The patriarch. Cabernet Franc came north from the Basque foothills — likely with pilgrims returning from Compostela — and was established in the Libournais, as "Bouchet", by the seventeenth century. Both Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot are its children, which makes most of Bordeaux, in a real sense, its descendance.
Earlier-ripening and gentler than its famous son, it trades power for perfume: raspberry, violet, a cool graphite line. On the limestone of Saint-Émilion it becomes serious and long-lived — the great wines of Cheval Blanc and Ausone lean on it — and everywhere it is the blender's aromatic top note.