A little premature for the weather, but my wine tasting has of late been dominated by white wines. This is more or less the time that most sauvignon blancs are released, and so it should also be a good time to reassess last year’s vintages, should there be any truth to the idea that sauvignon can age.
I’ve always supported the notion of aged sauvignon, almost instinctively, for I dislike the often over-bearing acidity that the new vintages show. With all the hoopla around the Cape’s ability to make impressive sauvignons, I think there have been precious few producers who have made sure that the wine is balanced and drinkable in its youth. Many of them need that year of bottle age to bring the fruit to the fore and soften the acid attack.
Recent examples that have impressed are the Steenberg Reserve 2006, yet again a stunner, though you will have to pay top rand (about R120); the Diemersdal Single Vineyard 2006, a new release from this Durbanville estate with beautiful palate weight; and another Durbanville wine, the Bloemendal “Suider Terras” 2005, which, after a year in bottle, is only getting better.
The reason I look for balance in my sauvignon has another motivation: we seldom drink our sauvignon blanc with food, treating it more as an aperitif wine to be enjoyed on its own. Its freshness and direct flavours even to the point of being obvious and one-dimensional have become benefits in an age when we enjoy simplicity in our flavours, where we want a “hit” of sugar, spice or freshness, and don’t feel like taking the time to have to interrogate what we eat or drink.
So where does this leave the “white blend”? This is a style of wine that could include Graça but is usually used to denote upper-end whites, often with a wood-matured component. As white wines that display far more complexity than most single variety wines, they are by nature food-complementary, but this also means that they are less “obvious” and easy to understand.
You cannot be sure about the form they will take: they could be sauvignon-semillon blends; sauvignon-chenin blends; or as diverse as viognier, chenin, grenache blanc and chardonnay blends. However, at an August tasting of some of these “great whites” it was clear that winemakers are very excited about the category. For Vergelegen’s winemaker, André van Rensburg, they should be the cellar’s white that matures for at least ten years, and a wine that’s far better than the sum of its parts.
So if you are looking for something less obvious in your white, ask your wine shop to recommend a white blend or two.
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