Loire vineyards

A version of this article was first published in Hampshire View, September 2011.

If you’re into sauvignon blanc then Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé are the names to conjure with, but France’s Loire valley offers many other opportunities to drink wines from this bright and zesty grape variety.

Outside of these two famous appellations, there are another couple that offer sauvignon blanc, and usually at a more affordable price, because they are ‘humbler’ areas. One is the catch-all Vin de Pays du Val de Loire (the Loire’s equivalent of Vin de Pays d’Oc), and the other is the Touraine Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée, which covers 4,500 hectares (ha) stretching east from Tours on both sides of the river Loire.

In both these appellations other grape varieties are grown, but sauvignon blanc will be mentioned on the label. In Touraine, Gamay de Touraine is the most common red wine, while Sauvignon de Touraine accounts for nearly 80% of the white Touraine wines.

Vin de Pays du Val de Loire is even larger than Touraine, covering 5,500 ha, and nearly half of all Vin de Pays du Val de Loire is sauvignon blanc. Other Loire vins de pays are made from the likes of chardonnay, chenin blanc, gamay and cabernet franc.

Fragmentation of production in Vin de Pays and Touraine has long been a challenge to focusing on improving the quality of production, with many growers owning a few hectares here and there. With some 1,700 growers of Loire Vin de Pays wines, it is really only the negociants, who buy fruit from many growers, who can bottle significant volumes of wine under one label. Otherwise it’s a case of searching out attentive and high profile producers, but who won’t make such high volumes of wine.

Recently, to give more emphasis on quality, the organisation that promotes Loire wines created a technical project in 2008, working more closely with growers and helping them to understand what styles of sauvignon blanc are preferred in the UK, whether more tropical fruits, or stone fruits, or citrus and grapefruit styles, or grassier, steelier styles, and how to work differently in the vineyard and the winery to achieve these styles, maybe using different yeasts, or fermenting at a particular temperature. One of the most important things is to keep oxygen away from the fruit during harvest and winemaking, which will keep the fruit expressions fresh, zingy and focused on primary fruit.  Then extra style-enhancing options, especially keeping the wine on its lees for a few months, add varying degrees of weight, intensity, texture and richness to the finished wine.

The beauty of these styles of sauvignon blanc is they’re straightforwardness in delivering zingy fresh fruit flavours. It’s important to drink the most recent vintage available.

Try these:
M&S: Domaine Jacky Marteau Sauvignon blanc 2010, £7.99, Loire.
Sainsbury’s:  Taste the Difference Touraine Sauvignon Blanc 2010, £7.99
Domaine Direct: Domaine du Haut Perron, Touraine Sauvignon 2010, £8.70 (per bottle in a mixed 12-pack)

Present were:

• Jean-Christophe Mau, owner of Château Brown in Pessac-Léognan.
• Bruno Eynard, general manager of third growth Chateau Lagrange in Saint-Julien.
• Eric Perrin, owner of Chateau Carbonnieux in Pessac-Léognan, classified for red and white.
• Francois Despagne, owner of Chateau Grand-Corbin-Despagne in Saint Emilion, promoted to St. Emilion Grand Cru Classé in 2006.

Of these four, Château Brown and Carbonnieux produce white wine.

White wine

The issues for white wine are far more imminent and pressing, than for red wines, for these top Graves producers. Both Mau and Perrin are concerned for their white production in the immediate term with Mau saying “the problem for whites is more important. We want to keep acidity and freshness, and it will be complicated to keep the freshness.”

Jean-Christophe Mau

And as with the reds, 2003 was a watershed, with the issue being more important for sauvignon blanc, whose racy acidity is part of proposition of the blend, to balance the softer maturity of fleshier semillon.

Mau explained their changing behaviour of the sauvignon blanc, saying “2003 was a complex vintage for whites, it was not a classic balance, and we lost some acidity and flavour [though Mau was not the owner in 2003].  In 2009, to avoid having so much maturity, we harvested in early September.”

