Grape varieties

Cabernet Franc: fourth in the vineyard, thirteenth on the shelf

Cabernet Franc is the most planted red in Ontario and the fastest-growing vinifera in the province's top ten. It accounts for about two per cent of VQA table wine sales. It is the red-wine mirror of Vidal, and for much the same reason.

The inversion

In the Agri-Metrics varietal study covering 2018 to 2022, Cabernet Franc ranks fourth in Ontario by acreage — ahead of Merlot, Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon — and it was expanding at about 2.1 per cent a year, the strongest growth of any vinifera in the top ten. In the 2023 LCBO figures its varietal sales came to roughly $2.5 million, about two per cent of VQA table wine, thirteenth on the list and less than a third of what Baco Noir sold.

The explanation is not that the wine is unpopular. It is that most of the crop is never sold under its own name. Red blends accounted for about $13.1 million of VQA table wine sales in 2023 and Cabernet Merlot a further $5.6 million — between them more than an eighth of the category — and Cabernet Franc is the backbone of both. A further share goes to red icewine, where the variety is the province's standard. A varietal sales table measures what is written on labels, not what is in bottles, and for this grape the two diverge further than for any other red. The same gap, from the other direction, is what the Vidal page describes.

Why it is the red Ontario can actually grow

Cabernet Franc is the hardiest of the Bordeaux varieties and it ripens roughly a fortnight ahead of Cabernet Sauvignon. In a province where the season is short at one end and the winter is dangerous at the other, those two properties together are worth more than any quality argument. It is the only Bordeaux red planted in every Ontario growing region rather than confined to the warmest ground, and it is the reason the province has a serious red wine industry at all.

It is not hardy in absolute terms — it is a Vitis vinifera, and the climate page covers what that means in a February cold snap — but it is hardy relative to its alternatives. Brock's VineAlert programme tracks it through each dormant season across the Niagara sub-appellations, and it has been the subject of its own published research on how bud hardiness varies between Ontario sites.

A two-degree climb

Appendix A of Ontario Regulation 406/00 sets varietal Cabernet Franc at a minimum average of 18.0° Brix for the provincial designation and 20.0° for a wine claiming a viticultural area, estate bottling or a named vineyard. That two-degree gap is the widest in the whole appendix, matched only by Chardonnay and exceeded by nothing.

The two grapes have the same problem, which is why they have the same rule. Both will crop generously and reach adequate sugar on almost any Ontario site; both make something worth attaching a place-name to only where the site can push them further. The regulation is drawing the line between the bulk use and the serious one, and it draws it at the same distance for the province's leading white and its leading red.

What it is paid

The 2026 Grape Growers of Ontario schedule puts Cabernet Franc in class 10c at $2,308 a tonne. That is below Cabernet Sauvignon at $2,599, Merlot at $2,614, Pinot Noir at $2,795 and Syrah at $2,982 — so the most planted and most reliable red in Ontario is also the cheapest of the serious vinifera reds. Growers plant it anyway, because it is the one that ripens.

The red icewine grape

Ontario growers were among the first anywhere to make red icewine at scale, and Cabernet Franc is the variety it is made from. The requirements are the same as for white — 32.0° Brix at the press, 35.0° average in the final blend, the fruit picked naturally frozen on the vine — but the agricultural demands are harsher, because a red must hold its skins intact to give colour. Cabernet Franc's relatively thick skins and its hardiness through a long hang make it the only red grown here in quantity that can do it. The icewine page covers the rules and the arithmetic.

Where it grows

Everywhere. Cabernet Franc is planted across the Niagara Peninsula, from the warm Niagara-on-the-Lake plain and the Niagara River sub-appellation through the benches, on the Lake Erie North Shore, and in Prince Edward County, where like the other vinifera it is buried each autumn. Its distribution is the widest of any red in the province, which is the practical meaning of being the hardiest of its family. The regions page covers the appellations.