Cabernet Sauvignon

Appears in
Oxford Companion to Wine

By Jancis Robinson

Published 2006

  • About

Cabernet Sauvignon, the world’s most renowned, but relatively recent, red wine grape, that is now the world’s most-planted grape variety, total plantings having more than doubled beween 1990 (when it was the world’s eighth most planted variety) and 2010 to nearly 300,000 ha. From its power base in Bordeaux, where it is almost invariably blended with other grapes, it was taken up in other French wine regions and in much of the Old and New Worlds, where it has been blended to create bordeaux blends and with indigenous varieties and is often used to produce pure varietal wine, especially in warmer climates.