Sauvignon Blanc: Around the World Dog Day Wines from Archetype to Offshoot to Otherworldly

Class transcript:

Welcome, welcome, one and all. A pleasure to have you all with us. Thank you so much for joining us this lovely Sunday afternoon. This remains the highlight of my week. I have disabled wine school purgatory. I have hit record. I'm sure I will find another way to take this wine school experience off the rails for you, but at the very least, those two things are up to you. Heather, thank you for joining us. Allegra, you unmuted. Congratulations on your new gig. We have yet another former staff member of ours living out my dream career journey. As thickened-up Christmas tree. I have been working hard at a winery, but my rent is going much below the $20 million. Thank you for all of your hard work and love of this great city.

I am in the winery right now with係 gham ouurt. I am in the Dan Nguyen acid Edward guestee cares. Angel Nguyen, thank you for all of your hard work previously, and getting a job working harvest at a winery. always, is one Zoe Nystrom. Say hello to the people, Zoe. Hey, everyone. This wasn't inspired by Zoe, who called for Sauvignon Blanc, who, you know, called it a slutty little summer wine. And, you know, the notion of sluttiness vis-a-vis wine, you know, hopefully not too controversial. You know, we're just speaking to a certain forwardness, a precociousness, if you will, that is a bit of a love or hate thing when it comes to Sauvignon Blanc. We don't want to demean anyone for their love of Savvy B.

You know, in this moment, especially, I want to reiterate, there is no such thing as a guilty pleasure. All pleasures are pleasures. I don't care, you know, if you're enjoying a reality TV show while eating Cheetos, you know, off, you know, your stomach, you know, that is, you know, a worthwhile way to spend an afternoon in as much as, you know, you know, reading, you know, Ulysses or what have you. So I think we are in a very special moment where we shouldn't be judging ourselves, least of all, for what we love. My wife has discovered that I have a strange love of hoppy IPAs in moments of weakness, and she abhors them. But I'm not beating myself up about my love of hoppy IPAs, which are kind of like the New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc of the beer world, just to bring this all full circle.

I'm going to start with the Sancerre for the sake of class and move on to the new kind of upstart, the Marlboro Savvy B thereafter. And, you know, that's just because, you know, we are, you know, kind of tracing the origins of this grape and charting its path from old world to new. But, you know, part of the reason we do this comparative tasting is that we're going to see that, you know, tasting one wine against the other illuminates things about each wine. And, you know, I encourage you all to move back and forth, you know, whether you're tasting for the Sauvignon Blancs or other wines in our series, you know, don't get too hung up about the order.

You know, I think it's really, you know, eye-opening to go back and forth between these wines and, you know, tasting one and then tasting the other, even if they're vastly divergent, will teach you a lot about them. So, you know, just have fun with this one. No wrong way to drink wine. There is particularly no wrong way to drink Sauvignon Blanc. You know, if you're enjoying your Savvy B out of a solo cup, good on you. We have proper stemware, you know, whatever moves you. All right. There is no waiting room. Welcome one and all. We're going to kick this off. It's a pleasure to have you with us for Savvy B Week here at Taylor Coat Wine School. A special thanks to all of you who continue to make this a wonderfully worthwhile experience.

Thank you. Endeavor going on our 18th week, you know, in as much as, you know, I hope that, you know, this is a pleasant diversion for you all. You all have been, you know, a continual inspiration for me, for all of us who work at Taylor Coat, and I thank you for that. A special thanks to Mr. Dennis Abrams today, if you're out there. We totally fucked up Dennis's order and sent him six wines that he'd already had instead of the two wines that he's hopefully enjoying now for the sake of this lesson. And Dennis courageously offered to buy those wines off of us. And, you know, there have been a million small acts of kindness like that, that have, you know, sustained us throughout this, you know, crisis for our industry.

