(ChicagoTribune) - Call it the Louvre of art museums, the Rose Bowl of college football, the Everest of mountaineering, or something more clever that you come up with on your own, but I think we can all agree that cabernet sauvignon is at the top of the heap. The big kahuna.

It is all of these things and many more, because it is so many different things itself. It is the complete package. Full-bodied and expressive, this is the wine that brings it all home. You don't warm up with cabernet sauvignon; you finish with it. This classic, international grape variety transforms into wines ranging at their best from mysteriously profound to majestically powerful. Even the cabs that don't reach those heights are fairly dependably high-quality. That is the nature of this grape. It produces, time after time. With the potential for fruit, elegance, power, complexity, consistency, acidity and aging, cabernet sauvignon's got it all. Name recognition too.

This was one of the wine styles, along with chardonnay and merlot, that made nonwine drinkers in the United States stop and take notice in the 1980s. "Hey," said people in turtlenecks, a glass of California cabernet sauvignon in hand, "I could get used to this. This is a wine style I can get behind."