Thanksgiving is about turkey, stuffing and sweet potatoes (or yams, depending on who you ask). But it's also about finding an affordable wine to go along with such a feast -- especially if the host is calculating a pound of turkey and a bottle of wine per person (as any good Turkey Day host or hostess should).
This beautiful bottle of 2005 Sauvignon Blanc, captured by Flickr user stevesteve8383, would certainly do the trick ... though we might have to do a little taste test just to make sure.
Autumn officially arrives next week. Labor Day has come and gone, and we've traded our barbecue tongs for pots of soup and our shorts for sweaters on chilly nights. But before you put away all your summer wines, consider this: Many of them, including Sauvignon Blanc, won't taste oh-so-fresh by the time you're in the mood for them again. Some of the best Sauv Blancs from the Loire Valley and Bordeaux can age for several years, but most inexpensive bottles are meant to be drunk ASAP.
What happens when you brave an old bottle? I tried a 2005 recently and the first word that came to mind was dank. It was like tossing a salad, forgetting about it for a week and then trying to eat around the decaying pieces. Blech. So here's my PSA for this week: drink all your unquestionably delicious Sauvignon Blancs now, before they become questionable -- the 2007s from the northern hemisphere and the 2008s from the southern hemisphere. Soon, the 2009s from New Zealand, Chile and South Africa will be on shelves, and in the spring, the 2009s from California, France and Italy will arrive.
After the jump, Sauvignon Blancs I loved, and a question for you: Which Sauv Blanc region steals your heart?
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With the exception of Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Blanc expresses terroir, or a "sense of place," better than any other wine.
The grape picks up minerality in the soil and shows it off in the wine with an exaggerated sense. Which is why, when I heard about Sauvignon Republic, a wine company dedicated to making Sauvignon Blanc from different regions around the world, I felt like I won the wine lottery. What could be better than tasting the terroir in a single brand of Sauvignon Blancs grown and made thousands of miles from each other?
I wrote about Sauvignon Blanc last fall when the 2008s were just starting to come out of Southern Hemisphere, but now it's spring up here, and I'm in the mood for them again. Sauv Blanc is light, zingy, minerally, refreshing and perfect with so many spring foods or just for sipping on the porch now that the days are (finally!) warming up.
If you can, find all three current releases of Sauvignon Republic's wines right now ($20 each) -- one each from Sonoma, Calif.; Stellenbosch, South Africa; and Marlborough, New Zealand, three areas where Sauvignon Blanc is known to do well.
Taste them together, and even better, blind, to see if you can detect differences among them. If so, you're talking terroir. See my tasting notes after the jump. (I blind-tasted and got them all wrong, but it was fun anyway.)
While grape growers in the northern hemisphere are just winding down harvest, the southern hemisphere is six months ahead of us. It seems we should still be drinking our 2005's, 06's, and 07,s, but I've just opened a bottle of the 2008 Veramonte Sauvignon Blanc Reserva, a gorgeously fresh and lively wine from Chile's Casablanca Valley.
Ordinarily I think of Sauvignon Blanc as a summer wine because its bone-dry acidity and grapefruit flavors zing through your palate and refresh a thirsty mouth like no other wine can. But dry, unoaked varietal Sauv Blancs are mostly meant to be drunk young in order to stay fresh--so the younger, the better, and when the southern hemisphere 2008s roll out in the fall, it's best to catch them while you can.
Many producers in New Zealand and Chile use a new harvesting method of picking grapes over a longer period of time at different levels of ripeness, which gives the wine a heady combination of raciness and curves. Pick too soon, and Sauvignon Blanc, already a vegetal varietal, is too green, too grassy. Pick to late, and the wine is flabby and flat instead of full and round. The combination picking results in a multi-dimensional wine that has the best of both worlds: flinty minerality and ripe body.
I can relate to the first paragraph in this Boston Globe piece about buying and drinking white wine during the summer. Or any time of year, actually. I'm a big lover of red wines, but white wine just confuses me. It doesn't help that I'm not a big fan of white wine. I don't know what it is, but the very few glasses of white wine I've had in my life, I just haven't liked the taste at all. But maybe that's because I haven't had the right white wine.
The Globe gives a lot of tips on what Sauvignon Blancs to buy, and it's good (for me and other people who live in the area anyway) that all of the stores mentioned are local.
So, help me out readers. What white wine would you suggest a newbie like myself should drink?
One of the reasons I miss the Bay Area is the San Francisco Chronicle. Now
don't get me wrong, I love the Los Angeles Times and a couple of the writers in
the weekly food section are ones I look forward to. However, the San Francisco Chronicle dedicates a whole section to wine on Thursdays (and the fact that there is no need to
"register" right away).
As we've already posted, the Chronicle pays
homage to the wines of New Zealand this week, but their list of 36 recommendations from the 52 wines that
they tasted deserves to be singled out. They're all Sauvignon Blanc, which is what New Zealand is famous for.
Highest ranked of their list, rated three and a half stars (***½) to 2005 Framingham Marlborough
Sauvignon Blanc ($17), 2005 Matua Valley Paretai Estate Series Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc ($17), and 2005 Sauvignon
Republic Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc ($18). 2005. That was a very good year.
Three stars (***) out of four awarded to 2005 Forrest Estate Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc ($16).
Two and half stars (**½) for just about everyone else.
There are many reasons why I miss the Bay area, one of the including the San Francisco Chronicle's Thursday wine
section. Unlike a lot of newspapers, the Chronicle dedicates an entire section (naturally, with all the wine growing
regions nearby). The section is always readable, even for someone who isn't a professed wine geek.
After tasting 52 wines from New Zealand, a recommendation of 36, all Sauvignon
Blanc, of course
Traditionally, wines don't pair well with salads, the vinaigrette often killing the taste of wine. However, a
citronette (olive oil and citrus
juice) works perfectly on a salad. A recipe for blood orange and fennel salad to pair with one of the NZ
Sauvignon Blancs is included.
In the Cheese Course, it's
Ewe's Blue, to be complemented with a wine with viscosity and a touch of sugar.
Qi Spirits has a new
liqueur, Lapsang Souchong Tea Liqueur, "incredibly smooth and very complex, bearing rich, smoky vanilla notes,
a hint of honey, and a wonderful orange-y finish that lingers in the back of the throat."
And don't forget the Chronicle will be issuing the Bay Area's Top 100 restaurants...I can't wait to see.