Notes From The Cellar » sauvignon blanc

☆ 2008 Cakebread Cellars Sauvignon Blanc

Steve — Wed, 04 May 2011 16:00:45 +0000

More Than Just A Summer Sipper

The days are getting warm again.

As my diligent temperature-tracking tool for my hometown of Walnut Creek, CA, will attest, it got up over 81° F on Monday. May is here, Spring is in full swing, and barbecue season is right around the corner.

Fittingly enough, this is a wine I drank for the first time last summer. It’s just the kind of wine I want to turn to in the coming months, with their hot days, warm nights, perfect barbecue weather, and all that. A picnic in the park! See, I just thought of another place to drink this wine!

Cakebread Cellars has put together this very nice sauvignon blanc from not just sauv blanc, but from sauvignon musqué (an aromatic clone of sauv blanc) and semillon, with which sauv blanc is blended in almost every Bordeaux Blanc in France.

The wine goes through a very specific, and I find quite interesting, fermentation and aging process. 67% of the 2008 sauv blanc was fermented in steel tanks, then aged in neutral French oak barrels; 18% was fermented and aged in barrel; 15% was fermented and aged in tank, with no barrel time at all. A blend of processes like this makes for a very complete, well-rounded wine.

The 2008 Cakebread sauvignon blanc is light yellow in the glass, but like a lot of sauv blancs that I love (and I do love me some sauv blanc), there is a nice hint of green to the color of the wine. On the nose are crisp notes of apple and pear, very clean. The wine itself, though, is a touch more tropical, with notes of mango and melon to go along with the apple from the nose, plus a hint of sweet citrus and clean, biting minerality that I quite liked.

It might be a touch too sweet for me to get to a “freak out” stage for this wine, but overall, it’s an incredibly well-rounded, tasty, refreshing, and interesting white wine. More than just your average summer sipper, for sure; but definitely good to sip in the summer.

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☆ 2008 Henry Natter Sancerre Blanc

Steve — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 17:00:18 +0000

Super-Stinky Sauv Blanc From France

Usually, I really like stinky sauv blanc. I have reviewed, quite favorably, stinky sauv blancs from the Natural Process Alliance and Clos Pegase. But this wine, from the Sancerre region of the Loire Valley, took stinkiness a step too far, even for me.

That’s not to say it’s bad, per se. But I have a hard time recommending something like this. It’s an acquired taste. If you’re a Sancerre fan, I’m willing to bet this will be up your alley. It clocks in under $30 and if this stank is your thing, you’ll probably want to try it.

But for most people—myself included—this just doesn’t tickle the ol’ proverbial fancy.

The ’08 Natter is gorgeous in the glass, however. A rich, golden shine looks incredibly inviting. It almost appears chardonnayesque, but don’t let that fool you. On the nose, the stank arrives.

Most of what I could discern from the nose of this 100% sauvignon blanc juice was manzanilla olive and fish oil. It was hard to smell past those two rather overpowering aromas. Upon tasting the wine, you get what you might expect from those aromas on the nose. The wine is light bodied, and comes off very briny. Almost a bit like the brine that manzanillas are jarred in.

There is a hint of sweetness, too. And the odors and flavors, while unmistakable, are not altogether unpleasant. But unless you know already that this wine is for you, I’d be willing to bet that it’s not.

☆ 2009 Silver Birch Sauvignon Blanc (Octavin)

Steve — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 17:30:17 +0000

The Real Meaning of “Value”

I just don’t get it.

A few people I really like and respect have reviewed this wine ahead of me. Jason over at Jason’s Wine Blog (who, it should be noted, specializes in reviewing wine at the lower end of the price spectrum), while not formally giving the 2009 Silver Birch in the bladder inside the octagonal cardboard the once-over, did mention it in a recent post as “…impressive and… a crowd favorite.“

A couple of my homeboys (as it were), including fellow Trés Amigo Josh Wade at Drink Nectar wrote this guy up, and gave it a 3 out of 5, which I translate in my little head as something resembling an 80 on the Robert Parker point scale. Josh mentions specifically that this is a value buy.