Perrin may have caught an earlier boat on this one, saying “in 2003 we finished the harvest of whites on 2^nd August. It was never so early.  I have the impression of being in South Africa yet we have white 2003s that are fresh, with fruit.”

At Carbonnieux, Perrin is also fortunate to create his wines from a much larger white vineyard than at Château Brown, saying his large and varied vineyard still offered some good climate buffering capability.  He said of his white “I have a complex problem. My white vineyard is huge, 45 hectares, all on different soils, with sauvignon blanc on gravel, on limetone, on sand, on limestone-clay.  Usually at the end of harvest there are 35 to 40 different styles [lots] of white wine.  All these are very different, and after winter we blend together to make the best wines – we have a very large palette of flavours.” So actually Perrin has less of a problem than for small vineyards on one soil type.  For the moment…

And it is the vineyard that is the last battleground for quality.  Most quality improvements throughout the 1980s and 1990s were in the winery, with improved hygiene and high-tech kit. Perrin, who employs white wine guru Denis Dubourdieu as consultant, said “he first consulted on the winemaking, now most of his work is in the vineyard.” Preservation of terroir character is high up the agenda, so for whites, in the first instance, there are more leaves in the vineyard to protect against sun exposure.  Bringing forward harvest date, especially on the zesty sauvignon blanc is another option, though this means burrowing into August, the sacrosanct holiday month for the French, so there are some deep cultural challenges.

Challenging culture is one thing. It was even mooted, heretically though tongue-in-cheek, to swap sauvignon blanc with chardonnay, which tolerates more warmth than sauvignon blanc.

The defining moment for South Africa that the world knows was the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990. Four years later the rainbow nation achieved democracy.

As far as South Africa’s wine industry is concerned, it may well have the longest viticultural history of all the new world countries, with wine first being made there in 1659, during the times when the Cape was a stopover trading and refuelling post on the great sea routes. But the latest liberating chapter in the country’s renewal was the early 1990s scrapping of a quota system which dictated what was grown and where it was grown.  And exports were freed up once the old controlling state co-operative was privatised in 1997. 

Flying by Elim vineyards, Indian Ocean

Since then it seems that everyone has been fleeing to the coasts and the cooling coastal breezes to find new and different places to grow grapes.  A big chunk of the vineyard is already ‘within sight’ of the oceans – the saying goes if you can see the ocean it’s a good place for a vineyard, presumably because of those cooling breezes, though quite how far inland they reach and actively moderate the vineyard climate is not always clear.

Closer to the coast there’s no argument, leaves waft in afternoon breezes. And with this great proximity to the oceans, Cape South Africans can satisfy two great passions simultaneously: making wine, with sauvignon blanc most definitely being flavour of the moment, and messing about on the water, in this case rather serious water in the guise of the Atlantic and Indian oceans. In the decade since 1997, sauvignon blanc plantings have increased from 5 to 8% of the vineyard area. And sauvignon blanc goes pretty well with fresh and simply prepared fish.

But there’s much more to Cape cuisine than fish, and Stellenbosch, at about 20 km from the sea, is the heart of the Cape Winelands, and nearby wineries long ago took the lead to offer local foods with the local wines.  Indeed Delheim, less than 10 minutes from the town, were one of the earliest down this route when they started serving cheese platters in 1976. 

The view from Delheim

Proprietor Nora Sperling-Thiel said they “started serving food as guests arrived in middle of day and were looking for something to eat, so we kept it simple with fresh farm bread cheese and paté. At the time we were the only farm with a restaurant and served 50 guests at a time but did two sittings a day in high season.” Now they have a busy lunchtime restaurant serving local food to accompany their wines. Their Pinotage rosé has become something of a legend in its own lifetime. 

A little further toward Paarl, Fairview has built on its long association with homemade cheeses as well as wine. Four years ago owner Charles Back turned his old winery into The Goat Shed, a breakfast and lunchtime restaurant that’s packed to the rafters at weekends. The dirt paddock at the front has become tailored lawns dressed with tables and chairs immediately next to the closest vineyards.

