Buyers Guide to Vintages September 26th Release

John Szabo’s Vintages Guide September 26: A Short History of Grape Fatigue, potential next victims and the Best of Beyond Cabernet

By John Szabo MS, with notes from David Lawrason, Sara d’Amato, Michael Godel, and Megha Jandhyala

Fashion in wine works like a pendulum, and it swings hardest at the grapes that sell best. This week’s Vintages release is themed Beyond Cabernet. The grape that has come under fire in precisely because of its popularity. “Variety is the spice of life,” declares the September 26 Vintages catalogue. “Yes, Cabernet Sauvignon is the world’s most popular red wine, but there’s plenty more out there to discover… Skip the Cab and take a walk on the wild side.”

I thought it would be fun to trace the origins of the ABC movement — anything but Cabernet (and Chardonnay) — for those readers who weren’t there and speculate on which grapes or wine styles might be in the crosshairs of the wine trade next. For those simply interested in what to buy, cabernet or otherwise, we have an ultra-rare WineAlign Crü quintuple alignment on a Spanish white, along with triple alignment on wines from Italy and Canada. There are plenty of doubles in the mix.

Last week I attended a California Wine Institute-sponsored gathering of about 120 sommeliers (mostly) from Canada, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica and the U.S. in New York City. I accepted the invitation in August, when it seemed U.S. wines would be returning imminently to Ontario shelves. I’m glad I went, if only to reconnect with friends and producers (and enjoy fine California wines) and sit in on a very timely and thought-provoking panel discussion entitled, Rebuilding Demand: Selling and Communicating Wine in a Changing World. I recap the main points of the session here. If you have anything to do with selling, serving or communicating about wine, it’s worth a read.

Anything But Cabernet (and Chardonnay): A Short History of Grape Fatigue

Fashion in wine works like a pendulum, and it swings hardest at the grapes that sell best. This is especially true within the tight circles of the wine trade, where often the more obscure a grape is considered the better. The ubiquity and familiarity of a small handful of grapes that make up the majority of sales breeds, as they say, contempt. At a recent panel discussion about the state of wine held in New York City last week, one of the speakers (a master sommelier), lamented that at one of the hyper Italian wine-focused concepts he oversees, the top selling wine is a New Zealand sauvignon blanc. “You have to meet the consumer where they are,” he said, with a notable twinge of exasperation, but also with a confident and matter-of-fact demeanour, knowing that he is earning money for his employer. Looking back in time, many readers will remember when it was chardonnay and cabernet that caused a sommelier’s eyes to roll, when ABC — anything but cabernet (and chardonnay) — was a thing. But given Vintages thematic this week — Beyond Cabernet — I suppose it still is a thing.

The Cabernet revolt came first

The acronym is usually credited to Randall Grahm of Bonny Doon Vineyard. In the 1980s, California’s premium wine meant cabernet sauvignon (and largely still does) and, to a lesser extent, Chardonnay. Grahm’s “Anything But Cabernet” was a jab at that orthodoxy. He released Le Cigare Volant, his homage to Châteauneuf-du-Pape, in 1986. In 1989 he appeared on the cover of Wine Spectator in a blue polyester costume as “The Rhône Ranger,” and the name stuck to him and to a whole group of producers working with syrah, grenache, mourvèdre, roussanne and viognier. His aim was diversity, not boycott. California had far more to offer than a Bordeaux and a Burgundy grape planted everywhere. On that point he was right.

Then Chardonnay became the punchline

The chardonnay backlash had different roots. It was about taste, not ideology. Through the late 1980s and 1990s, the New World turned the grape into a formula. Producers picked very ripe fruit and ran full malolactic fermentation, which gave the wine its famous buttery character. Then they added plenty of new oak, often as staves or chips. Some mass-market versions also kept a little residual sugar to round things off. The result was high in alcohol, low in acidity, tasted of vanilla and popcorn, and was tiring by the second glass.

Frank Prial of The New York Times is usually credited with naming the ABC mood in print in the mid-1990s, as a reaction to big California chardonnay. In Britain, the target was cheap, ripe, oak-flavoured Australian chardonnay. Pop culture did the rest. Oz Clarke later said: “Before Bridget Jones, chardonnay was really sexy. After, people said, ‘God, not in my bar.’” Jancis Robinson noted that “overt oakiness, so fashionable towards the end of the last century, is way out of fashion,” and that the stereotypical 1990s Meursault was “buttery,” even in Burgundy.

The complaint was fair. But the grape was never the problem. As I wrote in my 2019 i4C Buyers’ Guide for WineAlign, chardonnay is “a genetically superior variety that makes excellent wine.” The problem was the recipe. A wine that tastes the same from Sonoma to South Australia expresses nothing but the cellar that made it.

What it did to sales

The commercial effect was real but smaller than the headlines suggested. In the UK, a TNS survey reported by Decanter in 2008 found 200,000 fewer shoppers buying chardonnay over 12 months, a 3% drop in market penetration. Even then, commentators struggled to separate fashion from other factors like drought-driven supply problems in Australia. The clear winners were Marlborough sauvignon blanc and Italian pinot grigio. Both were crisp, unoaked and easy to explain, which made them the ideal anti-chardonnays for their time. Unoaked chardonnay became a category of its own, which amounted to the grape apologizing for itself.