The same score was given out by Those Who Are The Best New Wine Blog Twentyten at Swirl, Smell, Slurp, where both She and He gave, individually, a score of 3 out of 5. They refer to the wine as “good” after calling food They consumed “great,” so I have to consider that a less-than-rousing endorsement of the wine—but an endorsement nonetheless.

Liking this a bit more is my buddy and fellow fantasy baseballer Josh Sweeney at wine(explored). With his forgiveness, I am going to include here his entire review verbatim, including his 7 out of 10 (which, in my little messed up world, is something like an 85 on Parker’s scale):

2009 Silver Birch Sauvignon Blanc: 7/10. This is a classic, aggressive, beautifully flavored Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc. I actually had a lot of trouble keeping my pace with this box. It drank so well for so long, I actually finished it a week early. If you can get the 2009 before we hit 2011, I highly, highly recommend it for anyone who likes a crisp, acidic Sauv Blanc.

Josh likes.

So, the consensus seems to be that this is average-to-good wine, that when coupled with its price (around $24 for a 3L box, or about $6 per bottle-equivalent) is recommended pretty much across the board by my blogging contemporaries.

I don’t fucking see it.

This is plonk. This is nigh-undrinkable, one-note, over-acidic plonk, and I can’t consider wine like that a “value” at any price, including free (which, because this was sent to me by someone involved in the promotion of this product, it was).

I think the wine blog whateversphere has found itself in the dangerous territory of trying to redefine “value.” High value is not necessarily correlated with low price.

The Chateâu d’Yquem I reviewed last week, regardless of how good it is (and oh my GOD it is good) cannot be considered a “value.” It costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $300-$400 per bottle-equivalent (and is much more common in the 375ml half-bottle). But that’s not why. It can’t be considered a “value” because that price point is basically the worldwide peak for Sauternes.

However, the $30 Napa cult wine The Prisoner is absolutely a value. It drinks like a $60-$80 bottle. Many people would argue that wine that costs $30 (or $20, or some other arbitrary number) cannot be considered “value” wine, because it is out of some people’s price range.

To me, this is a bastardization of the concept of “value,” and leads to situations like this: crap wine given more than its due simply because it costs less than a child’s ticket to the cinema.

So here are my notes.

The wine looks like a sauv blanc, very light yellow-to-clear in the glass. On the nose is a light alcohol sting (but not terrible), grapefruit, and some grass.

The palate, however, is all one note. This tastes like grapefruit juice. Almost sour, but really, it’s the high, unbalanced acidity here that is making me think “underripe grapefruit.” Can’t blame the grapefruit for that. Did I mention this tastes like grapefruit juice?

I can’t call that a value, personally. And I can’t recommend this wine.

Verdict: C-

P.S., since I compared everyone’s else’s score to the RMPJOHPS (Robert M. Parker Jr. One Hundred Point Scale), I will tell you that in my little world—where we are right now—a C- is something in the high 60s. Definitely under 70 points.

P.P.S., a 12-pack of 32oz bottles of Ocean Spray white grapefruit juice will run you about $35. That’s around $2.30 per 750ml. Just sayin’.

(full disclosure: this wine was received as a press sample. No way I’d pay for this.)

2009 Silver Birch Sauvignon Blanc

☆ 2003 Château d’Yquem Sauternes

Steve — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 16:00:52 +0000

What Angels Drink

Where to begin?

First, the name. There are a handful of wines that I have specifically put on a bucket list. Wines I want to drink before I die. Names like Château Petrus, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Dom Pérignon, Château Cheval Blanc, and, yes, Château d’Yquem.

Second, the style of wine. Sauternes is botrytized semillon and sauvignon blanc (this one is 80% of the former, 20% of the latter) and it’s delicious. I wrote up a Sauternes-style wine from Sonoma County, and I’d still recommend that wine without hesitation. However, this… this is something else.

