Pouilly Fume 'Les Champlins' 2006

So Mark Cavendish has gone home to rest up ahead of the Olympics, but the Tour goes on, and the new format seems to be keeping things interesting. Today's winner was Cyril Dessel, a French AG2R rider. He used to race for Jelly Belly - I could ride for them.

Time for a French wine. We had a Pouilly Fume 'Les Champlins' 2006. I've cycled through Pouilly sur Loire, it's pretty flat, not like today's stage. 2006 was wet. Very wet. You can just see my panniers wearing their little raincoats outside the Chateau in the centre of town.

The 'Les Champlins' is pretty good despite the rain. It's steely in that mineral way that the Loire has perfected, with some lemon and lime balanced by a weird but good honeyed apricot kinda thing going on. At 12% alcohol it's easy drinking stuff. At about £7.50 it's a reasonable price for this appellation.

Sierra Grande Sauvignon Blanc 2007

I had a random weekday off work recently, there's something delightfully naughty about not going to work when everyone else is. I took advantage by planning in a leisurely lunch, booking a table for three at The Gallery before setting off for a trip arount the Herbert Art Gallery.

The Herbert is undergoing some major improvements with a beautiful new extension and a striking set of ironworks outside connecting the city with its pre-blitz history. The Gallery however wasn't undergoing renovations but had closed its restaurant without mentioning it at booking. We ate in the 'Bistro' - that's the bar - with a restricted pub menu. Having looked forward to a slap-up lunch I was disappointed.

I needn't have been, the food was good - freshly made with good ingredients - and reasonably priced. We had a bottle of Chilean Sierra Grande Sauvignon Blanc 2007 to go with it. It was crisp and fresh, with a smell of grapefruit and grass. One flavour proved difficult to identify, some sort of vegetable, maybe tinned, or boiled. We settled on asparagus, but perhaps with some residual yeast. The wine was good, the company was good, the weather was good. A perfect day off.

Tour Des Vins Sancerre

We found ourselves short of white wine, with drinkers heading in from the north. We needed to stock up, but had neither the time nor the energy to head out for a proper shopping trip. We walked around to 'Bargain Booze' and took out chances.

Beyond the 3 for ��10 offers on Blossom Hill and Echo Falls we found a tiny section of the fridge in the back which had an interesting, if ageing, selection. One of our choices was Bartyon & Guestier's Tour des Vins Sancerre 2004.

It tasted likea basic Sancerre should with a minerally zip and tense fruit, although it seemed to be softening a little. It went well with the salmon and salad we had for tea. At ��8 it was well priced for a corner store Sancerre. It's not a brand I'd actively seek out, but I certainly wouldn't reject it.

Premiere Sauvignon Blanc From The Loire

The Paris-Nice cycle race is underway and men in brightly coloured lycra are whizzing through streets that I bimbled through slowly in the cold rain as I cycled my way along the Loire. One of the things that kept me going was the promise of a decent glass of wine at the end of each day's ride. We mmostly opted for a jug of house white along the way, and in the sections covered by the Pro-teams for the last couple of days that was Sauvignon Blanc.

The closest I've had to those refreshing cold wines back home is Premiere Sauvignon Blanc Vin de Pays du Jardin de la France. It's dry with a high acidity and tastes of fresh grass with grapefruit. The flavour isn't overly intense, and it has a medium body matched by a medium alcohol level. It's about £4 a bottle, which is probably double what we paid in bars for similar quantities fresh out of the tap.

It's not the best Sauvignion Blanc in the world, in France, or even in the Loire, but it tastes like the kind of wine you would be drinking whilst eating your dinner, looking out through the rain at the Loire as it rolls past.

Bales' Choice - The White Stuff

We had a bottle of Bales' Choice 'The White Stuff' 2006 with a game of Twilight Struggle. It was OK. It tasted like a blended white wine, nothing exciting, nothing unpleasant, nothing memorable. It was 50% Chenin Blanc with 35% Chardonnay and 15% Sauvignon Blanc. It came from South Africa. In South Africa I'm sure it would be a really good, well priced, locally produced wine.

It's bright and fresh with good acidity and a mix of cheery melon and chopped fruit.

Here in England that seems a long way for a wine to come to be 'pleasant enough'. We can get those wines from the Loire Valley, a Vin de Pays du Jardin de la France would do the same job without a 5,500 mile trip. There's no good reason for people in South Africa to drink VdP when they can buy perfectly pleasant wines grown and produced locally. The Loire isn't exactly local, but at only 500 miles away it's close enough.