I don't want to pretend that you know, others don't have it way worse. But thank you all for those small acts of kindness. You know, they continue to sustain us all. Without further ado, a bit of verse for you. This is from a friend of the wine school, John Thompson, one of the kindest souls I know, and proprietor of an amazing rare books library who continues to text me poems in the midst of pandemic. And I am equally grateful for that. This is from Louise Bogan. It is called 'To Wine'. Cup, ignorant and cruel. Take from mandate love. It's urgency to prove unfaithful renewal. Take from the wind its loss. The lit list. Dead that lie face upward in the earth. Strong hand and slender thigh. Return to the vein all that is worth grief.

Give that beat again. And I really love that notion of, you know, things that are worth mourning. You know, we grieve because we love. There is no grief without love in the first place. And, you know, that, you know, is worth celebrating. And Sauvignon Blanc, equally, you know, is worth celebrating. We're going to dive right into tasting. I feel like often you have to put up with like 15 minutes of me, you know, going on about, you know, the history of a particular country, the history of a varietal. And, you know, finally I unleash the; you know, now it's time to taste the wine. We're going to, you know, try to, you know, skip forward for the sake of this lesson.

I always envision the old men in the balcony, you know, like in the Muppets, you know, shouting at me, you know, enough about the wine. Let's just taste it already. But I'm going to keep that short today. I do want to open up with a bit of prose. Sauvignon Blanc has its champions, its detractors. And it has inspired quite a bit of very florid writing. I'm going to kick it off with Mr. Oz Clark, who celebrates Sauvignon Blanc in his book, Grapes and Wines, which is well worth a read. Not the most expressive reference work of all time, but the rare reference work that you can actually read through. He's a very gifted writer, but he says, 'Why on earth does everyone make such a goddamn fuss about Sauvignon Blanc?

Why can't they let it be? After all, it's such a simple grape, isn't it? The wine's not complex. It's not intellectually challenging. It's just a cracking good drink. You get a bottle, you whack it in the chiller, you whip off the screw cap, sloshing it in everybody's glass, and hey, crisp, pure, tangy, there's quenching. Yum. What a drink. And I mean, drink.' A good glass of Sauvignon Blanc is like a good gin and tonic, or a good chilled pint of beer. Just drink it. That's what it's there for. I love that. I love, you know, we are, you know, coming up with all sorts of analogies for Savvy B. I love the gin and tonic of wines. That's amazing to me.

Just for the point, counterpoint, representing the nerdy, you know, kind of highfalutin wine establishment, Slate.com's former critic, Mike Steinberger, who, and an article in the Autz called 'White Lies: Why Sauvignon Blanc is Overrated', that is still archived to this day because, you know, a lot of nerdy, you know, wine people like myself, you know, said right on, man, you know, this is an overrated grape. You know, we should be contrarian and, you know, try to diminish this thing that's, you know, hugely popular. But Mike says, there was nothing wrong. He's speaking about a glass of Kim Crawford Marlboro Sauvignon Blanc, that he was served at a restaurant. There was nothing wrong with the wine per se. It wasn't cooked, corked, or otherwise spoiled. In fact, it was clean, crisp, and effusively pure.

It was also thoroughly, maddeningly dull. A wine with absolutely nothing to say. This wasn't a Kim Crawford problem, and it wasn't a New Zealand problem. It was a varietal problem. It was a Sauvignon Blanc problem. Simply put, the grape is a dud, hot take, producing chirpy little wines, wholly devoid of complexity and depth. The very qualities that make wine interesting and worth savoring. For years, this offensively inoffensive grape has escaped criticism. While Chardonnay and Merlot have been scorned, the free ride ends here, declares Mike Steinberger, circa like 2006, 2008, what have you. Anyway, I think like any grape that inspires this level of, you know, divisiveness is definitely worth a class. And, you know, I think it's a great wine. I think it's a great wine. I think it's a great grape.

So Sauvignon Blanc is a hugely interesting topic of study. From whence did it arrive in the first place? It's a very old varietal, probably descended from the ancient grape Savignin, which makes it related, akin to Grunewald Liener, Chenin Blanc, Rodejo, Sylvainer, among others. The verdict is out as to whether it definitely originated in France. The verdict is out as to whether it originated in Bordeaux, in the Loire. I think there's a growing body of evidence to indicate that it originated in the southwest closer to Bordeaux, but it has certainly reached its apotheosis in the Loire in Sancerre, which we are going to taste momentarily. Sancerre is a variety, or Sauvignon Blanc is a varietal wine, didn't really enter the fore until after World War II.

