(PD) - Researching a story the other day, I discovered that more than half the 45,000 acres of grapes growing in Napa Valley (22,800) now are planted to cabernet sauvignon.

What surprised me was that it wasn’t more.

For at least three decades Napa Valley has been known as cabernet country, so much so that in the mid-1980s, when the cabernet total there was somewhere around 20 percent, I wrote a column saying I could envision a day not far off when most of Napa would be in cabernet. I saw a time when the name of the region would supplant the name of the varietal, making it unnecessary.

Almost forever, red Bordeaux has by law been made entirely from the cabernet family of grapes. At some point a wine designated Napa will be the same, accepting that all such wines can have merlot, cabernet franc, malbec and others in the mix.