Dancing Bull Sauvignon Blanc

When it comes to Sauvignon Blanc I'm pretty well served by the Loire and New Zealand, but I was given a bottle from California so we gave Dancing Bull Sauvignon Blanc 2004 a go.

It smelled of kiwi fruits, maybe the grapes were pining for a more suitable home. It was off dry with a medium acidity. It tasted of sweet grapefruit and more kiwi fruit, there was something curiously pencil-like about it too as well as fresh squeezed lime juice. Odd.

It's odd, but not unpleasant, kind of like a familiar friend that's put on some weight and got a bit jowly, but is still good company. It was older than I would normally expect a Sauvignon Blanc to be but was purchased this year from a major retailer. It's not a wine I'd choose to buy, but I would accept it as a gift!

Nobilo Five Fathoms Sauvignon Blanc - Easy drinking

Nobilo was the first New Zealand wine I remember drinking. It wasn't a Sauvignon Blanc, it was 'White Cloud', a cheery combination of pedestrian grapes like Muller Thurgau and Chenin Blanc. It was really not bad at a time when Paul Masson, Blue Nun and Black Tower were still fresh memories.

It was therefore an enjoyable retro-moment to try Nobilo 2006 Five Fathoms Sauvignon Blanc which had made its way back on a ferry from France. Pastily pale yellow-green, it was fresh smelling with fresh cut grass and gooseberries. It was dry and crisp. It tasted lemony with under-ripe stone fruit, grapefruit and more grass.

This was a good midweek wine, expect to pay around £6. If the cost comes in above £7 then there's other Marlborough Sauvignons about that are worth trying.

Fond of wine

Sometimes a wine appeals because the label looks nice, sometimes because it comes from somewhere you've been and sometimes because the name is perfect. Sometimes there's a happy nexus.

I had a Claude Lafond Valen��ay Le Clos du Ch��teau 2006 this week. It was a lemon gold with fresh, clean aroma of white peaches. It was just off dry with a crisp acidity. It had a light spiciness as well as the stone fruit. 13% alcohol matched the medium body well. We had it with Chinese food, which was a perfect match.

A blind guess might have placed this as a New World Viognier, rather than a Loire Sauvignon Blanc-Chardonnay. At ��6-7 a bottle it's a lovely, surprising wine.

Sauvignon Blanc

Sauvignon Blanc buds late and ripens early, making it perfect for those areas on the cooler edges of wine production. Traditionally the signature grape of the Loire, it also produces both sweet and dry wines in Bordeaux. Despite only being planted for the first time in the 1970’s Sauvignon Blanc has flourished in New Zealand, producing outstanding wines.

At it’s best Sauvignon Blanc produces crisply acidic, aromatic wines with flavours varying from fresh cut grass and asparagus, through gooseberries, grapefruits and apples to passion fruit and peaches. The much mocked description of “Cat’s pee on a gooseberry bush” was originally intended as a compliment.

Dry Sauvignons are made for early drinking whilst the fruit and acid still tingle. Left too long the aromatic fruit tends to disappear and the asparagus and gooseberries migrate towards peas, tinned peas and pea soup, getting grimmer by the year.

Wine & Friends & Nobilo

I ran into some friends last week and stopped for a drink, and then another one. We had a bottle of Nobilo Sauvignon Blanc Marlborough Regional Collection 2006.

It was pale lemon green and looked bright and inviting. It smelled fresh and zingy with limes and apples and grapefruit. Served very cold on a hot day, it was inviting.

It was dry with a crisp acidity, which with the chilling made it refreshing as well as moreish. The fruitiness really did come through, balancing with fresh cut grass and a mineral tang with just a hint of apricot. 12.5% alcohol feels about right for this wine.

Bright and refreshing this was fun to drink with friends, but would go well with lightly spiced foods too. It���s not a wine that will last well, it needs drinking this summer, but that���s not a hardship. At around ��5-6 a bottle, this is a good party and barbeque wine, worth keeping a bottle or two in the fridge for party emergencies.



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The Pope’s Chest

I���ve found Chasse Du Pape���s red to be a great value, flavourful midweek wine so thought I���d give their 2005 Sauvignon Grenache a go.

It was pale, with strong legs. It had a light aroma with a little citrus fruit and a hint of florality. Dry with reasonable acidity and a medium body, it had 12.5% alcohol. It had a lemony citrus taste with some nutty, honey sweetness lurking underneath.

