Kanonkop Kadette Cabernet Sauvignon

Cabernet Sauvignon is the grape on this bottle, and our grape research describes it as a red variety grown across many regions, one that often makes firmly built wines and turns up in red blends. For taste, that research points to black currant, cherry and plum, with noticeable tannin and possible spice from oak, and it notes that ripeness, climate and winemaking can leave a Cabernet lean and herbal in style or broad and fruit-led. Kanonkop says four generations of one family have held its Stellenbosch estate, and it has carried the Kanonkop name on its wines since 1973. Regional guides place Stellenbosch between mountain ranges and the ocean side of the Cape, with warm dry summers, winter rain, and sea air that cools the more exposed vineyards; they add that the district covers varied slopes and wards, enough that pinning the exact character of the place takes the specific ward or producer.

We do not have a shopper rating for this wine. If you would rather choose a Cabernet by its grape and its origin than by a score, this bottle asks you to do exactly that. In our September 2026 checks its price ranged from $32.99 to $39.99.

Kanonkop publishes a technical sheet for the current 2023 vintage that fills in details behind the grape and estate already named here. The fruit comes off vines five to thirty years old, farmed to a yield the estate caps at seven tons per hectare, and the finished wine lists 14.35 percent alcohol with 2.4 grams per litre of residual sugar, which in plain terms is a dry wine. The producer's winemaking page states that the Kadette range gets an automated punch-down machine during fermentation, a gentler mechanized version of the hand punch-downs used on Kanonkop's main estate wines, and the tech sheet adds the juice spends three to five days on the skins before the wine finishes twelve months in French oak barrels. The producer's own tasting notes describe a nose of vanilla, ripe cassis and black cherries with a hint of bell pepper, and a palate of juicy red fruit that finishes grippy and refreshing, the maker's words.

Our call: reach for it if a producer-documented estate is what convinces you, a technical sheet naming vine age, yield and alcohol, plus a Kadette-specific note on how the wine is handled in the cellar; Kanonkop supplies all of it here. Pass if a shopper rating carries weight in your decision; none has reached our record for this wine, so the estate's paperwork is doing the full job of persuading you.

The Grocery Store Wine Desk · written Sep 16, 2026 from our research file for this wine. Numbers reflect our latest checks.