Cabernet Franc of my dreams

July 23, 2010 posted by Louis Nel

The other night I had a most amazing dream, dreaming of a Cabernet Franc that just blew me away. There are a few local (South Africa) examples that blow your socks off, but then there are a dozen ugly Betties. What makes this variety so fickle, with a Jekyll and Hyde personality that sometimes makes you smile, and other times cringe?

Cabernet Franc in its best form is the reason Cheval blanc is amazing, and it is one of the parents of Cabernet Sauvignon. From noble descent yes, but where do the white trash, green and yucky traits come from?

Cabernet Franc has two weaknesses in its armor and one being its susceptibility to virus infection. Cabernet Franc has often been used as an indicator plant to test for the presence of virus, and this leads to vineyards that once performed amazingly in their youth, to become amazingly bad by the time they reach their teens. One vineyard I can remember was a five star winner in Wine Magazine in its youth, and when it was about 15 years old it was one of the worst blocks on the farm. By then another Cabernet Franc vineyard that was still young became the crown prince of this beautiful piece of terroir.

The other chink in its armor is its tendency to produce a huge amount of green flavours. Once green flavours enter a cellar, it will survive a nuclear attack with only the cockroaches to keep it company. It is just about impossible to get rid of. The best way to prevent greenness is to follow vineyard practices that prevent green flavours. One of the few analysis that seems to correlate with greenness is malic acid and this is also correlated with very dense canopies. There is actually a direct relationship between the amount of leave layers over a bunch and green flavours. The simplest way to prevent greenness in the cellar is to error on the high side with sugar ripeness when picking, to prevent dense canopies, and to expose of bunches as much as possible.

To say that you can do nothing in the cellar to combat greenness is a bit of a stretch, but for all practical purposes it is true. Many ways have been described to bring down greenness in the cellar, but the exact impact you will have to determine yourself. Besides these methods, that I will describe in another post some time, the only treatment that is suppose to help is basically cooking the wine, which is simply not on.

Interesting enough, the Asian Lady Beetle (Ladybug) that has caused lots of havoc overseas, produces exactly the green flavours in wine that we want to avoid. Hopefully research to combat the flavour induced by the ladybugs, might just give us the answer to fixing green flavours in wine.

Louis Nel is the owner and winemaker of Louis wines in South Africa.

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3 Responses to “Cabernet Franc of my dreams”

michael simons Says:
July 29th, 2010 at 10:09 pm
As one who has two barrels that are reminescent of Recola throat lozenges, I am most interested in how to bring down this excess of eucalyptus. So hopefully, you will write about your remedies sooner rather than later. The wines have an intense cherry core, so basically I am producing cherry cough syrup.
Jeff Del Nin Says:
August 26th, 2010 at 10:39 pm
Having made some very highly regarded cab franc, I can say that canopy management and deficit irrigation are key components. It seems to help that the vines grown on sandy soils, where vigour can be controlled easily. In sandy soils, you have to fight to increase vigour, not the other way around.

I have had only one seriously green batch of Cab Sauv. It was strong and green like dill pickles, but I totally eliminated the perception of green character by loading up with M+ french oak from good cooperages. After 6 months, the green character cannot be detected by anyone who tastes the wine, allowing me to down shift the oak back to normal levels. Quite a transformation indeed.
The strongest tool a winemaker has to combat green characters in the cellar is heavier toasted oak, applied with care and precision.
Mark Stanley Says:
September 24th, 2010 at 1:56 am
I am a winemaker from Washington State USA. The typicity here is for Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc to have some vegetal characteristics unless the grapes are well ripened, and good canopy management is practiced. We end up with very ripe fruit with high pH numbers often.
Last year 2009 I sourced some Cab Franc & Merlot from a good vineyard with the intention of making a right bank style wine. With the intention to make a structural Merlot, I used MT yeast by Martin Viallatte. That turned out well. I wanted to get that perfumey character out of the Franc. One fermenter was inoculated with F33 yeast, and another allowed to go indigenous. As far as I can tell, the F33 is a Bordeaux isolate, possibly from the right bank. Someone more familiar with Cab Franc suggested that I do a cooler ferment–topping out at 82 F. [28 C.] The wine turned out fine, but I did not get that perfuminess. I know it can be done here having tasted it. Any tips? Has anyone worked with MT or F33?

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