Let me just burst any bubble you might have here: this is expensive wine. This is world-renowned, expensive wine. A 375ml half-bottle of 2003 Château d’Yquem is $150–$200.

OK, so what’s it like?

First, the color is a perfect gold. It’s truly gorgeous. Swirling the glass even lightly shows the viscosity one would expect from a dessert wine. No surprises here.

The surprises begin when you get your face anywhere near this stuff. The nose is soft and lustrous, and shows off a lightly sweet honey note, along with a hint of bright, sharp cheese, and a nuttiness that comes off to me like candied cashews. I am so excited to be able to use candied cashews in a wine review.

The wine is full-bodied, but not heavy. It doesn’t coat your mouth, it just kind of covers the whole thing. Does that not sound dissimilar to you? I’m not sure how else to describe this mouthfeel—it is both full-bodied and light on the tongue. And I’m not sure how.

Notes of honey and nuttiness from the nose mix with a hint of lemon zest, but more than that, with a caramel note that, like the rest of this wine, stays light and soft while also feeling downright elegant. Luxury in a glass.

I wish this wine was less expensive. I wish I could have it all the time. But, like many of the world’s finest things, high demand must be counterbalanced by high cost, because it is simply impossible to make enough of something this good to satisfy everyone who wants some.

However, if you have a chance to drink this wine—whether at $400/bottle or $40/glass—give it a go. I cannot imagine the 2003 Château d’Yquem disappointing anyone.

2003 Château d'Yquem Sauternes

☆ 2008 Gamble Family Vineyards Sauvignon Blanc

Steve — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 16:00:36 +0000

Hot Days, Cool Wine

The days have been hot here in Northern California. We’ve been joking that 2010 is the first year on record in the East Bay with no spring. One day it was raining and cold, the next day it was 95 degrees.

Hot days call for crisp, chilled white wine (or rosé, of course). This Yountville single-vineyard sauv blanc is just what the global warming ordered.

I have something of a love affair with sauvignon blanc. I was one of those guys who wouldn’t drink white wine. It wasn’t even that I necessarily didn’t like white wine, it was that I thought if I drank it, it made me some kind of wuss. Now, at 6’3″ and what my mother would lovingly refer to as a “husky” build, I don’t think too many people would have made an issue of pointing out my wussiness in carrying a glass of white wine around a party, but peer pressure’s a bitch.

So when I started drinking white wine, and started liking it, sauvignon blanc was a big part of that. Possibly just because it wasn’t chardonnay. Now that I’m a big proponent of drinking white wine (I cringe when people say “well, I really only drink red wine” like they’ve had all the whites on the planet), I’ve found reasons to like most of them.

I usually like a stinky sauv blanc. This isn’t that. The 2008 Gamble is very light in the glass, almost clear. Sauvignon blancish to begin with, for certain. The nose features notes of green apple and wet grass—some of the “stinkiness” I like.

On the palate, however, no stink/stank/funk/whatever. The wine is light bodied, dry and crisp, featuring notes of fuji and green apples, and some underripe tart honeydew melon. The finish lingers, featuring mostly the less-tart fuji apple on the back end.

Nice. Real nice, crisp and “refreshing” (I still struggle with using that to describe any wine, really). Perfect for hot days. Not a ton of acidity, and a hint of barrel-aging might make this a little more of an acquired taste for hardcore sauv blanc fans, but I can easily recommend it.

Verdict: B+

☆ 2008 L’Ecole No 41 Columbia Valley Semillon

Steve — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 15:00:54 +0000

School’s In Session

On the first full day of the Wine Bloggers’ Conference, the assembled wine blog whateverspherites were—well, treated, I suppose—to a white wine “speed-tasting” round. 12 white wines in the course of 1 hour is a marathon that I’m not sure I’d want to do again. It was a huge crowded room, 30-or-so tables of 6-8 bloggers each, and the winery representatives had five minutes to give us their spiel.

