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It’s one of only a few truly different wine styles to come out of the New
World. It’s Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand. Martin looks in
detail at this popular wine type on the afternoon show with Sean Moncreiff on
New Talk 106-108FM this Friday (22/6/07).
Arguably most wine styles
from the New World are based on traditional European models.
They may be a bit fruitier, but when cabernet producers in Napa or
Stellenbosch make a wine, their benchmark is top Bordeaux and when chardonnay
producers in the Adelaide Hills or Carneros aspire to greatness, they test their
wines against White Burgundy.
However when sauvignon blanc
producers in Marlborough at the northern tip of New Zealand’s South Island
look for a benchmark, they don’t turn to Sancerre or Pouilly Fumé in France,
they just go the local bottle shop and pick up something made by their
neighbours. Cloudy Bay has been their iconic model since the mid ‘80s but
today there are a host of others such as Hunters, Jackson Estate, Withers Hills,
Selini, and many, many more making excellent wines.
Classic French Sauvignon
Blanc is restrained and elegant with lightly grassy notes with some gooseberry
and maybe mineral notes. The version the Kiwis brought to the world was a whole
new ball game. Elegance was ditched for exuberance as the wine’s aromsa leap
from the glass, while the palate is mouth fillingly tangy and zingy with an
almost sweet and sour twist. As if we hadn’t noticed already, a research
project under way revealed at a recent seminar that the aromas vary from grassy,
raw green pepper type flavours through to riper notes of gooseberry, tinned
gooseberry, citrus and passion fruit. Curiously for a dry wine, buried in
technical specs on web sites you’ll often find that there is a slight residual
sugar, and slight the equivalent of less than half a teaspoon of sugar per
bottle, presumably to balance the striking acidity.
A few of them use oak but for the most part they are oak free and trade on their
freshness of fruit. The daddy of them, Cloudy Bay, has a small (single figures)
percentage of the wine oak fermented, not to give a note of oak but rather to
enrich the middle palate and sometimes its actually semillon they use rather
than sauvignon.
We all seem to vary as to
whether we like the grassy style or the riper citrus and passion fruit style or
a blend of both. It really is subjective, there is no right taste. I prefer the
riper citrus scented versions and sadly they tend to be the more expensive ones.
It seems the cheaper ones tend to major on green characters. Montana and Oyster
bay are the most widely available and usually has some of this character.
I’ve
picked three wines for the show and we’ll see where they sit in the spectrum
and then I’ll write them up here. They are: Tesco
finest New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, €12.60, Astrolabe
Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc 2006, €15.99 from O’Briens
(via their website too for those not near a branch of theirs) plus the
iconic Cloudy Bay Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc 2006,
€25+ if you can find it in smart Independent off-licences or
restaurants.
Tasted
the wines on the show and at home. The Tesco wine is great value and really
hardly green at all as some lower piced ones are. It has a lot of citrus and
gooseberry and rates 88/100. The astrolabe has a ral lime streak to it, is very
zestry and refreshing and rates 89/100. The cloudy Bay has zesty notes but
mercifully lakes green pepper character. It aslo has some ninerla charcter nad
very good length. Scores 92/100. MM 27/6/07.
listen
live to News Talk 106-108 FM
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