It’s not often that I would even contemplate ordering a bottle of Australian sauvignon blanc. Most of our best sauvignon blanc seems to be blended very successfully with semillon, and from my vantage point in Melbourne the vineyards of Marlborough are even closer to me than those of Margaret River. A small number of Australian sauvignon blancs from our presently recognised wine regions, the Adelaide Hills for isntance, give the Kiwis a run for their money. Most of the time, however, we’re chasing their tail. It is possible, however, that we are still to find where in Australia sauvignon blanc actually performs best. One such location could be the granite foothills of Tynong North, south and east of Melbourne, and significantly south of the Yarra Valley. This is a cool place, with deeply weathered soils and gentle slopes. Its key vineyard is called Cannibal Creek, which its owners believe to be a corruption of an original pastoral selection of Crown land called ‘Connabul Run’. Cannibal Creek’s Sauvignon Blanc 2004 is a vibrant, herbal and deeply fragrant wine, packed with the intense gooseberry, passionfruit and blackberry flavours of fine sauvignon blanc and shaped by refreshing, minerally acids that lend both definition and punctuation. It’s an unwooded style, and by its very description sounds like a Kiwi. It tastes likes a very good New Zealand sauvignon blanc and was something of an unexpected star at a tasting I conducted of Australia’s 40 best wines for Japan’s leading wine authority at Sydney’ Bathers Pavilion. If you’re familiar with Bathers’, all I need to say is that here is a wine that cruises all the way through a Bathers’ lunch. If you’re not, there is always time. The wine sells for $18 per bottle from the winery’s website at www.cannibalcreek.com.au.