To keep some of the winery feel, and to break up the large space, Charles said: “we cut out the concrete tanks by three quarters. And” he said “we wanted to use local people, and the kids of the farm workers. It took a lot of training, it took us a year to come out of the woods” while new staff got to grips with the service culture and the professionalism required to efficiently wait tables.  And no surprise given the restaurant has more than 200 covers.  Charles added that having the restaurant meant his “finger is on the pulse, because it elevates wine into the food environment. You have to focus on where you’re going; and you have a product testing-ground on site.”  

A Fairview Goat

As well as the Fairview range, Back also makes the Goats do Roam and Spice Route ranges, so the restaurant has plenty of opportunity to test plenty of products. With so many wines, Back sources fruit from some of the newer vineyard plantings, and his Spice Route sauvignon blanc comes from the Darling region, an hour’s drive north of Cape Town, about 10km inland from the Atlantic Ocean, which he said: “is a seaward facing vineyard, getting breezes off the coast. The vineyard gets 5-6°C lower than [Paarl], and the harvest is about a month later.”  This later ripening helps preserve some of the typical zesty and grassy characters in sauvignon blanc.

Futher up the West Coast, about 300km north of Cape Town, is an even more recently planted vineyard area, around Lambert’s Bay, where the Sir Lambert property can be found, and Fryer’s Cove, lying another half an hour north on a dirt track. Both are producing light, zesty, grass and lemongrass style sauvignon blancs, which are back on track with the local fish at the key attraction of the region, the Muisbosskerm restaurant, an all-South African experience.

View from Muissbosskerm

The Muisbosskerm is as close to the Atlantic coast as it’s possible to get … being on the beach. It takes its name from temporary shelters made from the local mouse bush plant. The restaurant started out feeding family and friends, but it’s been a highlight on the tourist trail for many years, and it’s the clients who have to turn up on time for the freshest straight-from-the-ocean fish. Those local sauvignon blancs match well the atmosphere and the open-grilled and baked kingklip, hake, crayfish, snoek, steenbras and Cape salmon fish braai, whatever’s in season. The traditional stickily-sweet sweet potato somehow works well as one of the accompaniments.

In 2009, the South African wine industry celebrated its 350^th birthday, but it’s the freshness of the last decade that’s getting folk really excited as producers carve out a new identity for the 21^st century.

This article was inspired by a visit to the Cape winelands in March 2009, sponsored by Wines of South Africa.

In the last decade (barely the blink of an eye in viticultural terms) something’s been going on around the coastline of South Africa’s Western Cape, where the winelands are concentrated.

Sauvignon blanc at Cederberg

The old bureaucratic control boards were disbanded in the mid 1990s, which meant that suddenly, growers could plant grapes wherever they wanted, and there’s been a rush to the coasts to find the most maritime-influenced climates possible. 

The variety being planted in these cooler coastal regions is mostly sauvignon blanc. And the flavours in the wines suggest the Kiwis will finally have some competition on the cards for their Marlborough ‘savvies’.  

South Africa might be warm to hot in climatic terms, but a combination of moderating maritime and near-maritime influence, plus some skilful management of the vine canopy to shade grape bunches from the heat, while allowing in light for photosynthesis, has resulted in wines with a range of flavours from green-grassy herbaceousness, through zesty citrus fruit, figs and asparagus, into more tropical guava and passionfruit flavours, all with a steely core of freshening acidity vibrating up their backbones.  Exactly the sort of stuff we love in the UK, and can’t get enough of from the Kiwis.

One of the things that is making these flavours possible is the cold ocean current called the Benguela current which runs up the west coast of Africa.  It’s travelled all the way from the Antarctic. This helps cool down temperatures near the coast.  Fryer’s Cove vineyard, 300km north of Cape Town, is right on the windy Atlantic coast, just a few hundred metres from the ocean, while the Darling Hills, about 75km north of Cape Town, are more like 10km inland, and wine producers say they still get cooling westerly breezes coming off the ocean.