Historically, Sancerre in particular was a Pinot Noir region, and Sauvignon Blanc just happened to be easier to replant after Phylloxera in the late 19th century. Savvy B entered modern consciousness first as the parent of Sauvignon Blanc, so in the 1750s, it spontaneously crossed with Sauvignon Blanc and gave us Cabernet Sauvignon, which is why Cab Sauv has a lot of the same kind of green pepper notes that Savvy B has, and Carol Meredith at UC Davis did really pioneering work to establish this genetic relationship, and really kind of like reaffirming the idea that Sauvignon Blanc is a variety of wine, and that Sauvignon Blanc is a variety of wine, and really kind of like revolutionized this field of anthelogy with this discovery that a white grape could give birth to a red progeny, which is hugely fascinating in its own way.

Sauvignon Blanc still plays a role in Bordeaux Blanc, which remains a hugely underrated wine. We saw a couple wonderful examples at our own wine store, shameless cross-promotion, but typically Sauvignon Blanc isn't a standalone entity there. The merchants of Bordeaux, the winemakers of Bordeaux, use Semillon to give it breadth and to kind of soften it. As a single variety wine, varietal wine, it comes to the fore in the Loire Valley, and we are going to talk Sancerre here, first and foremost. And we have a Sancerre from La Verge. Christiane and Kevin, an adorable couple, they both are descended from generations of grape growers and winemakers, but only in the recent generation did they start, you know, to produce their own.

It should be said that Sancerre, the Loire Valley, broadly speaking, is not really one region so much as it is, you know, typically kind of three. You have three or four. You have Pinanté, then you have Anjou, which is Muscadet country. You have Anjou-Torrent, which is Chenin Blanc country on the white side, Cap-Franc country on the red side. And then you have Paysante, or the upper reaches of the Loire, which is Savigny country and Pinot Noir country historically. You can see Savigny, you can see rather a Sancerre here in blue. It is this beautiful hilltop village called, you know, kind of locally known as the King of the Hill. And it is closer to Burgundy than it is Angers.

It is a much cooler climate that owes a lot more to the kind of more central heart of France than it does to the more kind of maritime and inflected regions of the country. And as such, you know, brings a brisk, cool wind to proceedings. I promised that we would taste. I'm at 4.13, so I broke that promise. I've been droning on for a solid 10 minutes, but we are going to taste here. I mean, I actually wrote down tasting notes for this one. I know that's something that sometimes I speed past and something that you all want, but I sat with these wines a little bit at first. And, you know, this is a wine, planted, the vines are 30 years old. They're planted to kind of clay limestone soils.

And we'll double back to the soil types here in a second. But, you know, for the sake of my tasting notes here, you know, nothing feels quite so sophisticated as good Sancerre, which I think I really love about it. It, you know, in the 60s and 70s supplanted Chablis as the bistro wine of choice, spread from there throughout the world, because everybody wants to drink like a Parisian. But, you know, there is something just, you know, wonderfully pure about this wine. I get a like jalapeno on the nose, a hint of green pepper, which is, you know, an innate characteristic of Sancerre. But, you know, there's a purity. There's this ineffable minerality thing that wine nerds talk about all the time, which is this notion of chalkiness, which is this notion of, you know, what remains after, you know, water.

Water runs over, you know, rocks from the basement of time in a babbling brook. And, you know, that's what this, you know, tastes like, you know, are washed clean, whatever they may be, for the sake of drinking this wine. And, you know, on the palate, you know, it's not austere, you know, it's not shrill. There is this wonderful orchard fruit that comes to the fore, this wonderful, you know, just ripe, but not overripe. Pear quality to it, or some kind of bougie, you know, boutique apple that, you know, comes into the mix. And, you know, I love that about it. It is, this particular example, you know, exactly what I want out of Sancerre, you know, you know, for the sake of the Mike Steinbergers of the world, like, you know, is this a wine to pour over?

