The days are getting warm again.
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 musque (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.
Verdict: 90/100