One wine—and I think the fact that it was the first that I tasted cannot go unmentioned—truly stood out for me. In fact, this classic Bordeaux-style blend of 89% semillon and 11% sauvignon blanc was among the best Washingtonian whites that I tasted over the long weekend.

L’Ecole No 41 is a winery located in Frenchtown, WA, just outside of Walla Walla, named after the schoolhouse the winery now occupies (“l’ecole” is French for “the school”) and the Washington school district number that the schoolhouse once belonged to.

Founded in 1983, L’Ecole No 41 is one of the original wineries in the Walla Walla area, having opened for business before the Walla Walla Valley AVA was even officially codified.

But enough of the winery; what of the wine? The winery’s historical place in the Walla Walla Valley AVA notwithstanding, this particular wine is made from grapes grown in the Columbia Valley AVA.

The wine is a very light straw yellow in the glass, and the nose features notes of melon and of a light—faint, even—honey sweetness. The wine is medium-bodied and tastes fresh and bright. Melon and pair dance on the palate, and a pleasant minerality keeps everything in check.

The wine would be an A-, but there is one problem: it’s hot. The 2008 L’Ecole No 41 Semillon clocks in at 14.2% ABV, very high for a white wine in general, and not balanced very well. It drinks hot, and while I would love to recommend it with food like seafood pasta, the alcohol level makes that difficult.

Still, it’s a very good wine on its own merits. Well recommended.

Verdict: B+

☆ 2009 NPA Sauvignon Blanc

Steve — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 15:00:15 +0000

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

☆ 2000 Ferrari-Carano Eldorado Gold

Steve — Thu, 20 May 2010 17:52:31 +0000

You Have Never Tasted A White Dessert Wine Like This

You really haven’t. And, that’s not necessarily a good thing. The 2000 Eldorado Gold is the older cousin of one of the best white dessert wines I’ve ever had. But it couldn’t be less like its relative.

The vinoteca at Ferrari-Carano

Everything about this place is visually stunning. Moving on.

OK, you know how sometimes siblings look nothing alike? My brother and I don’t look much alike, at least at first glance. Billy and Alec Baldwin look hardly similar. And the girl in that 90s doo-wop longhaired pop outfit “Hanson” looks very little like her brothers.

Same here. While the 2007 Eldorado Gold bellows out its message of world peace, goodwill towards all, and honey and vanilla, the 2000 has an entirely different agenda.

Peppers.

The wine is a tawny gold in the glass, more than a shade darker than its younger. On the nose are—and no, I’m not making this up—pimento, manzanilla olive, and jalapeno. Yeah, I thought I was crazy too, but try it and see.

The palate offers up those same notes, but with at least an appearance of the sweetness one expects from a botrytized, Sauternes-style dessert wine. Think pepper jelly, which is really quite nice.

Of all the wines I’ve had, this one as much as or more than any other comes off as “I might like it, but others will not.” Maybe you’re one of those others, maybe not. It’s worth a shot if you can get your hands on it. Just be prepared.

It’s like nothing else you’ve tried.

Verdict: B

(photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnjoh/ / CC BY-SA 2.0)

☆ 2007 Ferrari-Carano Eldorado Gold

Steve — Thu, 06 May 2010 15:00:29 +0000

Rotten Grapes At Their Best

Sometimes a wine is evocative of its place in this world. And I don’t mean in some figurative, allegorical way, like we all have a “place” or whatever; I mean it evokes a literal, physical place. Its home.

That’s the villa at the Ferrari-Carano Winery in Dry Creek Valley, Sonoma. It’s pretty impressive, as are the rest of the grounds and the pair of tasting rooms.

My wife and I visited, and befriended a fellow with a French accent named Philippe down in the Reserve tasting room where they serve up the good shit. I’m not saying the other wines at F-C are plonk, but then, I don’t know. What I do know is that this particular wine—a white dessert wine in the Sauternes style—is fantastic.

