Our intrepid wine columnist tests cabernet francs against pizza and post-midnight solitude

I surprised myself when I realized — in my home office, sipping a glass of Trinch! Bourgueil (Woodland Wine Merchant, $25) — that the prospect of sitting alone with four more bottles of cabernet franc did not really appeal to me. Nothing against the wine — it was everything I wanted an affordable Bourgueil to be: lively, reeking of herbs and cedar, and with the slight chill I had on it, as refreshing as good Beaujolais.

Nothing against the venue, either — I often drink wine while reading or writing in the post-midnight solitude of our home. But a mirthful field test seemed in order. So when I promised cab franc, my thirstiest and most knowledgeable wine friends promised to appear: Sam Stoppelmoor of Union Common, Alex Burch of Kayne Prime, Caitlin Wyatt of Josephine, and Dan Hutchinson of the Wine Shoppe of Green Hills. My wife, Caitlyn, would denerdify the gathering a bit by providing some lay perspective. We grabbed our glasses, I grabbed three bottles of wine, and we met at perhaps the most egalitarian wine-drinking venue in town: the corkage-fee-free DeSano Pizza Bakery (115 16th Ave. S.) in Midtown.

My small lineup included wines from several regions, but didn't come close to representing every place where cabernet franc is grown and vinified. Its spiritual home is in western France, where it figures prominently in the assemblages of some of the stateliest wines of Bordeaux, and where it comprises the majority of much more affordable Loire Valley reds (two of which showed up in our sample). The grape is indispensible in the storied Super Tuscans of Italy, and its expert deployment is on display in California by Robert Sinskey (in his silky POV) and Scott Palazzo (in his lauded Right Bank blend, as well as his varietal cab franc). These are all fantastic wines that would have blown my budget on a bottle or two — I would focus on wines at or below $30.

The first lesson that cab franc teaches is that of nominal overlap in the grape world. Pinot noir is not the same as pinot meunier; syrah is not petite sirah; and cabernet franc is not cabernet sauvignon. Cabernet franc is a versatile, medium-bodied grape that tends to be marked by a generous nose of herbs and pepper — generous enough to illustrate the herbal characteristics to novices not yet practiced at identifying such traits in wine.

"Green" is most often a pejorative used to describe wines made from underripe grapes. But the word is also used to describe the fresh bell-pepper aroma of exemplary cab franc. Another common descriptor is "fresh pencil shavings," which seems silly until an evocative whiff of cab franc transports you back to the hand-cranked sharpener mounted on the wall of your third-grade classroom.

DeSano's efficient servers dropped three steaming pies on our community table, and I cracked our first wine: a bland 100 percent cab franc from Veneto in northern Italy ($13.99 at Grand Cru Wine and Spirit). I pressed Sam for a sound bite about the wine, and it was like asking him to wax poetic about a sandalwood-brown Toyota Camry. The most positive thing he could say for the wine? It's only $13.99. Moving on.

Sadly for it, the innocuous Veneto wine was trounced even in the value competition; it couldn't compete with the $16.99 Puydeval (Wine Shoppe of Green Hills), one of several Jeff Carrel wines that have made Nashville inroads. The man's skill exceeds his humility: He seems to have a fondness for breaking with French tradition and slapping his majisculed name — or a quaint little personal history — prominently on the front label of his wines. Yet the Puydeval blend left every head nodding in agreement: Carrel had deftly achieved a beautiful balance.

Composing nearly 60 percent of the blend, cab franc provided Puydeval's defining fragrance but did not bully the wine; the sun-baked Languedoc syrah and merlot just wouldn't put up with it. The ramped-up richness –— Puydeval's alcohol is 14 percent, well above the 12.5 common to Loire cab franc — bolstered the wine against the piquant Peppadew peppers and salumi that dotted the pizzas before us: foods whose strong flavors might have caused trouble for cooler-climate wines. Indeed, the back label of the Puydeval recommends the wine as a companion to pizza, and the entire panel looked forward to drinking it with the label's other recommended fare: "elaborate burgers," whatever those are.

As the Puydeval dwindled, we moved on to our priciest wine, the cabernet franc from COR Cellars ($29.99 at Grand Cru) from the Horse Heaven Hills appellation in Washington. North American cabernet franc normally boasts more weight than European, and Washington wines can tend toward greenness. The COR did neither. This was a delightful wine — fruity, soft, teeming with red berries.

Yet it lacked the distinctive cabernet-franc characteristics that repel some drinkers but also make an intriguing wine. I thought of the dispute between Geffen Records and Neil Young, after Neil turned in Trans and Everybody's Rockin'. Both were inarguably Neil Young records, but not "representative work" — they didn't sound like Neil Young records. So Geffen sued. We all agreed that COR was a fine wine, though at the moment I felt like it didn't deliver. But this was just cabernet franc following its fickle muse, and I was just the drinker. It made me feel like one of the chastened suits at Geffen who stiffly expected the expected every time.

Our night didn't end with the clearing of the baking sheets and bottles from our table, and I responded to the following morning's hangover with a few days' temperance. But things are now back to normal, and the fifth bottle of cabernet franc, Les Pensées de Pallus (if you can find it in Nashville right now, $27 or so), sits open on my desk as I write this column. It's after midnight, and the only sounds are from my fingers on the keyboard.

This wine was a bit tightly wound and inexpressive when I opened it last night. Tonight, it is all tart raspberries and faint pencil shavings, and its edges have been smoothed by a day in the oxygen. Chinon, and other high-acid Loire cabernet francs, are known as excellent food wines — this one would have been fantastic with one of DeSano's slightly charred mushroom pizzas. But its subtle intrigue and modest alcohol — even its name — make this an excellent wine for late-night contemplation: of wine, of terroir, of expectations, and of the range of cabernet franc.

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