen to float into the air, or maybe they hugged in that special way ;).) Later, the British (not wanting to sound French) added spices to Bordeaux and called it Claret. Bordeaux became well-travelled, so much so that even today, people think that it must be the best wine in all of the world. But the grape that was originally well-travelled, was not Cabernet Sauvignon, but his dad, Cabernet Franc. (I know grapes don’t have pronouns – but I find that a little personification helps to understand a grape’s attributes. Sure, a grape can be either strong or delicate, but I want an image to come to the mind of the viewer of Cab Franc as all male gigolo. A woman can’t be a gigolo. Thus, we’re using he/him to describe Cab Franc, even though a flower has both parts, as opposed to humans which are typically either or. I know, confusing huh?) Being that Cabernet Franc is the first grape that comes to mind when we think of the origins of the grapes of Bordeaux, and that Queen Eleanor brought Bordeaux throughout her travels and as far as what would become Israel during the Crusades, it must have been Cabernet Franc that she brought. There’s no other grape that was as well travelled. No other grape survives so many climates and mutates with the climates. And with so many grapes sharing DNA with Cab Franc and not necessarily others, it just takes the test of time to prove me right or wrong or maybe there’s a Grandpa X out there.
Being that Cabernet Franc is of utmost importance on the world stage and that you hardly ever see it on the wine aisle, it’s the perfect grape to start with. Tomorrow, I’ll chat more about the attributes of the very first King of Kings.
