Sauvignon Blanc. Photo: stevesteve8383, Flickr.
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.
Posts with tag sauvignon blanc
A Bottle of White - Feast Your Eyes
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.
Fall Sauvignon Blanc - Wine of the Week
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| Photo: Constellation Brands |
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?
Inspired Potato Salad and More - The Houston Chronicle in 60 Seconds
How do you take your potato salad from tired to inspired? Throw in some corn, cherry tomatoes and basil.- Now that the whole bird is popular again, dark chicken meat recipes are, too.
- Which cocktail should you whip up with artisanal vodka? How about a Martinique with Chambord and lime juice?
- From ring-shaped vegetable brushes to trio lasagna pans, Chicago's housewares show for funky new gadgets.
- What grape is perfect for the rising June temperatures? Wine writer Dale Robertson says Sauvignon Blanc.
- The peach crop in Fredericksburg/Hill County was almost decimated in April when a severe freeze destroyed roughly 98 percent of the crop.
- "Southern Living Comfort Food: A Delicious Trip Down Memory Lane" is perfect for home cooking and dishing on Southern food memories, while Morton's new cookbook shares tips for a steak fiend.
- The 2009 Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo crowns a bunch of tasty vino champions from 2008 Vina Robles Suendero to McManis Family Vineyards Zinfandel.
- Reader recipe of the week: Chocolate Croissant Bread Pudding
- A rundown of Houston-area farmers markets.
- Quick tip: Grab a pastry blender to easily mash your avocado.
- Foodie product spotlight: Sara Lee's buns, low-cal Truffle Bars, V8's V-Fusion, butter with olive oil, a bottle emulsifier and Miller's limey Chill.
Sauvignon Republic - Wine of the Week
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.)
Wine of the Week: Sauvignon Blanc
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.
Trying to bring white wine into my red wine world
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?
San Francisco Chronicle's New Zealand Wine Recommendations
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.
Aw, they didn't even mention my favorite Monkey.
- Two and half stars (**½) for just about everyone else.
San Francisco Chronicle's Thursday Wine section in 60 seconds
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.
- Budweiser brews organic
- 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.
[photo: San Francisco Chronicle]
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