Cabernet Sauvignon
Bordeaux, France
The world's most widely recognized red grape, a natural crossing from 17th-century Bordeaux prized for its structure, deep color, and ability to age for decades.
Sensory profile
Characteristics
Flavor & aroma
At a glance
Production facts
Prevalence
Widely planted
Climate
Warm climate
Ripening
Late season
Wine styles
Still
Where it's grown
Geography
Shaded areas are the state, province or département(s) containing each region, so they run wider than the appellations themselves.
France
Bordeaux (Médoc)
The grape's classic home, forming the backbone of the Left Bank's most celebrated blends.
United States of America
Napa Valley
Rich, powerful, often higher-alcohol expressions that made Napa's global reputation.
Chile
Maipo Valley
Structured, often eucalyptus-tinged wines from one of Chile's oldest wine regions.
Australia
Coonawarra
Distinctive terra rossa soils produce structured, mint-and-blackcurrant reds.
Italy
Bolgheri (Tuscany)
The backbone of Bolgheri's blends, including Sassicaia, on a coast where it was first planted in the 1940s.
Background
Origin & History
Cabernet Sauvignon arose as a natural crossing of Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc sometime in 17th-century southwestern France, most likely in Bordeaux, where growers would have noticed a distinctive new vine growing alongside its two unrelated-looking parents. For centuries its exact origins remained a matter of ampelographic speculation, finally resolved by DNA analysis conducted by Carole Meredith's team at UC Davis in 1997.
Thick-skinned and late-ripening, the grape rose to prominence in the gravelly soils of Bordeaux's Left Bank — Pauillac, Margaux, Saint-Julien — where it forms the backbone of the region's most celebrated, age-worthy blends. Twentieth-century plantings in California's Napa Valley, followed by Australia's Coonawarra, Chile's Maipo Valley, and vineyards across the globe, transformed it from a Bordeaux specialty into the most widely planted premium red wine grape on Earth.
Lineage
Family tree
Ancestry above, descendants below. Click a related grape to explore its own lineage.