2009 NPA Sauvignon Blanc

Amazing Funky Stank Juice

Those words in the title, if you didn’t realize, are meant with love. Sometimes descriptors in wine reviews seem off-putting at first, but what I mean by funky stank juice is as high a complement as that could possibly be.

The NPA, or Natural Process Alliance, is a Santa Rosa-based winery that focuses on “thinking downstream.” They try to do as little to the wine as possible, and upset the natural process of the winemaking as little as possible. So this sauvignon blanc, which is (among other things) unfiltered, comes off as very, very different from what you’re used to.

But damn if these vine-hugging hippies haven’t figured something out. This juice is legit.

The very first thing you’ll notice, assuming you pour your NPA Sauv Blanc for yourself (or see someone do so), is the container. No glass, no box; the NPA houses all their wine in 750ml stainless steel Klean Kanteen bottles. Next, the wine looks very different from your usual sauv blanc: it’s cloudy, and a yellow-green in color.

When I first sniffed this wine, I had to back up off of it and set my cup down, if you know what I mean.¹ The nose is a mélange of the most amazing ripe citrus and tropical fruits: melon, pineapple, nectarine, and passion fruit. It’s really quite something. You could bottle this scent and sell it at Tommy Bahama for, like, a grip of cash.

The NPA Sauv Blanc is full-bodied, which I don’t find often in this usually-lighter variety. On the palate you pick up notes of peach, grass, and nectarine. The wine’s alcohol content is low for California (12.8%), and it’s refreshing in a way not unlike Kern’s fruit nectars are.

NPA wine is extremely hard to get ahold of right now, but you can check out their website to see what your chances are of getting ahold of this funky stank juice.

I recommend you do.

Verdict: A-

(photo: Courtesy Flickr user linecook / CC BY-NC)

Footnotes

1. Cf. ↩