Elsewhere, Elgin is about an hour’s drive east of Cape Town. It’s a natural bowl, surrounded on all sides by mountains, and is a heartland of apple and pear production.  And now wine. With lots of sauvignon blanc. Elgin Vintners’ sauvignon blanc comes from fruit grown on the undulating valley floor, while Iona’s vineyards are higher on the southern-boarding mountain slopes, nearest to the ocean and both have pristine flavours.

Wind here is also a big feature helping to cool the temperatures, with the typical afternoon southwesterlies cooling the vine climate by 4-5°C up to 15km inland, depending on the local topography, which is pretty hilly. As the land heats up during the day, air rises, pulling in cool breezes off the oceans. But, to liberally mix metaphors, the proof of the pudding is in the wine: see what your think of these:

Majestic: Neil Ellis Sauvignon Blanc 2007 Groenekloof, Darling Hills £9.99 when you buy 2 bottles
Stone, Vine & Sun : Fryer’s Cove, Sauvignon Blanc 2008, West Coast, £9.95  
Tesco: Elgin Vintners Sauvignon Blanc 2008, Elgin, £9.99
Waitrose: Iona Sauvignon Blanc 2008 Elgin, £9.99

Democracy liberated the industry from the shackles of the past including trade sanctions, which also meant that high quality new planting material was hard to come by, and a brandy-distillation focused grape growing trade, rather than light wine. International travel, the lifeblood of cross-fertilisation of ideas and skills in a global wine industry had also been inhibited prior to democracy.

A defining moment occurred two years prior to democracy with the ending of the quota system.

Cederberg vineyards

To backtrack momentarily, at the turn of the 20^th century, the South African wine industry was in poor state of affairs with both wine surplus and attacks of devastating phylloxera. So in 1918, the KWV co-operative was set up to stabilise the industry. A quota system was later introduced which limited the number of vines a producer could grow. This meant the KWV, as operators of the quota, controlled the size of crop, the grape varieties planted, and the location of grapes.  It was not something that encouraged quality improvement, because minimum prices were guaranteed for grape products.

Abandoning the quota system in 1992 allowed a freer market to develop. Vines could be planted anywhere someone thought they could successfully make wine. The playing field was levelled further in 1997, when the KWV was privatised.

As a result, in the last 15 years, new wine-growing regions have been popping up all over the place in the Cape, outside the traditional areas of Stellenbosch, Paarl, Constantia and Robertson. For example, Cederberg, high up in the mountains; Lambert’s Bay, tight against the Atlantic coast; Elim, tight on the Indian Ocean; and further along the Indian Ocean coast, Plettenberg Bay, a good 500km as the crow flies from Cape Town. 

Generally, given that South Africa has a warm to hot Mediterranean climate, growers have sought less warm areas, and apple-growing territory such as that at Elgin, was an early opportunity. Those coastal pockets up the Atlantic and across the Indian Oceans are proving increasingly popular.

As a result of the shifting vineyards, the number of Wine of Origin (WO) designations has doubled since 1990, now heading towards 100.  The WO system specifies that fruit must come from the origin stated on the label, providing a guarantee of origin to consumers, much as the appellation system does in Europe.

Yet all this flight from traditional areas has not seen a massive expansion in vineyard area. Over the last five years the total vineyard area has settled at just over 100,000 hectares (ha). France, by comparison has 825, 000 ha, Australia 174,000 ha.

Diemersdal

However the structure of the country’s vineyard has changed almost beyond recognition, in terms of the grape varieties planted and the age of the vines. Twenty years ago, white grapes accounted for 85% of the vineyard area.  Now they account for just 56% as red grapes have taken firm root in the Cape. The top four reds – cabernet sauvignon, shiraz, merlot and pinotage between them are 35% of the total vineyard, though in the last few years only shiraz plantings are still growing, and then only just. Cabernet sauvignon plantings have increased three-fold, and shiraz plantings have gone from a just 1% 20 years ago to 10% today, an extraordinary increase, but one well borne-out by the warm and hot Mediterranean climate that favours shiraz/syrah. Even merlot plantings have doubled in the last decade.

