'Cabernet Sauvigon' Grapevine Plants

Vitis vinifera 'Cabernet Sauvignon' Grapevine Plants

This world-famous claret grape is small, with a potent flavour and thick skin. It's not good for eating fresh, but with a little sweetener makes a refreshing juice if you don't want to make wine.

It can be kept in check with judicious pruning, so is suitable for small gardens or courtyards.

Browse our full range of soft fruit, or our climbing plants.

Features:

• Large deciduous healthy climber
• Bunches of black grapes in autumn
• Famous wine variety.
• Size: To 8m x 3m
• Grow under cover
• Needs support

Growing 'Cabernet Sauvignon' Grapevines

Full sun is essential for the best crops. The microclimate beside a warm, sunny wall is ideal. Outside the warmest parts of the South West, it will only crop reliably in a greenhouse; you can plant it with the roots outside.

Fertile, well-drained but moist during the growing season, alkaline to neutral soil.

It will need a framework, trellis or wire support, quickly growing to fill a space 8m x 2.5m. It can be pruned in mid-winter to create a framework and again in mid-summer if required.

In Your Garden Design

If you are prepared to sacrifice the small, dark-purple fruits, which may not ripen in time outdoors, you could grow the vine for its decorative qualities alone, including the leaves, which colour beautifully in autumn and act as a foil to other reddish plants such as cordyline, crocosmia and salvia. Otherwise, a large greenhouse is the place for it.

Did You Know?

This is the first grape variety to have had its genome sequenced (in 2016), but DNA studies have been carried out on it since the 1990s. In 1996, one of the world's most popular varieties for the production of red wine was determined to be most likely a hybrid of Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc, grown in the Bordeaux region since at least the 17th century (the clue was in the name all along).

How to plant Vitis vinifera Cabernet Sauvigon:

Plant in a deep hole, backfilled with a humus rich compost, to which has been added a handful of bonemeal and some Root Grow, just planting to the pot level.

Firm and water in well and keep watering regularly while the plant matures. It will need some wires or a trellis as support.

Look out for: Resistant to Phylloxera and will cause very few problems. The foliage and sap are a slight irritant.