Cabernet Franc Offers Life's Most Sublime and Quotidian Pleasures

Unconvinced? Steven Mirassou is determined to show you why—and how

The ROCK. Credit: Steven Mirassou

Cabernet Franc is the Pedro Pascal of grapes.

Once a respected go-to player toasted for its supporting role in red blends, Cabernet Franc became a cultural phenomenon.

This once-niche grape actually commands higher prices than Cabernet Sauvignon in Napa, with the grape selling on average more than any other grape, at $11,332 per ton an acre, versus runner-up Cabernet Sauvignon’s average of $9,146 per ton. (Granted, there are about 24,839 acres of Sauvignon, and just 1,270 acres of Franc, making it rarer and perhaps by definition, more desirable).

But Why?

The rarity factor will only get you so far. Napa also has Koshu, Ribolla Gialla, Charbono, and Grignolino under vine, and while they all have a hardcore following of vintners, you don’t see multiple baller luxury bottles of these spectacular, hard-to-find grapes emerging.

What makes Cabernet Franc so popular is, at least in part, is that it is both familiar and mysterious. And it meets the market it where its palate is.

“Cabernet Franc is so much more interesting and delicious than Cabernet Sauvignon,” says Steven Mirassou, sixth generation winemaker at Steven Kent Winery, which has focused on elevating Cabernet Franc in Livermore and beyond for 20+ years. “I think the Livermore Valley is the place for Cab Franc. If history bears out the way I hope it does, Steven Kent will have helped create an identity and a style for the grape that is a confluence of terroir and the desire for purity and varietal self-expression.”

That expression, is the pinch-hit.

Because compared to most other reds—especially ones grown in sunny California, home to oak-loving winemakers—Cabernet Franc is inherently lighter, more aromatic, and lower in alcohol, with higher acidity. Plus, it appeals to the growing audience of wine enthusiasts who want to try something different, but not completely unfamiliar.

And while Mirassou is clearly on (maybe even the captain of) team Livermore, he is delighted to see how winemakers and consumers are embracing Cabernet Franc with ever-increasing enthusiasm.

“I love the fact that New York State is trying to codify Cabernet Franc,” Mirassou says, referring to the Cab Franc Forward movement, which wine lovers, makers, and writers (including this one) are equally excited to see. “I’m entranced by the amazing examples of Cab Franc from France, Italy, Hungary, South America and other areas. The world is too short on examples of beauty, and the proliferation of Cabernet Franc helps to equilibrate this dearth.”

While the rise in Cabernet Franc’s popularity has caused prices to skyrocket in areas like Napa, Mirassou sees mainstay regions—like the Loire Valley and the Livermore Valley—as offering an “aesthetic upside that far outstrips its price point.”

Wine as Poetry

“Wine is bottled poetry,” as Robert Louis Stevenson so memorably told us, and, in Mirassou’s mind, its kind of ephemeral transcendence is exactly what the world needs right now.

Mirassou sees the current downturn in wine sales as a distinct opportunity for authentic winemakers, regions, and wines.

“We are not purveyors of drink,” he sys. “We are on the front lines in a battle to provide succor and care. We are in the hospitality business, and we are here to make life a little better, to forge connections that are beyond slaking thirst—though there is great value in that.”

Giving people a reason to care about wine, and connect with growers and winemakers, is what gets him—and his children, and the generations of Mirassous who preceded them—up in the morning.

“We need to connect this magical things we make, this product of history and hope, toil and exultation, to the desire to make life a little bit more delicious,” he says. “There is no consumer product, with more depth and promise, at once sublime and quotidian, more at the mercy of good weather and good judgment, than wine.”

An Elemental Spin on Cabernet Franc

The “desire to dive as deeply into the emotional and aesthetic pool to which Cabernet Franc is so inevitably an heir,” inspired Mirassou to launch The Elements Series.

“I see Cab Franc the same way that great painters see fields of sunflowers or block stone that hide the inevitability within,” Mirassou says. “This variety is an encompassing canvas that contains everything worth experiencing about wine. There is no margin, and everything is possible.”

Steven Kent’s entire production is about 4,000, and The Elements Series represents a fraction of that.

The latest iteration—which is releasing now, vintage 2024—was made from a new vineyard in the Valley. Morgensen Family Vineyard is planted primarily to the Loire Valley 214 clone, and this release marks the first time this clone has been used in Mirassou’s wines.

The goal of the line is to explore the range of Cabernet Franc made from one grape, one clone, one vineyard, aged in four different kinds of vessels, each of which tease out different characteristics. Drinking through the line is like listening to a song performed by four different bands.

As Mirassou notes, “all of the individual parts of The Elements Series glow with undeniable Cab Franc aromatics and flavors, and they are also wrapped up in a scaffolded structure that supports the grape’s brightness and “herbal immanence.”

The wines are all aged for 12 months in stainless steel, concrete, a neutral French oak barrel, and a combination of the three.

The release is small, available primarily in Steven Kent’s tasting room. One wine—ROCK—will be available at select restaurants and independent wine stores.

“STEEL is a naive wine in a way,” Mirassou says. “It so naturally inhabits its inherent contours that it can’t even conceive of the concept of adulteration.”

The ROCK, meanwhile, lifts the purity of the steel, and weaves it into the other aromas and flavors, creating a narrative of flavor.

“It brings to bear echoes of the tuffeau, of its spiritual home in the Loire, and transmutes that wonderfully intractable quality in the wine’s feel,” Mirassou says. “WOOD is the most California-esque iteration of the Cab Franc.”

The oak is neutral, but a sense of roundness can be felt, with full-bodied flavors singing from the glass.

ELEMENTS, the blend, is the most complex, and arguably, compelling.

“It is at once stolid and playful, ebullient and thoughtful,” Mirassou says. “Not the wine furthest on the margins, it is, especially over time, the wine that will show Cab Franc at its most mysterious and beautiful.”

Mystery, beauty, good taste. All of the Elements for pleasure, in a glass.