On the white front, chenin blanc, which in 1990 represented a third of the vineyard area, is now less than 20%. And very much flavour of the moment, sauvignon blanc, plantings have doubled to nearly 10%.  It is the historical, less good quality grape varieties that are being ripped out, the likes of crouchen, palomino, clairette, and lesser known varieties, to make way for international grape varieties that have a considerably better export potential.

All this uprooting and replanting in recent years means about 50% of the South Africa’s vineyard is less than 10 years old, which by old world standards, is thought to be significant tipping point for improved wine quality. So things augur well for those producers already doing well from their young fruit.

A decade ago, the buzz was around Cape Blends – usually Bordeaux blends (cabernet sauvignon/merlot) with some of the Cape’s indigenous pinotage blended in. Warwick Estate’s Three Cape Ladies (the current 2005 vintage being 38% cabernet sauvignon; 25% pinotage; 22% shiraz and 15% merlot) is one of my favourite examples of the genre.

Now, the buzz is all around pristine, grassy-tropical-combo sauvignon blanc from relatively cooler, coastal sites, as well as around different expressions of shiraz/syrah, according to location. There’s been some ‘rediscovery’ of older vineyard pockets, for example around Paardeberg and Malmesbury in Swartland, about 70km north and a tad east of Cape Town, where the likes of Sadie Family Vinyards, Scali, The Observatory and Lammershoek lie, alongside the Swartland co-op which has being going for more than 60 years. 

Luddite, Bot River

Additionally the opening up of newer, less warm, sites is offering a stylistic difference, with more black pepper spice notes, floral violets and blackcurrant fruit. Cederberg first planted shiraz in 1999 and have developed a nice reputation for theirs. Diemersdal in Durbanville have a good commercial version. Luddite in Walker Bay only makes shiraz and their 2005 is a big, nicely-structured wine. It’s still evolving, but some producers are adopting the ‘syrah’ moniker for the ‘cooler’ examples and ‘shiraz’ for the warmer, full-blooded versions.

So much else is still evolving in viticulturally emancipated South Africa.

This article was inspired by a visit to the region in March 2009 sponsored by Wines of South Africa.

Bordeaux wine region

Bordeaux is the most prestigious and the finest wine producing area in the world. The eponymous region in south west France is the home of some of the most sought-after “collectors’ items” in the world, as well much good value everyday wine. It produces 14% of all French wines, 65-70 million cases, which is more than Romania.

HISTORY

The region is one of the oldest wine growing regions, and there is a long trading history with England. A 12^th century royal marriage gave to England much territory in south west France, and favourable trading terms.  

During the 17^th and 18^th centuries, long after the land reverted to French ownership, entrepreneurs from several countries such as Ireland, Britain, the Netherlands and Germany moved to Bordeaux to trade and export wine to their home countries.   

It was the Dutch, with their excellent land-drainage skills who, by draining the marshy land of the Médoc in the mid 17^th century, exposed their beautifully draining gravels, laying the foundation for the modern Bordeaux wine region – the left bank -  and its top quality wines. 

Bordeaux reds are often called claret in the UK as a linguistic artefact of our centuries-long historical trading association. 

GEOGRAPHY AND CLIMATE

The Bordeaux region covers over 120,000 hectares (300,000 acres). The climate is similar, but a bit warmer to southern England: temperate, with mild winters, damp springs and rainy autumns.    

The region is sliced into three big chunks by the Gironde estuary, which is fed by the rivers Dordogne and Garonne.  The Entre-deux-mers is akin to the bread-basket of Bordeaux producing much everyday red and white wine.  But it is the left bank of the Médoc that lays claim to the finest red wines of Margaux, St. Estephe, St Julien and Pauillac, and the right bank to the highly-prized reds of Pomerol and St. Emilion. 