It was fine really, and if I���d never tried and been impressed by their Syrah blend I probably wouldn���t have been disappointed, but I had, and so I was. I���ll stick to the red in future.

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Mistletoe and Wine

Last Christmas I attended a school carol concert and as well as being given a glass of wine and a mince pie on the way in, I won a bottle of wine on the way out. A better than average school concert for me.

It���s sat in the kitchen, festively adorned with a tinsel necklace since then. As I was seriously lacking in Christmas cheer this weekend I craced it open. It was a 2006 Domaine de Peyrat Sauvignon Blanc, a Vin de Pays D���Oc from the sunny South of France.

It was a pale lemon with a little tinge of green. It smelled lightly of citrus and fresh green grass. It was bone dry with a crisp acidity. With a medium body and 12% alcohol it was, overall, rather ordinary, which was fine with some rather ordinary pasta.

I wouldn���t choose to buy this wine, it���s standard ��5 wine and there���s plenty out there at the same price point which could be better, or for that matter, worse, but I���d take that gamble. This wasn���t a great wine, but it had happy memories, and that made it good.

Americano

Mostly when I’m in a wine producing country (England doesn’t really count) I like to drink their wine, but on a recent trip to the US my hosts mostly wanted to drink antipodean wine. Never one to turn down Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand, particularly when it’s free, I was happy to comply.

We had a Brancott Vineyards Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc 2003. To English eyes it looked like they’d worked hard to make the label look like Montana, but maybe it was the other way around. I suppose if it was called Montana in the US people would assume it was from that state.

The wine itself is pale in colour with a medium aroma of green peppers with some fruitiness approaching gooseberries and a little peach.

It’s dry with a crisp acidity and plenty of fruitiness. There’s citrus, grapefruit and some minerality to add to the green peppers. With 14% alcohol it’s fairly strong but the fruit carried it through and the acidity keeps it balanced.

This is a good, familiar, NZ Sauvignon Blanc, and one I’d certainly pick up if I found myself bemused in an American wine aisle. At around $10 - $12 it’s great value, but right now everything in US wine aisles seems great value. I’d pay £7-8 here.

Three Buck Chuck

I'd heard alot about 'Two Buck Chuck', so when I found myself in the States driving past a Trader Joe's I had to stop in. To my horror it was now 'Three Buck Chuck', but as that equates to the cost of the tax on a bottle of wine in the UK it's still an absurdly cheap wine and I needed to try it. People were loading their trolleys with the stuff and there was Chardonnay, Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon, but as on of our party only drinks Pinot Grigio or Sauvignon Blanc we opted for the Sauvignon. Just the one bottle, I didn't want to go mad.

So what's it like?

Bad, very bad. It tastes like it's the cheapest wine I've ever tried, thin and acidic with very little fruit flavour. Our three glasses only had a few sips taken out of them. As polite as we were trying to be, our water glasses were empty. Eventually I cracked - I couldn't take it any more. We agreed that we could start agian with fresh glasses and a fresh bottle of wine.

Three Buck Chuck was a fun experiment. Not one I'd try again. I toyed with using the rest of the wine in a risotto but was voted down. I'm sure the reds would be better.

Middle of the road

The constant rain of the last few days put me in mind of the Loire, having cycled the Loire this summer in non-stop rain, I now associate rain with Sauvignon Blanc. I had a Duc de Guise Sauvignon Blanc 2005 this week. It’s a pale lemon with reasonable legs. It smells slightly blossomy with some mineral and zippy fruit.
It’s dry with a refreshing acidity. It tastes lightly nettle-like with some subdued fruit and minerality. It has a medium body with a medium level of alcohol at 12.5%.

This is a perfectly good Sauvignon Blanc, less fruity than one from New Zealand, less assertively mineral and austere than a Pouilly Fume or Sancerre, but it doesn’t really carve out anything unique for itself. At under £6, it’s a reasonable midweek wine to have with food, but not one I’d seek out.

In Pieces

I've had Rosemount Estate's Jigsaw Verdelho Chardonnay Sauvignon Blanc a few times at assorted pubs rather than at home. At first I thought I'd been given a dud glass from a bottle that had been kicking around a while. Then maybe a bad bottle. I never ordered it, but if someone else did I tried it.

Wine in pubs is rarely perfect, and the beery, smoky, foody atmosphere doesn't favour fine wines, so good solid flavourful ones are usually the safest choice.