Is it, you know, a life-altering wine, you know, that, you know, you're going to talk about, you know, you know, decades hence, you know, maybe, maybe not, but does it give me exactly what I want on a 90-degree day to speak to, you know, Zoe's point earlier this week? You know, absolutely, it does. And, you know, for those of you who are drinking this wine, I encourage you to throw in your own tasting notes here. I think something that La Verge does really well is they manipulate the leaves' contact on this wine. So, the leaves are the dead yeast, the particulate from the dead leaves left over after fermentation. They leave this wine in stainless steel, so there's a purity about it, because it doesn't see any oak.

But in fact, with the leaves, that impart a richness that it wouldn't have otherwise. You know, there's just nothing wrong with that, you know. It does. It feels, you know, it's like, you know, indulgences in a glass to get, you know, all Catholic on you. You know, I feel like you know, there is a sense of hope, you know, embodied in it, in a way. And this is a wine that's all about terroir. So, I name-dropped limestone earlier. Limestone, is much fetishized in the world of wine. And Sancerre, you know, being almost exclusively devoted to Sauvignon Blanc, is a wonderful place to explore this notion of terroir. So, limestone is calcium-heavy rock. It degrades into soils that are heavy in calcium carbonate. In Sancerre, locally, there are three predominant types.

You have Terre Blanche, and that would be the, what's called essentially a mudstone that has somewhere between 30 to 60 percent content worth of limestone. And it's soft, it's freeable, breaks apart readily, which is good for the sake of vines because they can sink their soils, they can sink their root systems very deep into these soils. So, you know, with a lot of vineyards, you want, you know, poor soils and good drainage and hard rock. But if you get, you know, rock that is impermeable, then the root system has nowhere to go. And then, you know, it's a bad thing. So, you know, this calcium, these calcium deposits in the form of limestone, that, you know, they give you, you know, this freeable, this rock that breaks apart in a really auspicious way.

And, you know, this whole, you know, set of geologic formations derived from ancient seabeds. So, it's very poetic. People think of Sancerre as a great wine with oysters. Essentially, we are drinking, you know, the remnants of an ancient oyster bed here in the region. And we'll get into specific geological era for the sake of the coyotes. But Terre Blanc is essentially a mudstone. It's one of the more predominant soils throughout the region. Silex is a much harder, flintier type of rock. It tends to turn out wines that are more powerful, predominates in the kind of eastern kind of reaches of Sancerre and across the river in Puy-Fumay. It makes age-worthy Sauvignon Blanc. Truly age-worthy. You know, some of the greatest wines of Didier, Dagonel, for instance, who's one of the most famous vignerons in this neck of the woods.

Some of those vineyards are planted to see like soil. It gives you kind of thicker skins and higher acid in your wines, which, you know, you want for something that will age well. And then Coyote is, you know, a type of soil that refers to a mix of these kinds of rounded stones, typically derived from either Kimmeridgian or Portlandian limestone. So, it's kind of a mix of these kinds of grounded stones, typically derived from either Kimmeridgian or Portlandian limestone. You're dealing with geologic era here. Portlandian slightly older than Kimmeridgian. And this was this era of, you know, central France at the bottom of a shallow sea, which gave us this wonderful limestone rock. Kimmeridgian soil tends to be softer, full of fossils, and, you know, consistent with the way that, you know, geological deposits are laid for the sake of sedimentary rock.

Higher on the hill, than the Portlandian, which are a little lower and harder rock. Tends to have, you know, fewer fossils, and, you know, gives you wines that are a little more structured and maybe a little less delicate than the Kimmeridgian soils. Kimmeridgian soils exist throughout France. They're hugely lauded in such reasons as Champagne and Burgundy. Limestone is much obsessed over for a few reasons, is composed largely, limestone soil is composed of sheets of molecules held together by ionic bonds, which is to say, positive and negative charges attracting. But the soils have these wonderful properties that they retain water in drier conditions, but they drain water in wetter conditions. And grapes are kind of, you know, the ultimate Goldilocks.