It was the last of a series of wines I tasted while sitting in the underground tasting bar surrounded by people who—by virtue of my eavesdropping, I could tell—knew a lot less about wine than they were trying to let on to their guests, or dates, or whathaveyou. In my experience, the more crowded a tasting bar is, the more likely you are to be around people pulling shit like that; partially this is because the more crowded the bar is, the more people there are, and because it’s harder to pull the ear of someone who works there, interested as they are in educating and chatting up their wine.

I think this is why Philippe liked me. Not necessarily because I know anything more or less than some of the others present, but because I don’t pretend to know what I don’t. I like to think that’s apparent when you meet me. So when I asked him if this wine, made up as it is of 90% semillon and 10% sauvignon blanc, was indeed botrytized, he smiled in the affirmative, and I knew I was in for a treat.

Botrytized? If you don’t know, the fungus that rots semillon grapes to give Sauternes wine its distinct sweetness is called botrytis cinerea, or “noble rot.” So it is with Ferrari-Carano’s Eldorado Gold.

As rich and golden as its namesake, the Eldorado Gold gives off the most incredible white raisins and vanilla on the nose. There’s a hint of honey, and a chalklike minerality that could have come straight off the white terrace out front of the villa.

I took a sip expecting great things, and got them: the Eldorado Gold is medium bodied and features dried apricot, honey, caramel and vanilla. The residual sugar makes itself present but doesn’t kill off all the good aromas and flavors that make the wine a delight.

Verdict: 93/100

(photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/elcapitan/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

☆ Passover Wine You Actually Want To Drink

Steve — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 17:01:58 +0000

2007 Yarden Mount Hermon White

First up, full disclosure: I am a Gentile. Not having had the good fortune to be born Jewish, I have to live vicariously through my Hebrew friends. Quickly becoming a tradition for my wife and I is joining our friend’s family for Passover seder each year (this year’s the second time we’ve enjoyed the holiday with them).

Last year, during my first seder, I was introduced not only to traditions like the seder plate, the Four Questions, and leaving the door open (the cold be damned!) for Elijah, but also to Manischewitz wine, that kosher mainstay at Jewish holiday dinners (and, apparently, at just about every 13-year-old’s B’nai Mitzvah), made primarily from Concord grapes (which, as we know, aren’t even vitis vinifera!), and sickly sweet enough to give you a toothache and stomach rot… or tooth rot and a stomach ache, I’m not sure which is worse.

So, this year, leading up to Passover, I decided to track down an affordable bottle of kosher-for-Passover wine to bring to the seder that would be more drinkable (and, frankly, made from actual wine grapes). To add to the task, I decided I wanted a wine specifically from Israel, and my friend requested that it be a white, since her parents don’t drink red wine (apart, it seems, from the Manischewitz).

From the Golan Heights Winery in Israel, made from 50% Chardonnay and 50% Sauvignon Blanc grapes from vineyards in Galilee, comes the Yarden Mount Hermon White. Costing between $10-$15 and marked “kP” on the back of the bottle (kosher, and specifically kosher for Passover), it was something I was more than happy to bring along to seder this year. It was something of a hit, as well, as the host, who usually drinks no wine, had himself a second glass. Mazeltov!

The wine is almost clear in the glass, but what color is there is a pleasant golden glow. The nose is very clean, and the Sauv Blanc elements seems to stand out here more than the Chardonnay elements: the nose is rich with apple and floral notes, and even have a hint of honey (it seemed, actually, more Viognier-like than anything else).

On the palate the wine is crisp and light-bodied, and the predominant notes are the honey and floral notes from the nose. It’s a pleasant quaffing wine. Nothing to write home about, but certainly light years beyond Manischewitz, and a decent QPR to boot.

Verdict: B-

2007 Yarden Mount Hermon White