Cabernet Franc

Cabernet Franc is the parent of Cabernet Sauvignon — crossed naturally with Sauvignon Blanc in south-west France — and it is also a parent of Merlot and Carménère. For a grape with that much influence it remains oddly underappreciated.

It ripens earlier than Cabernet Sauvignon and tolerates cooler, damper conditions, which is why it succeeds in the Loire where its more famous offspring would struggle. Chinon, Bourgueil and Saumur-Champigny are its heartland, producing medium-bodied reds with raspberry, redcurrant and violet over a distinct green, leafy, graphite-and-pencil-shaving character.

That green note comes from methoxypyrazines, the same compounds that give Sauvignon Blanc its blackcurrant-leaf aroma. Underripe Cabernet Franc tastes aggressively of green pepper, which is the fault the grape is best known for; properly ripe, the same compound reads as an attractive leafy, herbal lift.

In Bordeaux it is the third grape, planted as insurance against a cold vintage and valued for the aromatic lift it gives a blend. On the Right Bank it plays a much larger role, and Château Cheval Blanc in Saint-Émilion is famously more than half Cabernet Franc.

It has found real success on the cool limestone of Ontario's Niagara Peninsula, in New York's Finger Lakes, and increasingly in northern Italy and Virginia.

The wines are lighter and fresher than Cabernet Sauvignon, with finer tannin, and they are typically better value.

Its reputation suffers from a genuine fault and a false one. The genuine fault is underripeness, which produces an aggressive green-pepper character that many drinkers find unpleasant and which was common when the grape was planted in sites too cool for it. The false one is the assumption that it is simply a lesser Cabernet Sauvignon, when it is a distinct variety with a lighter body, finer tannin and a floral, graphite-scented profile that its offspring does not have.

In the Loire it is nearly always unblended, and the wines from Chinon's limestone and Bourgueil's gravel are the reference points. Those wines age surprisingly well, with the best holding twenty years and developing tobacco, dried rose and forest floor.

It is also increasingly the answer for cool-climate regions that want a serious red and cannot ripen Cabernet Sauvignon — which is why it has taken hold in Ontario, the Finger Lakes, Virginia and parts of northern Italy.