Sauvignon Blanc

After frantic calls to everyone I knew – friends, friends of friends, neighbors whose last names I didn’t know - I reached a plumber named Steve,  who said he’d be over in ten minutes.

When he appeared, he went down to the cellar to check out my well. He saw my wine collection and mentioned that he made wine too. “Really? Tell me about it.” I replied, tossing out a nervous volley of questions, trying not to envision him digging out my well. “What kind of wine do you make? Do you use local grapes? Is it white or red?” “Do I need a new well?” “I don’t know. I have to check it out,” Steve replied.

The Kindness of Plumbers (in Wine Cellars) - Wall Street Journal (blog)

A summary of findings from the first six years of the sauvignon blanc research project was presented at the Romeo Bragato wine conference on Saturday.

The science leader for the programme, University of Auckland professor Richard Gardner, said Marlborough sauvignon blanc contain high levels of thiols called 3MH and 3MHA.

Another Auckland University professor working on the project, Paul Kilmartin, said it had been found that 3MH was unstable and broke down quickly in the bottle.

Savvy research on sav blanc - Stuff.co.nz

Twenty years ago, they debated what it should taste like. The purists argued that it was naturally lean and crisp, with hints of minerals, cut grass and even gunflint. Pragmatists countered that, yeah, but we want to make a living, and customers prefer it tasting like ripe pineapples - in other words, like chardonnay.

The purists seem to be winning. More sauvignon blancs are being made in the leaner style, with cool fermentation and little or no oak barrel aging. These crisp, intensely fruity wines are better than either camp was making two decades ago.

It's a crisp, rich, minerally, grapefruit-on-steroids flavor that easily identifies a wine as from Kiwiland - and that many California winemakers are replicating.

You'll notice that many of the best sauvignon blancs are bottled with screw caps. These days, that's a sign of quality: The tight caps seal the wines completely from air and preserve their intense fruit.

Crisp, fruity sauvignon blanc hard to beat - Sacramento Bee

Crisp and cooling, sauvignon blanc is one of our favorite hot-weather wines, and Clos du Bois’ 2009 release is a model of its kind. Although the ever-reliable Clos du Bois is a California vintner, with headquarters in Sonoma, this sauv blanc reminds us of its New Zealand cousins: It hits the tongue with a big gulp of grapefruit and a definite pong of gooseberry. That opens into lush melon, countered by bright lime and the green flavors of fresh herbs. The wine gets partial barrel fermentation combined with aging on the lees in oak barrels, which gives it just a touch of toast and vanilla; a portion of it is fermented in stainless steel barrels to enhance the melon and grapefruit. The latter lingers right into the finish, which has a clean mineral edge. Priced at about $12, the wine is available at big-box stores and wine shops. We’d drink it with a big salad, maybe a tropical take on a Cobb, with lots of buttery avocado, sweet-tart mango, salty bacon and snappy little grilled shrimp. It would also be delicious with cold roast chicken, prepared with lots of chopped lemon and fresh herbs.

Clos du Bois 2009 North Coast Sauvignon Blanc - Worcester Telegram

While the wine-industry slump has caused prices to slide and given corporate wines new competition from smaller producers, the big boys are still capable of making winners in the $6 to $8 price range. Among the best in a recent sampling of California wines, Kenwood 2009 Vintage White and Kenwood 2008 Vintage Red stood out.

IN THE SPIRIT of the recently concluded World Cup matches, I staged a four-team wine shootout, looking for the best bottles from four producers whose wines are widely available in supermarket and convenience-store wine departments. Though many wine writers tend to avoid such corporate offerings, the truth is that they are exactly the sort of affordable, easily found wines that are helping craft a wine-drinking culture in this country. In my regular forays into what some might dismiss as Plonkville, I always hope to find something of genuine value.

Not that it's easy for the corporate folks to compete these days. The economic downturn, whose ripples are being felt throughout the wine industry, has been a boon for consumers. Those $6 and $8 national brands can no longer compete solely on price; there are plenty of new entries (from winery overstock, online discounters and newly minted entrepreneurs) that can go head-to-head with the critter, truck, dress and lifestyle labels, offering better wines at comparable prices.

The four teams in this recent match were all from California. Turning Leaf is a Gallo brand aimed squarely at young women; Kendall-Jackson is widely known for its iconic chardonnays; Fetzer is a Brown-Forman brand hanging its hat on being "The Earth Friendly Winery," and Kenwood is a Sonoma standard that now is part of the Heck Estates portfolio, which also includes Korbel, Lake Sonoma and Valley of the Moon.

Wine Adviser Low-cost corporate wines can be winners - Seattle Times