The best dry whites come from the Graves, immediately south of the city of Bordeaux, and the most famous sweet whites just south of that, in Sauternes and Barsac.                                            

Bordeaux has a total of 57 appellations — a specific, delimited area of land, the name of which appears on the label.   These appellations generally avoid land that is of too poor quality to grow grapes such as low-lying badly drained land, or soils that are too sandy. 

To qualify for an appellation all the grapes must be grown within the borders of the appellation. So, for a wine labelled ‘Bordeaux Appellation Contrôlée’ the grapes can come from anywhere within the 120,000 hectares.  But there are fewer than 800 ha of vines in Pomerol, which makes average production per grower a tiny 2,500 to 3,000 cases.  As a point of comparison, in the UK, we buy over 2.5 million cases of Aussie wine Jacob’s Creek to drink at home.

Another criterion for appellation is the use of specific grape varieties.  For Bordeaux, all red wines are made from cabernet sauvignon, merlot and cabernet franc (sometimes with sprinklings of petit verdot and malbec).  All white wines, both sweet and dry, are made from differing proportions of sauvignon blanc and semillon, sometimes with a little muscadelle.  Bordeaux wines cannot be made from any other grape varieties. As a comparison, the appellations of Burgundy must be just pinot noir for reds and chardonnay for whites.

GRAPES AND BLENDS – RED

Pauillac vineyards

It is the red wines of Bordeaux that have claimed their place in wine immortality. They account for the lion’s share of production, about 90%. Over the centuries the Bordelais have found that blending their grape varieties can add additional layers of complexity and palate profile to a wine, with the best aspects of one grape variety complementing the best aspects of another.  For the classic cabernet sauvignon/merlot blend the deeply coloured, tannic and richly blackcurrant-fruited cabernet sauvignon can be softened and rounded a little by the more supple tannins of merlot and its additional flavours added of earth, plum and warm bread.  

Within this classic blend there is a useful distinction to be found between the left bank and right bank.  The Médoc tends to have a higher proportion of cabernet sauvignon in the blend, maybe 60-70%, which lends a stronger, more structured profile, with more tannic grip.  The remainder will be 20-35% merlot, up to 15% cabernet franc, plus a little “seasoning” from those other two grape varieties.

Right bank wines tend to have a higher proportion of merlot (~60%) and cabernet franc (~30%) which offer a softer, rounder, more approachable and supple profile, supported by the strength of about 10% cabernet sauvignon. Right bank wines are often considered an easier introduction to people unfamiliar with the wines of Bordeaux.  And in terms of value, some of the best reds are to be found in the lesser known right bank appellations such as Bourg, Blaye, Fronsac and Côtes de Castillon.

GRAPES AND BLENDS – WHITE

White Bordeaux wines are made from semillon and sauvignon blanc, and the sweet styles may have a little muscadelle also.  For dry whites at the lower end of the market – likely from the Entre-deux-Mers – the best may be varietal sauvignon blanc, unoaked, aiming at primary fruit expression, an aperitif style.  At the top end dry whites are generally blends and are serious, overtly oaked, creamily-textured wines needing appropriate food pairing to show their best colours.  The emphasis for this style is on structure and potential longevity rather than immediate fruity appeal and the price reflects this, often £20 and more. 

The sweet white wines of Sauternes and other appellations such as Barsac, Saint-Croix-du-Mont and Cadillac are made in a very different way.  Some grapes are left on the vine after the ‘dry wine’ harvest.  As autumn approaches and with it the risk of rain, the mornings in places close to the river may be misty which brings a beneficial mould, botrytis. Botrytis wraps itself around each intact berry, drawing water from it, thereby concentrating all the other grape constituents.  So long as the afternoons are dry all is well, but if the autumn is damp and rainy the mould can turn nasty and cause the remaining crop to rot, by splitting the berry skin and exposing the pulp. Semillon has thin skins which are susceptible to this magical, risk-laden botrytis.  Blending with sauvignon blanc, which has naturally high acidity, balances the final wine.

CLASSIFICATION

Almost unique to the wine-producing world, a few Bordeaux properties are classified.  About 200 properties are classified, among the ten thousand growers, and it is these ‘top’ châteaux that provide the global benchmark.

