In 1996, after long careers working in Napa’s wine industry, John Skupny and his wife Tracey did something quietly radical: they started a small wine label dedicated exclusively to Cabernet Franc. They named it Lang & Reed, using the two middle names of each of their sons, J Reed Skupny and Jersey Lang Skupny.

These days, especially in California, Cabernet Franc is riding a wave of popularity, with varietal bottlings increasingly common among producers traditionally focused on Cabernet Sauvignon and Bordeaux-style blends, as well as with smaller independent producers interested in exploring alternative grape varieties. Demand for the grape has recently hit new highs in Napa, resulting in prices for Cabernet Franc approaching $12,000 per ton, roughly $3,000 higher than the going rate for top-quality Cabernet Sauvignon.

In the late 1990s, however, only a handful of producers in California bottled the grape on its own with any regularity. 

‘Mostly those producers were throwing it in with their Cabernet Sauvignon just so they could say they were making a Bordeaux blend using the right grapes’, says Skupny. ‘If they ever bottled Franc on its own, it was just because they had some left over after their blending.’

To most people in Napa at the time, the idea seemed questionable at best. 

‘Jeff Morgan, who was writing for the Wine Spectator at the time, called me up after I left Inglenook and asked me what I was going to do with myself’, recalls Skupny. ‘I told him that I was going to start a small wine label focused on Cabernet Franc and there was silence on the line for about thirty seconds. I actually thought we might have been disconnected. And then he said, “You’re going to do what?!”’

Napa wasn’t Skupny’s reference point when it came to Cabernet Franc, however. Instead, it was the Loire and Bordeaux’s right bank, where Cabernet Franc plays a starring role. 

Continue reading this article on JancisRobinson.com.

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Photo at top: Tracey and John Skupny, circa 1996, courtesy of Lang & Reed.