IS YOUR SAUVIGNON BLANC EXUBERANT ENOUGH FOR YOU?
If you are a monomaniacal drinker, drinking only one grape, you’ll pretty soon come to understand all its possibilities.
But no matter how good your taste buds are, no matter how trained nor what intelligence you bring to bear on the wine, if I were to sit you down with, say, a hundred Sauvignon Blanc and record your comments, you would not be able to repeat your scores nor your comments the next day.
This poses something of a problem for wineries in a crowded arena. They desperately need SOMEBODY to notice their wine. Winemakers, if you get them alone, will tell you about an industry practice that is well known but not often acknowledged: building a wine for competition, or for a media tasting. The problem with these wines is when you drink them under more sedate conditions, like say for dinner tonight, you may find the wine stomping on your palate like Godzilla in Tokyo.
Sauvignon Blanc from the New Zealand Marlborough region will taste rather generic to anyone who drinks the wine casually. Other than a certain spectrum from watery to intense, you pretty much get the same wine whether you pay $14 or $22.
If you pick up the current release of Cloudy Bay, the winery that broke through to American consciousness a couple of decades ago, you will find an extraordinarily subtle and balanced wine, for 50 per cent more. It also will never win a competition again. The winemakers these days are actually concentrating on making a fine wine. They typically ferment a small amount of the vintage in oak to add some complexity. The 2016 has a lovely bouquet with some orange flowers, a bit of mineral and citrus. The palate is integrated with a juicy acidity, some herbs and great fruit. In short, a great wine.
Dog Point 2016 Sauvignon Blanc is a wine striving mightily to supplant Cloudy Bay. They’ve priced their wine at the same level as Cloudy Bay. The palate is loaded with pyrazines, those chemicals that make beets and asparagus smell. When sitting in the glass, it gets even funkier. The palate has some real bitters along with the bright acidity and fruit. In any kind of side-by-side tasting, this wine will attack your palate like a WWE takedown. I confronted Sairey with three Marlborough wines including both the Dog Point and Cloudy Bay, she adored the Dog point. Loved it. Couldn’t get enough of it. Me? I thought it overwrought, clumsy and exaggerated.
And this is the point. How exuberant do you like your wines?
There’s another point. How much are you willing to pay? You can usually find a wine that offers similar, though less sensation, than Dog Point (which is to say less subtle than Cloudy Bay) for half the money. Mud House, for example. It scores about three points less in the Wine Spectator, and costs a bit more than half of what you’ll pay for Dog Point.
It too has some pyrazines apparent when you sniff a glass. Fruit dominates the bouquet, with some herbs behind it. The palate is juicy, with tremendous green berry flavours. In short, it is pretty much everything you are looking for in a Sauvignon Blanc, including a 90 point rating by the Wine Spectator.
So over to you. How much exuberance is enough? And what price will you pay for it?