It’s a fashion business. Over the last twenty-five years wine fashion has moved in waves. Our tastes have moved from a prolonged affair with Ros̩ (Mateus in particular), Liebfraumilch (Black Tower, Blue Nun, etc etc) and Moselle (remember the Maroomba and the Coolibah) to chardonnay and beyond. In that time we have flirted with traminer, dabbled with sparkling red, let cabernet sauvignon fall entirely out of favour and become besotted with shiraz. We’re now letting pinot gris and pinot grigio play with our affections, trying to figure out viognier and developing a taste for sangiovese. We’re also quite prepared to leave riesling as the perpetual wallflower but we have come to accept the inadequacies and inconsistency of pinot noir. But there’s another, massive, total change in fashion that just five years ago would have been impossible to predict to this extent: our complete and total capitulation to anything containing anything remotely resembling sauvignon blanc. With 44% of its entire vineyard area singly devoted to this grape, New Zealand has both driven this trend and profited most from it. It’s done so by providing huge volumes of pungent, grassy and intensely flavoured wine that has wowed and won the popular palate. Australian winemakers have also benefited, although they typically need to add the freshness, length and acidity of semillon to enhance the typically quite broad and juicy sauvignon blanc grown in this country, and to add the grassiness that people today typically expect from this wine. This year, sauvignon blanc and its blends will actually surpass chardonnay as Australia’s most popular white wine. All of which is well and good for the countless people who are and will be entirely satisfied by what they’re drinking each time they untwist a screwcap and slosh out yet another glass of Marlborough sauvignon blanc or Margaret River sauvignon blanc semillon. Trouble is, it’s rather unlikely that any such people would have read this far into a wine column. If you’ve made it this far, I believe it’s fair to assume that you’re one of what is frankly a wine drinking minority, who wants something more to drink than the same old flavour, the same old texture and the same old grassiness. You are, quite clearly, more than the average herbivore. I’ll also assume that you enjoy the concept of what sauvignon blanc could be, but rarely find these days. You find it difficult to drink an entire glass, let alone half a bottle, of sweetish, sweaty and confectionary sauvignon blanc (you might also be old enough to make the connection between these wines and the Liebfraumilch of yesteryear) but you still get genuinely excited by the raciness, the tightness, the chalky texture and briney finish of the very best sauvignon blancs, be they from the Loire Valley in France, the Awatere Valley in Marlborough or even the Adelaide Hills in South Australia. I certainly do. So, where do you turn? While most Kiwi sauvignon blanc these days can fairly and squarely be lumped into the ‘beverage’ category, I am still greatly impressed by the wines of a few makers. In no particular order, these are Vavasour (very taut and mineral), Spy Valley, Fairhall Downs, Clos Henri, Framingham, Dog Point, Mahi, Craggy Range, Wairau River, The Crossings, Isabel Estate and Seresin. Furthermore, I’m deeply enamoured with Villa Maria, and any sauvignon blanc of theirs from Marlborough or else with a ‘Reserve’ tag is typically exceptional. Pound for pound, it’s hard to imagine a better wine company anywhere. While these makers create a diversity of styles, it’s clear to me that they’re doing more than most of the others to focus on their vineyards, which is really where the making of the typical unwooded style of sauvignon blanc really begins and ends. Only the best and best-managed sites will deliver the raciness, the brightness and the intensity sought after in the finest sauvignon blanc, delivering the focus, the essential freshness and acidity that punctuates the classic examples. Other than the Adelaide Hills, few Australian wine regions could really list sauvignon blanc amongst their leading varieties. Here, makers like Shaw & Smith, Alta, Starvedog Lane, SC Pannell, Nepenthe and Ravenswood Lane create taut, flavoursome and varietally correct wines of genuine drinkability and appeal. Two emerging makers in south eastern Victoria are also worthy of mention, since their wines capture unusual focus and minerality for Australian sauvignon blancs: Chestnut Hill and Cannibal Creek. Led by the finest from Margaret River, which has virtually copyrighted the style, Western Australia has become the Australian epicentre for tight, tropical and intensely flavoured blends of sauvignon blanc and semillon, lifted by a typical grassiness and wrapped in bracing acidity. The best makers of this style are Cullen, Cape Mentelle, Vasse Felix, Voyager Estate, Pierro (the LTC), Evans & Tate, Suckfizzle and Leeuwin Estate. Cullen now produces two rather contrasting blends, from its Cullen and Mangan vineyards (see below). A few winemakers are mastering a richer, barrel-fermented and heavily worked expression of these varieties that complements their fruit qualities with smoky, creamy, cheesy and occasionally meaty complexity, typically taking just a little away from their grassy and more herbal highlights. These wines are hard to make, since it’s all too easy to let these artefact-like influences entirely dominate the fruit, compromising flavour and freshness. The best examples from this part of the world are Cloudy Bay’s Te Koro, Cape Mentelle’s Walcliffe Reserve, Geoff Weaver’s Ferus, Domaine A’s Lady A, Mount Mary’s Triolet, Yarra Yarra’s white blend and The Lane’s Gathering. And, if you really like these, you might then do yourself an enormous favour by opening an all-too-rare bottle of Domaine des Aubuisi’res’ Silex by Didier Dagueneau in the Loire. Then the penny will drop for sure!
