A Celebration of #SauvBlanc
As you might guess from the hashtag in the post title, we recently participated in the sauv blanc twitter tasting organized by Rick Bakas. (By “we participated” I mean that we drank wine and I tweeted since Grape Envy Guy has handed over the twitter account to me. 
) It was our first twitter tasting, and it was a fun, if slightly frantic, experience given the scale of involvement from the twitterverse.
Given that we try to drink local whenever possible and this tasting was about the varietal and not a wine from a particular winery or region, we selected a VA wine: the 2008 Sauvignon Blanc Reserve from Veritas Vineyards (another check for our century club quest). All I remembered about this wine was that it had a lot of green notes and that both of us had liked it. We still liked it – it was still green – but there was a lot of other things going on in this wine as well.
The green smells are the first thing that struck me – fresh cut grass and hay. It was a nice nose, but since I’m allergic to just about everything that grows, that grass smell always makes me think of allergy attacks at first. The more I sniff, the more I get beyond this and just settle in to enjoy the wine. At this point I started to get some fruit notes as well – when it was colder I would have said generically tropical, but they became more clearly citrus as the wine warmed to an appropriate drinking temperature rather than a just out of the fridge temperature.
The first flavor that hits me is citrus. I thinks is a slightly more complex lemongrass rather than just lemon. The green grassy flavors come in after that. There’s also a hint of mixed tropical fruit flavors on the finish – I really enjoyed the lingering finish on this wine.
This wine had a great nose and a fair bit of complexity in terms of both scent and taste that I couldn’t (and didn’t really want to) totally pick apart. I enjoyed the wine and the twitter tasting experience; I’m looking forward to more of both in the future.
The A Celebration of #SauvBlanc by Swirl, Sip, Snark, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
I still think the Veritas logo looks a little like a tramp stamp, but I really enjoyed this wine. I’m a big fan of most green-tasting (not vegetal) wines, and this was no exception. As a connoisseur of grass, I would say that this wine has a new-mown, spring tall grass at the edge of a wild area taste, which shifts into some pleasantly intense citrus. As for the Twitter-tasting aspect of things, I can only speak to what my delightful partner relayed, but it sounds like it was a pretty huge deal. As far as I’m concerned, these Twitter tastings are a reason to zero in on particular wines, which is going to be a lot of fun. Can’t wait for the next one, and I also can’t wait for our next trip to Veritas.
He really is serious about that grass note everyone – he does love grass that much!
The Va Vineyard Association conference is going on in Charlottesville as I write this. Later today, we will be sampling the Veritas SB that you write about, along with a few other select whites – then participating with a panel of the winemakers of each. Thursday we had the unique opportunity to taste the 2009 Linden Hardscrabble red pulled right from the barrel. Many here commented that it may be better than the 2006 – which we tasted side by side. The 2006 could be one of the best reds I’ve had from VA. The future looks bright!!!
you’ve sure got me excited for the future!
The 2009 Veritas Special Reserve SB is top notch. I’ve heard there are only 5 or 6 wineries that bottle SB in the state – this may be the best. If you are a fan of SB, this should be worth the $25 needed to obtain a bottle. The owner of Veritas (Andrew Hodson) has an intense passion and lifelong love of SB and has taken great care to meticulously cultivate the best possible representation of this varietal.