All things considered, I think it's understandable why the powers that be have quietly decided to relegate Variations to the attic but still, that's a cool bit of info. I went ahead and put a link to the CC plug-in in my CC2014 plug-in folder — more because I could than because I actually needed to — and lo and behold, it works.
It's scary that I remember this, but the last time I used Variations was for a project back in 2008. As Brett N said above, there's lots of subtler ways to play with the color balance.