I hadn't written it up before, but now I think the weight of evidence is pointing against my experiences being one-offs. The difficulty with this wine is that it tastes like the wine equivalent of Dairylea Lunchables. It tastes like it's been tweaked and processed to the point whewre it's not so much wine as 'wine style drink'. From the first whiff of sulphur to the lingering chemical aftertaste this is simply not a wine I can learn to like. My local sells Montana Sauvignon Blanc from a quid or two more, so it's certainly worth the upgrade.

Zip a dee doo dah

A random selection from the fridge tonight, an Estate Bottled Triunfo Sauvignon Blanc 2005 from Vina Tarapaca Maipo Valley, Chile. It came in a clear bottle, and was almost clear itself. It smelled crisp and juicy, with herbs and citrus. Maybe I���m fast forwarding to Christmas, but there was a hint of clementines in with the grapefruit and lemon.

There���s yet more fruitiness on the palate with a zingy, lively acidity and plenty of grassy herbs. It carries 12.5% alcohol well and the fruitiness sticks around.

It went fabulously well with the somewhat less than fabulous scrambled eggs and smoked salmon on toast concocted from the only fridge contents that weren���t wine.

Expect to pay about ��7 a bottle, which is about right for a good, dry, characterful Sauvignon Blanc from anywhere in the world.

Sancerre, raw

Last summer I cycled along the Loire and up to Sancerre. It was beautiful, stopping to stand on what passes for soil there and looking at vines as far as the eye could see. I did so in driving rain, up through the hairpins to the town of Sancerre itself. I’m a sucker for the romance of wines, standing in the vineyard, cycling past vines, feeling the sun the grapes feel, soaking up the rain as they do.

So when asked to pick a wine out of a limited selection in someone else’s fridge I immediately chose a Sainsbury’s Taste The Difference Sancerre 2004. This Sainsbury’s range used to be called Sainsbury’s Classic Selection, and they went out of their way to find examples of famous wines which were absolutely typical of the appellation – handy if you want a reasonably priced benchmark.

This Sancerre was pale and bright. It smelled like wet stones, if you’ve ever bothered to stop and smell some! It had some quite zippy fruit, citrus and with just a smidge of gooseberry and herby grassiness. It’s bone dry and crisply acidic. The minerality feels really refreshing in the mouth, with the citrus flavour carrying through.

This is quite a direct wine, it’s not gentle or friendly and welcoming, it’s assertively acidic and mineral, perfect when you’re in a Sancerre frame of mind and don’t want to break the £10 barrier.

The Crab with the Golden Claws

Cheverny is an impressive French Chateau, in the big fancy house sense rather than the wine corporation way. There’s an absurd quantity of Chateau along the Loire as it heads east to west, and cycling through the neighbourhood it’s easy for them to blur together. This one is probably easiest to recognise from its appearance in TinTin books.

I had a bottle of 2005 Cheverny, Le Vieux Clos from Domaine Delaille to remind me. It smells lovely with oodles of gooseberry and some scented tropical fruits. It’s dry with good acidity, but not a rip roaring amount. It tastes fruity, with a strong dash of minerality and some grassy herbiness. What more could a person want.

It’s not a pure sauvignon blanc, it also includes chardonnay which seems to soften off the acidity and add softer tropical fruits to the more traditional zippy Loire flavours, making it a happy compromise between the two rather than a bizarre and ugly love child.

At under £6 a bottle from Majestic it’s a steal, perfect with seafood, even crab, whether you love TinTin or not.

Running away

Clos d’Yvigne is an interesting wine. It’s maker, Patricia Atkinson, had moved to France without planning on being a winemaker, knowing anything about it, or speaking French, but a series of unfortunate events, documented in her books, The Ripening Sun and La Belle Saison, meant that winemaking seemed like a sensible way forward.

I had a bottle of Clos d’Yvigne ‘Princesse de Cleves’ 2005 Bergerac Blanc Sec 2005. It’s made from a happy blend of sauvignon blanc, sémillon and muscadelle. It’s a pale lemon colour with good legs.

It smells fresh and fruity with a quite intense hit of florality. It’s dry, with a mineral acidity. It feels surprisingly full in the mouth with lots of lemons and grapefruits and some slightly bitter grassiness.

13.5% alcohol adds to the fullness, but is well balanced into the wine. It’s good with food as it stands up well. We had it with grilled tuna.

It costs around £6-7, which probably includes about a quid for the added romanticism of planning your own escape to run your own vineyard in the sun. It’s worth it.