2008 Cakebread Cellars Sauvignon Blanc

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.

2008 Cakebread Cellars Sauvignon Blanc

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.

2003 Château d’Yquem Sauternes

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

2003 Château d'Yquem Sauternes

2008 L’Ecole No 41 Columbia Valley Semillon

School’s In Session

Semillon grapes

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+