In North America, chardonnay never lost its place at the top of the white-wine market. People said “anything but” and kept buying it anyway. The lasting damage was to its image, not its volume.

The rehabilitation

The real response came from producers. Burgundy dialled back the new oak. Australia overcorrected into lean, tightly wound wines built on early picking, which Robinson described as “so tart and lean that some became positively austere.” In Canada, the International Cool Climate Chardonnay Celebration (i4C), launched in Niagara in 2011, built a whole argument around latitude, altitude and acidity. I spent years at WineAlign, starting with the 2012 “Cool Chardonnay Boot Camp,” trying to convince readers that ABC was aimed at a style, not a variety. Most of the sommeliers who would have said “ABC” in 2000 happily pour chardonnay from Chablis, Jura and Niagara by the glass without a second thought.

Who’s next?

The pattern is predictable: A grape succeeds, gets made to a formula, turns into a cliché, and then provokes a backlash. A few candidates:

Marlborough sauvignon blanc. It was the first beneficiary of ABC and now shows all the same symptoms: huge volumes, a single recognizable style, and a supermarket identity. “Anything But Sauvignon” is already quietly under way on wine lists.
Pale Provence-style rosé. A colour masquerading as a wine style. When the main sales pitch is how pale the wine looks, the backlash is built in.
Prosecco and pinot grigio. These were the neutral alternatives. Neutrality eventually runs out of goodwill.
Heavy-handed “natural” wine. Once volatility and mousiness become house styles rather than flaws the winemaker is working around, drinkers will tire of them.
Reductive “struck-match” chardonnay. This is the irony. The flinty, sulphide-driven style that rescued Chardonnay is becoming a recipe of its own. Give it 10 years and someone will coin a new acronym for the backlash.

What do you think? If you have a prediction of what the next “anything but…” movement might be, please drop us a line in the comments.

The lesson from both ABCs is the same. Drinkers don’t tire of grapes. They tire of sameness. Varieties that express where they’re grown tend to survive the swings of fashion.

As for our top picks this week, I’d draw your attention to a few wines with multiple alignment. The standout of the release is the Bodegas Merayo Godello 2024 from Bierzo ($20.55), recommended by all five WineAlign critics. Sara points to its source, “old, head-pruned godello vines planted at 600 metres in Bierzo,” and her advice is blunt. “Drink it young, or better yet, right away,” she says. Michael, who knows the bodega’s centenary-vine “La Gineta” bottling, put it simply: “A good godello will always be your friend.” David was drawn to its “bright, clean, sub-tropical nose of green banana and honeydew melon with pretty florals.” He concluded: “I like its restraint and purity.” Megha called it “clean and uncluttered, flavourful and balanced,” a wine “sure to please most palates.” I filed it among the trade’s insider grapes — “obscure enough to be cool, but broadly likeable enough to recommend with low risk” — with “a good amount of wine here for the money.”

Two more whites earned triple alignment. The Aquilaia Vermentino 2025 from Tuscany’s Maremma ($21.95) struck David as “a surprisingly rich yet still spry example with a lifted nose of fresh mint, lemongrass and green apple.” Megha found it “pleasantly fleshy and rounded, yet supple and spry,” and I flagged it as “a sharp wine for seafood over the near term.”

Closer to home, only 63 cases were made of the Thirty Bench Small Lot Riesling Wood Post Vineyard 2024 ($28.95). Michael wondered “how a riesling as rare and unique as this could cost a mere $28.95” and foresees “15-plus years of incremental aging ahead.” David summed it up in four words: “Great nerve and finesse.” Megha noted that “intense acidity and refreshing bitterness balance sweetness,” and would pour it with Javaher Polow or Sabzi Polo served with fish.

As for the release theme, my pick is a qualified “Beyond Cabernet” wine: the Cave Spring Estate Grown Cabernet Franc 2024 ($24.95). It’s qualified because franc is still a cabernet, and a parent of the more famous sauvignon at that. In Ontario, though, “the shadow is cast the other way.” It’s a “fresh and fine, balanced and juicy example” with “fine, dusty tannins and succulent acids,” free of both green pyrazines and overripe notes.

On the other side of the argument, I was the only WineAlign critic to recommend the Xanadu Circa 77 Cabernet Sauvignon 2023 from Margaret River ($18.95). For me, it’s a solid reason not to go beyond cabernet at all: “well-balanced, fruity, varietally correct,” with wide appeal, and hard to beat under $20. If there’s a lesson in it, it’s the same as the ABC story: drinkers tire of sameness, not grapes.

Buyer’s Guide Vintages September 26: White, Rosé & Sparkling

Lacheteau La Confluence Sauvignon Blanc 2024, Loire, France
$13.95, Hektars Agence Inc.
David Lawrason – A bargain price for a zesty, intense Loire sauvignon. No great structure or depth, and there is a touch of sulphur flint, but it offers classic grapefruit, lime and scallion, with some guava. It is light, a bit thin and tender, with high acid and some balancing sweetness. Chill well.

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