They need a certain amount of water to thrive and properly exchange nutrients, but they also need a certain amount of water to systemize the environment, because they're too continually gonna relocate through wicked clustering or during carry peptide changes. So, some of the plants we have stored, have basically been used by small-minded aquarists. So, they're Costa Rica are torn the plants out and closed in imaginative us and they have one mimic, who's known for growing their plants more often than others. And stories of other types, plants like barley, quince's, and b veteran's. These are kind of lower rich soil and talked about to death in the old world in a way that is worth emphasizing and considering. So I'll flash forward. We're going from the old world to the new world here and New Zealand.

New Zealand is perched thousands of miles to the east of, a thousand miles, the east of Australia. It's a big fucking island. I didn't realize just how big until I decided to give this lesson. So you can see here, transposed over the eastern United States, we're stretching from beautiful Erie to Tallahassee. I love that this map juxtaposes Erie and Tallahassee. I feel like they should be sister cities. I feel like they share a lot in common. I hope I'm not offending anyone tuning in from Tallahassee, but I feel like the Redneck Riviera has a lot in common with Tallahassee. It's not just the shores of the Ohio Great Lakes, but at any rate, that is a huge spread. Think about that in terms of climate.

And wine is made from the northern tip to almost the southern tip of New Zealand. And New Zealand has some of the most southerly vineyards in the world, chiefly in the central Tago, which is just kind of west of Dunedin on the South Island. Great grapes. And growing winemaking came to New Zealand with some of the first English settlers. James Busby is kind of like the Johnny Appleseed of wine for the sake of our friends in both New Zealand and Australia. He first made wine in what is called the Northland. We got a North Island, we got a South Island in New Zealand. He planted vines in the Northland. We don't figure that prominently for the sake of modern New Zealand wine, but it was the first region colonized by the English where grapes were planted for the purpose of making wine.

We're going to talk about Hawke's Bay, which is this yellow region here, which is equally old for the sake of New Zealand wine. And we have a historic property here founded in the 1890s, one of the oldest wineries in New Zealand for the sake of this particular offering. But I want to talk about Marlborough, because Marlborough dominates New Zealand, just as Sauvignon Blanc constitutes the vast majority of plantings in New Zealand and dominates exports from New Zealand. Marlborough didn't come to public attention, didn't enter international consciousness as a winemaking region until the 1970s, when the Montana Wine Company planted vineyards there. But it should be said, they planted vineyards all the while they were doing their winemaking on the North Island.

So the grapes they were growing had to be trucked across this treacherous Cook's Strait to wineries on the North Island. And much of what we think of as that ostentatious New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc style originally derived from the fact that during that 12-plus hour trip, the juice would leach from these grapes and the Kiwis unintentionally were essentially making Sauvignon Blanc as a lightly skin-contact wine, which gave it this aromatic kind of ostentatiousness that is very different from the Sancerres of the world. I think a really important thing to understand about New Zealand, for the sake of Marlborough, for the sake of Hawke's Bay, is that you're dealing with a cooler climate, but it's very unique because it's a cool, dry climate. The Loire Valley is a cool climate region in the context of France, but it's wet.

You know, they get quite a bit of rain, and as such, there's quite a bit of disease pressure, and the rains interfere with the slow ripening of the grape. And New Zealand, or Sauvignon Blanc in general, is a grape that likes cooler climates and that, you know, prolonged growing season for the sake of developing its ripeness. You're dealing with regions here that are among the few cool climate, dry growing regions in the world. There's a reason that there are no major growing reasons on the western edge of New Zealand. There are, these heavy prevailing winds that sweep off the sea to the west that make viticulture virtually impossible there. The spine of mountains that runs the length of New Zealand north to south protects the vineyards of the east from that, but it also acts as a rain shadow.

