Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot have a parent in common.

Give wine a place in the evening.

As a winery co-founder, I think the industry can ask the wrong first question. “How do we get people interested in wine?” starts with our need for attention. “What would make their evening better?” starts with theirs.

That changes the invitation. It might be a bottle with dinner, a name connected to a place they love or a story that overlaps with the music they follow. Wine has to earn its part in that wider life. I find that a more interesting challenge than persuading everyone to become a wine person.

Vinography → Vinography →

Why a Napa family built around Cabernet Franc.

Producer history · Earlier reading, September 7

Tracey and John Skupny date Lang & Reed’s founding to 1993. The name comes from their sons, J Reed and Jerzy Lang. Their inspiration came from Cabernet Franc in France’s Loire Valley and on Bordeaux’s Right Bank; in Napa, they made that grape the focus of a winery.

The interesting part is the commitment. They chose a grape that often supports a Bordeaux blend and made it the central idea of a Napa winery. More than three decades later, that choice still runs through the family’s account of its work. It is a specific example of the variety within a region so often introduced through Cabernet Sauvignon.

Vinography’s “Napa’s Singular Loire Love Affair” follows this same producer. Its public introduction points readers to a comparison of Lang & Reed with a Loire producer in Alder Yarrow’s Jancis Robinson subscriber column. For the tasting comparison, follow the original; the family’s own account is the place to start with their history.

Lang & Reed → Vinography →

Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot are half-siblings.

Grape history · Research reference, November 18, 2025

Here is the dinner-party detail: Cabernet Franc is a parent of both. Cabernet Sauvignon’s other parent is Sauvignon Blanc; Merlot’s is Magdeleine Noire des Charentes. The Julius Kühn Institute’s grape-variety catalogue records those relationships, and UC Davis recounts the Cabernet Sauvignon discovery in its research coverage.

Two grapes that often anchor a wine list turn out to share a family connection with the one that gets less attention. Knowing that makes Cabernet Franc easier to place—and makes the familiar names a little more interesting, too.

The family tree does not tell you how an individual bottle will taste. Place, growing conditions and winemaking still matter. But the next time Cabernet Franc comes up over dinner, you have something more memorable to share than a score.

Julius Kühn Institute / Vitis International Variety Catalogue → Julius Kühn Institute / Vitis International Variety Catalogue → UC Davis →

Local wine gets a fresh San Francisco headline.

New this week · October 27

“San Francisco’s Local-Wine Complex” is the fresh read for the week. Follow Vinography for its account, and keep the larger question in mind: what makes a wine feel local to the person drinking it?

A nearby vineyard matters. So can the person who introduces the bottle, the restaurant where it becomes a favorite or the friends who bring it back next time. Those relationships are part of how a producer becomes meaningful beyond a label. They are worth caring about as much as another placement on a shelf.

Vinography →

Leave room for the music.

“Hip-Hop Doesn’t Need Wine, But Wine Just Might Need Hip-Hop” is the culture read to finish with. Follow the original for its argument.

The question it opens for me is whether wine can participate in a culture without demanding to be its center. Music already brings people together. So do food and style. A bottle chosen with those interests in mind has somewhere to belong. The industry has more to gain from that curiosity than from telling people how a proper wine evening should look.

Vinography →