In Defense of Sauvignon Blanc

In Defense of Sauvignon Blanc

Sauvignon Blanc is in need of an advocate or at least a clever publicist. This noble grape varietal is too often mistreated, misunderstood, and very much under appreciated. If it were a Hollywood starlet it would have earned a spot on Oprah’s couch long ago.

Sauvignon Blanc is so much more than Chardonnay’s little cousin and we are urging wine lovers and aspiring wine lovers to give it a chance. In the hands of a respectful winemaker, Sauvignon Blanc delivers aromas and flavors like no other which is precisely the problem in some instances. Sauvignon Blanc is no wallflower. It yearns to be bold, expressive, and a bit wild. For this reason a number of wine drinkers, novice and otherwise, find its flavors to be too assertive. Some winemakers, in an effort to tame Sauvignon Blanc’s effusive personality, use a heavy hand treating the free spirited variety like Chardonnay allowing the sugars to soar, softening it with wood aging, and coaxing silky, nearly buttery tones. The result is a wine stripped of its true nature, and in our view; its dignity resembling a Garman Shepherd dressed in a brightly colored outfit. Sure, he will play along but the eyes revealed a crushed soul. Don’t do this to Sauvignon Blanc!

Sauvignon Blanc in the World
Sauvignon Blanc hails from France’s Loire Valley where it stars in two of the region’s classic wines, Sancerre and Pouilly Fumé. It is also an important player in Bordeaux where it is employed in the great dry wines from the Graves district and the famous sweet wines of Sauternes. In both cases it is often paired with Semillon, another misunderstood varietal of distinction.

Sauvignon Blanc first made its way to California in the 1880s. The first California examples were primarily sweet and through the decades Sauvignon Blanc has been made in every imaginable style.

New Zealand embraced Sauvignon Blanc’s brash nature making wines with personality plus, allowing the grape to fully express itself. In recent decades New Zealand has become the unofficial home of Sauvignon Blanc focusing on wines made with minimal interference and bottled fresh with screw cap closures.

Enjoying Sauvignon Blanc
Sauvignon Blanc’s aromatics and flavors are often described as being reminiscent of gooseberry, grapefruit, fresh cut grass, ginger, asparagus, nettles, and in the case of the French, a feline derived substance that we shall leave unsaid.

It’s crisp and fresh nature makes it a wonderful aperitif but has much more to offer pairing well with a wide range of foods from fresh shucked oysters to roasted pork. Its flavors and textures offer the ideal foil to fatty and salty foods pairing beautifully with Chèvre, a French goat’s milk cheese.

Next week, BevX concludes our month long salute to Sauvignon Blanc with reviews of more than one dozen Sauvignon Blancs from four nations.

Get our Sauvignon Blanc reviews.