Sauvignon Blanc
While Chardonnay skews toward full-bodied wines, Sauvignon Blanc makes wines that tend to be lithe and light on their feet. Its calling cards are an herbal scent and tart, citrus-driven flavors.
The best regions for Sauvignon are the Loire Valley in France, where it takes on a firm, minerally depth; New Zealand, where it recalls the tartness of gooseberries and, sometimes, an almost green, jalapeño-like note; California, where it pairs crisp grassiness and a melon-like flavor; and South Africa, particularly the Cape region, where it combines the minerality of France with the rounder fruit of California.
Sauvignon Blanc Flavor Profile
Typically a light to medium-bodied, crisp and refreshing white wine with notable acidity, Sauvignon Blanc offers a fairly wide range of flavors. From herbal taste sensations to veggie, and from flavors of grass, hay and mineral tones to a citrus and tropical flavor mix, Sauvignon Blanc displays a very unique wine tasting adventure.
Sauvignon Blanc has a distinctive taste profile. Though you may wince to learn its flavor is often described as "cat's pee on a gooseberry bush," take heart: you may actually enjoy this herbaceous, green fruit quality. Note the other common descriptors for the wine listed below.
* citrus fruits (grapefruit, lemon, lime)
* melon
* pear
* pineapple
* lemongrass
* herbs
* green vegetables
(asparagus, bell pepper, green bean)
* freshly cut grass or hay
* fig
* toast
* gunflint
Sauvignon Blanc Food Pairing
Sauvignon Blanc is a very food-friendly wine and terrific for appetizers such as artichoke dip, veggie dishes or dips, garlic or Italian seasonings in creamy sauces, fragrant salads - like Greek, Caesar or Garden, Thai food, fish (sushi), poultry and the list goes on.
Sauvignon Blanc is a great wine to serve with food! As a light- to medium-bodied wine, it happily belongs at the beginning of a meal, setting the stage for the fuller-bodied wines to come. Its high acid and fresh, piercing style are a fantastic match for many first courses such as soups, salads, and appetizers.
Sauvignon Blanc also works well with foods that are difficult to pair wine with, like green vegetables and spicy dishes. The naturally herbaceous quality of the wine makes it delicious with fresh herbs. A high natural acidity enables it to stand up to foods with higher acidity, like goat cheese, tomatoes, and yogurt. A wine with less acidity would taste flabby in comparison.
Sauvignon Blanc teams well with light fish, shellfish, salads and green vegetables, and it's a perfect aperitif, too
With naturally high acidity, Sauvignon Blanc is always tangy, tart, nervy, racy, or zesty, and this character pervades even sweet and dessert versions, keeping them from being cloying and sticky-tasting.
Dry-style Sauvignon or Fumé Blancs are very versatile in accompanying foods and can handle components such as tomatoes, bell peppers, cilantro, raw garlic, smoked cheeses or other pungent flavors that would clash with or overpower many Chardonnays and almost all other dry whites. In fact, Sauvignon Blanc is probably the best dry white wine to accompany the greatest variety of foods.
Sauvignon Blanc Grape History
Sauvignon blanc is a green-skinned grape variety which originates from the Bordeaux region of France. The grape gets its name from the French word sauvage ("wild") and blanc ("white") due to its early origins as an indigenous grape in South West France.[1] It is now planted in many of the world's wine regions, producing a crisp, dry, and refreshing white varietal wine. Conversely, the grape is also a component of the famous dessert wines from Sauternes and Barsac. Sauvignon blanc is widely cultivated in France, Chile, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Brazil and California
The Sauvignon blanc grape traces its origins to western France in the Loire Valley and Bordeaux Regions. At some point in the 18th century, the vine paired with Cabernet Franc to parent the Cabernet Sauvignon vine in Bordeaux. In the 19th century, plantings in Bordeaux were often interspersed with Sauvignon vert (In Chile, known as Sauvignonasse) as well as the Sauvignon blanc pink mutation Sauvignon gris. Prior to the phylloxera epidemic, the insect plague which devastated French vineyards in the 19th century, these interspersed cuttings were transported to Chile where the field blends are still common today. Despite the similarity in names, Sauvignon blanc has no known relation to the Sauvignon Rosé mutation found in the Loire Valley of France.
The first cuttings of Sauvignon blanc were brought to California by Charles Wetmore, founder of Cresta Blanca Winery, in the 1880s. These cuttings came from the Sauternes vineyards of Château d'Yquem. The plantings produced well in Livermore Valley. Eventually, the wine acquired the alias of "Fumé Blanc" in California by promotion of Robert Mondavi in 1968. The grape was first introduced to New Zealand in the 1970s as an experimental planting to blended with Müller-Thurgau.
Sauvignon Blanc Around the World
Traditionally, quality Sauvignon Blanc was from the Loire Valley in France, where it was labeled as Sancerre or Pouilly-Fume. Today, this lively grape is cultivated all over the world, with great wine coming from California (where it is also called Fume Blanc), Washington, Chile, South Africa, Australia, Austria, and New Zealand.
No Sauvignon Blanc tastes like all of the flavor descriptions listed above. Each wine you try might have three or four of those flavors, but no one Sauvignon Blanc has them all. Though the winemaker's choices are important - especially decisions regarding oak usage and pruning of the vines - the greatest stylistic variations among the wines are regional.
All grapes are affected by the climate, soil, and location in which they are grown. The French call this "terroir," and it refers to the intimate connection between the land and the wine. Sauvignon Blanc has a unique taste profile in the different places it is cultivated. Let's talk about climate differences first. Grapes don't ripen as fully in cooler climates as they do in warm climates. A cooler climate, like the Loire Valley, produces wine with high acidity and low to moderate alcohol. The resulting wine will tend to have lean, crisp flavors like grapefruit, lemon, and grass. In a warmer climate like California, grapes achieve a greater degree of ripeness, which means more alcohol and less acidity in the wine. The flavor profile for this warm climate wine is richer, with pear, melon, fig, and, if oak is used, toast flavors.
Generally speaking, Sauvignon Blanc thrives in cooler climates. It is a vigorous variety in any climate, though, which requires the winemaker to trim and prune the vines and leaves so that the grapes are exposed to the sun. This is called "canopy management." If the winemaker doesn't give the grapes and leaves adequate access to sunlight, the wine can take on a strongly vegetative note (think canned asparagus).
A region's soil can also influence the flavor of the wine. For example, the Loire Valley's chalky soil creates a flinty, mineral taste in the wine. On marl soil, in New Zealand, the wine achieves bright grapefruit flavors. And in Bordeaux (where Sauvignon Blanc is used for blending with Semillon), the gravelly soil yields herbaceous notes in the wine.