The 1855 Médoc classification is the most widely known (see it here).  It was drawn up for the Universal Exposition in Paris of the same year.  Market prices of the day formed the basis of a list of producers whose wines consistently attained the highest prices.  This group of 60-odd châteaux were ranked into 5 groups – first growth through to fifth growth – what are now known as the ‘classed growths’. 

Other properties, such as those in the Graves, Sauternes and St. Emilion, have also been classified, bringing the total up to 200.

REPUTATION AND QUALITY

At their best and classic expression, the prestigious appellations (containing those classified properties) of St. Estèphe, Pauillac, St. Julien, Margaux, Graves, Pomerol, St. Emilion show subtly different flavour profiles, which reflect the particular site where the grapes have grown.  This is the essence of ‘terroir’ or the ’sense of place’ that good quality wines display.

The vast majority of wine is produced in the less prestigious appellations – the Entre-Deux-Mers and areas lying outside the key names.  Some of these wines are bottled at the property and sold as “petit châteaux” wine under its specific appellation and Château name.  Much is sold in bulk to merchant firms which blend various wines into brands e.g. Mouton Cadet, Numéro 1, Sirius, Calvet Classic, sold under the most generic appellation of Bordeaux Appellation Contrôlée.  The advantage here  is that the merchants are able buy fruit and wine from all the Bordeaux vineyards with the aim of finding the best quality they can to fit into the price of their brands.  This is a vital part of the Bordeaux market, and a way of potentially offering consistent and reliable wine styles for consumers to try the region’s wines.

We had port and lemon in the 70s. We had rum and coke in the 80s. We had gin and tonic in the 90s. And in the ‘noughties’ we have New Zealand sauvignon blanc as our aperitivo du jour. And even more than that, it has to be Marlborough sauvignon blanc, from the northern bit of the South Island. 

Marlborough Vineyards

More than two-thirds of all the wine the UK imports from New Zealand is sauvignon blanc. Which is more than 29 million bottles of the stuff. But what is it that makes Marlborough sauvignon blanc so great? 

The smell of the wine should be enticing, enlivening, zesty, full of summer grass mowings, pink grapefruit, tropical guava and mango fruit, enough to make you want to dive into the glass and take an obviously moderate slurp, letting the bracing, racing acidity explode your taste buds into action. Intense, pungent summer flavours wake up the senses and move you into the pre-dining moments of wind-down and relaxation. 

Consistency is part of Marlborough’s magic with sauvignon blanc, but it’s not true to say that they all taste the same.  However, by the time you’ve judged, blind, 100 in three days (alongside other varieties), as I did in one of the competitions earlier this year, it can be tricky coming up with new ways to describe the flavours. For high quality there are indeed many flavour as well as tactile and quality differences:  elegance, length and intensity of flavours are big deciders, as well as a richness and lushness of primary fruit without sugar-sweetness that combines with the racy, zesty acidity to jump-start the palate. 

Marlborough sauvignon blanc is usually unoaked, which adds to its aperitif appeal, but sometimes just a smidge of oak can add a bit more dimension, texture and creaminess without imparting active oak flavours. You won’t even notice the technique has been used in the good examples, except you may find yourself having the wine with the starter instead of as an aperitif. 

Try these for size, two from the mainstream and one from Salisbury-based on-line New Zealand specialists ‘winethief.co.uk’. Normally the rule of thumb for Marlborough sauvignon blanc is to drink the youngest available.  2008s have only recently come into the market, but their sauvignon blanc, a 2006, has put on a little weight (yes, some wines do this too, with a little (bottle) age!) which adds an attractive dimension to the flavour profile. 

Majestic: Nautilus Estate Marlborough Sauvignon blanc 2008 £9.99
M&S: Flaxbourne Sauvignon blanc 2008, Marlborough, NZ, £7.99
www.winethief.co.uk Two Rivers Marlborough Wairau Sauvignon Blanc 2006 £7.99