So Hawke's Bay, Marlborough, are much drier. They're not totally dry because you're still dealing with the maritime climate, but they're much drier than they would be otherwise. So what you're left with is this prolonged growing season and this incredible development, of what we call phenolic ripeness in these grapes. And so physiologically, you're pushing ripeness to the extreme here with a grape like Sauvignon Blanc that pushes to the extreme, develops all these fascinating sets of flavors that, you know, love it or hate it, people have responded to and have become, you know, iconic worldwide. So, you know, for me, these wines couldn't be much different. I mean, the Te Mata, you know, it is a little offensive, you know. It, you know, is delightful in and of its own way.

What we're smelling here are chemical constituents called pheols, which develop as the grapes ripen. There's been quite a bit of scientific inquiry into the physiology of taste, into the chemical constituents of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. Because it's such a great laboratory, because this is wine at 11, you know, because it's so expressive, because it leaps out of the glass, people have wanted to, you know, untangle that. And part of what they've untangled are methoxypyrazines. Those are those bell pepper notes. Those tend to disappear as the grapes ripen, or disappear as the grapes are exposed to the sun during the ripening process. Pheols are kind of like a new inquiry. They're chemical constituents that develop during fermentation. They're not directly present. In the grapes, they develop out of the action of yeast on chemical precursors in the grapes, fascinatingly enough.

There are three, and this is through the work of Mr. Jamie Goode, who's a friend of the class, who was in on the Riesling Band Camp that I organized last year, and writes really fascinatingly about the subject, if you're a huge wine nerd. But there are three different ones that he identifies. One, you know, has this grapefruity, passionfruity dimension, for the sake of the wine. I definitely get that here. One has more of a sweaty, overripe papaya kind of dimension. I get that here. And then the third, the dreaded Pheol 4MMD, gives you the intrinsic confrontational in your face, New Zealand cat pee litter box smell. And I do get a little bit of that here. You know, it's something that, you know, I think if you grew up with cats is inescapable.

But, you know, it's not, you know, poisonous for the sake of enjoying the wine. I think it's a very well-made wine. And it should be said that Hawke's Bay, being further north, being closer to the equator, the most privileged sites are north-facing because they get longer exposure for the sake of the sun, whereas, you know, in the northern hemisphere, the privileged sites are south-facing. And that's the case here. It's a very well-made wine. The soils are very different than they are in Sancerre, tend to be much more alluvial. They tend to be much heavier, which gives you fuller ripeness on the grapes. And as the grapes ripen, it gives you a little less of that, you know, kind of consistent development of acidity. But, you know, this is a 12.5% alcohol wine that's loud as hell.

You know, it goes to 11. It's no shrinking violet, but in a, you know, wonderfully enjoyable way that's worth celebrating. But, you know, also, you know, really fun for the sake of kind of understanding what someone's doing. That's what Sauvignon Blanc is all about for the sake of this two-pack. Zoe, I've been talking for 30 minutes straight. What do you have for me from the commentariat vis-a-vis tasting notes, vis-a-vis questions about Sauvignon Blanc, kick it. Let's start with questions. Lisa wanted to know what areas of Sancerre to look out for, for, like, younger winemakers that are not so traditional and textbook. That's hard. I mean. Or do you have specific producers to call out? There are quite a few. You know, Alphonse Mellot, certainly we featured Didier Dagueneau's Across the River and Puy Fumé.

I should have more of the tip of my, off the tip of my tongue, off the top of my head, having done this lesson, Zoe, but it's been supplanted by New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc information. And Vuitton, that makes a hugely iconic Sancerre. This is a map of Sancerre I meant to share earlier. And it's kind of cool because it identifies the different soil types. You can see that the Terre Blanc is predominant in the northwestern corner. The Sancerre we're drinking is from Suri Éval. There's some really lovely younger producers there. There's some fun natural winemakers there as well, which definitely would qualify, you know, for the There's some fun natural winemakers there as well, which definitely would qualify, you know, for the Sancerre we're drinking is from Suri Éval.

