Sauvignon blanc never really had a chance to become the next chardonnay, no matter what the marketing boffins of the 1980s might have thought. Chardonnay’s star began its rise in the late ’70s, courtesy of what we now regard as wines that were lacking any sophistication whatever, grossly over-wooded and perfectly unable to be cellared with any confidence. Yet despite this, everyone from Premiers of New South Wales to the true chardonnay socialist had to drink it – or at least had to be seen to be drinking it. Everyone waited for the bubble to burst, but it hasn’t yet. Neither does it show any signs that might encourage any proponent of hitherto unfashionable varieties such as viognier, rousanne or muller-thurgeau that their time might be approaching. For the first time in the history of Australian wine, more chardonnay was crushed for quality wine than was Rhine riesling in 1992. This year I expect the trend will continue. This, however, is a story of sauvignon blanc. Now that I am able to speak with perfectly uncluttered 20:20 hindsight, sauvignon blanc is too simple, too straightforward and just not mouthfilling enough a wine to tackle chardonnay in its many guises. To be sure, the best sauvignon blancs are utterly remarkable, but the quality differential between these wines and those generally available between $5 and $8 is an ever-increasing gulf. Give me $5 to $8 to spend on a bottle of white and apart from the occasional wine like the Saltram Classic, sauvignon blanc just isn’t a viable contender. Let’s tale a look at the quality end, the action end of the market. Getting to know sauvignon blanc is easy, for there are two principal styles of dry white into which it is made, largely dependent on whether or not the wine is given significant time in small oak casks. What’s a significant time? A couple of months or more. Many fresh, zesty sauvignons have a small component dipped into casks during or after fermentation for a short time, just for the benefit of the extra complexity this imparts, but I don’t refer to this as a major flavoural or structural influence. Most of the “name brands” of sauvignon blanc fall into the former category. Wines like Cloudy Bay, Katnook Estate, Leeuwin Estate, Yarra Ridge, Mount Hurtle, Wirra Wirra and Bridgewater Mill. Their winemakers readily admit it, so I don’t mind saying that these wines represent a simple conversion of intense, ripe fruit flavour and fresh acids into wine. Factors that influence wine quality are the ripeness and flavour of the fruit before picking, the coolness of the fermentation (which retains the grape’s unique flavours) and the quickness with which these wines are ultimately put into bottle. There’s not a lot of scope for winemaking originality and flair here – most of the work is done in the vineyard, as the winemakers themselves concede. That’s also why the best examples of these wines, as my list indicates, come from the better vineyards in cooler regions where the grapes are able to ripen later and accumulate more flavour. What these wines share is the remarkable passionfruit/tropical/ gooseberry flavour of ripe sauvignon blanc, utterly mouthfilling and vibrant, finishing with a cleansing and slightly tart acidity. The other highly publicised flavour of sauvignon blanc derives from a list of vegetative possibilities, which vary in their intensity between the outdoor pong of freshly-cut grass, to more intense vegetative flavours including asparagus, all the way to a pungent, heady and socially questionable aroma, more than slightly suggestive of tom cat pee. Australian sauvignon blancs, however, err less in this direction than do a majority of their New Zealand counterparts. So, if someone thrusts a mawkish and catty sample of sauvignon in front of your nose, place your fiver on it being yet another new arrival from the land of the long, white Cloudy Bay. Scientists have ascribed this character to a family of trace molecules called methyl pyrazines, which are also present in green peppers amongst other things. So, if you have New Zealanders coming to dinner (and English also, for they seem to love the stuff), immerse a small cut of capsicum into your bottle of cheap Australian sauvignon blanc overnight beforehand. After all, wine is meant to be fun. All the top sauvignon blanc vineyards in New Zealand and Australia are paying much more attention to the amount of foliage they allow to grow around the developing bunches of grapes. Most are regularly trimmed to keep shading and foliage down to an absolute minimum, which dramatically reduces the methyl pyrazine influence. I really don’t mind a touch of herbaceousness in my sauvignon blanc but I do need to be left with the feeling that fruit is driving the wine, not some extraneous extract of cabbage or cat. The other type of sauvignon blanc is typified by the Fume Blancs of Tim Knappstein, Taltarni, Penfolds, Rosemount (although this wine now has less oak than in previous years) and the brilliant sauvignon blanc of Cullens. These are chunkier, richer wines with more roundness, softness and grip, achieved by fermenting portions of the wine with grape solids and/or in contact with oak (which does indeed mean oak shavings on occasions) and by maturing them for a decent spell in small casks after fermentation. Although there is no legal guarantee that wines labelled as ‘Fume Blanc’ are made from sauvignon blanc – all or in part – this is what the name is supposed to indicate. Check the back label, then, before buying. To balance their extra richness and texture, these wines are more laid-back in their fruit, typically less herbaceous, and show softer acids than the non-wooded styles. Consequently they are made more as wines to be used around a meal, rather than the ritzy, often dominating nature of the other wines, some of which can be so overpowering that a satisfactory match with food would challenge even the most experienced dating service. Indeed, such is the concern with which individuals like the Californian winemaking superstar Robert Mondavi address this issue that in a bid to ensure their compatibility with some dish or other, they occasionally run the risk of emasculating his sauvignon blancs almost beyond recognition. But if that’s really going to worry you, you’d best not bother with sauvignon blanc at all. Back to my original point – try chardonnay instead.