So for Leash's sake, as young guns. Further to the south, you get more of those marley soils. And then most of the sea leks you'll find in the east. There are 14 individual communes in Sancerre. They're not as important, you know, for the sake of the wines as the villages of Burgundy. Sancerre is very much, you know, about the winemaking establishment. You know, this is a winemaking from sustainable vineyards. And the grapes are harvested by hand. And it's very much an artisanal property. You know, it should be said that that is sadly the exception to the rule that is also the case in New Zealand, certainly the case for Marlborough. Part of the reason those wines are as affordable as they are is that I mean Marlborough; they can push the yields; they can make wine at 60, 70 you know, liters per hectolitre or hectolitres per per acre or hectolitres per hectare of vines and the machine harvesting - anything, everything.

It actually should be said that fascinating: a lot those, those fields that give you that like you know, overripe tropical fruit and cat pee in the wine; they are elevated in grapes that are machine harvested so. They tend to be lower, ten times lower, in grapes that are hand harvested, which again tells you how dynamic and alive plants are. On it reminds me of you know slaughtering animals and they say that you know if you traumatize an animal or scare an animal you know you taste that in the meat. Grapes work that well. It's the same way you traumatize the grapes, these fields are way higher. It just so happens that in New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, you know people, you know enjoy that, you know, kind of strung out Sabi B flavor profile for whatever reason, but you know there are artisanal producers in Sancerre as much as there are artisanal producers in in New Zealand and I promise I'll follow up with a better note to that effect.

I tend to follow importers for the sake so I'll tell you just some examples of young wine producers and you'll notice, you know David Boler, you know certainly Louis Dresner would, you know, have some really amazing wines worth, worth you know sharing; Kermit Lynch, you know a million other American importers who deal with smaller artists or producers. But um, you know the book of production in Sancerre is you know mechanized and in a way that you know can produce like good wines but you know perhaps not great wines that are truly expressive. of of the place. You kind of touched a little bit on this but can you explain exactly why there's cat pee in Sauvignon Blanc and is that just a attribute to aging Sauvignon Blancs?

So there is no actual, so I don't want to get angry letters from the, you know, Wine Tourism Board of New Zealand. This wine contains no actual cat pee. It just happens to contain a chemical constituent which is called a theol or MMD is one in particular and that's an innate characteristic of the grape in these particular set of conditions such as they exist in New Zealand. So, you know, it's this magic of, you know, flavor chemistry in this one corner of the world and honestly I think it's something that, you know, has always been intrinsic about the grape but it took the Kiwis to tease out for better or worse and, you know, this evolving science of flavor in wines, it's so dynamic.

So, you know, take the ols, you know, take mox, oxypyrroxenes, you would think that if you razored lower one, you know, the perception of cat pee for instance would be razored lowered but there are all these other chemicals that interact with, you know, these other constituents in the wines that, you know, can have the effect of, you know, enhancing or dampening the chemical constituents at higher or lower concentrations so everything is inter-related and raising and lowering one thing can have all of these unintended unintended consequences in this kind of like fabulous chaos theory kind of way that is just beginning to be unraveled and it just so happens that Sauvignon Blanc makes a really fascinating case in point for a study because it's such a loud wine.

You know, you wouldn't want to, you know, do this with Chablis. It doesn't, you know, speak as loudly. It would be a lot harder to, you know, tease out in a wine that wasn't as loud. But, you know, that Cappy thing is just, you know, this grape in this place equals this chemical constituent that, you know, has this set of, like, associations for us. I have no idea, honestly, whether Cappy itself contains that particular feel. I need to do deeper digging. I don't know if Jamie Good or any other wine personality has looked into the chemistry of Cappy sufficiently. And I'm deeply sorry that we are discussing Cappy at such length. I love cats. It should be said. But neither here nor there. Zoe, what else do you have for us?

Could you talk a little bit about why you would age a Sauvignon Blanc from Loire Valley, but you wouldn't necessarily want to lay down a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc for 10, 15, 20 years? Yeah, excellent question. So that would have everything to do with the way the wine's made. So part of the reason that, you know, those chemical constituents survive in these wines, Thiels in particular, is that the wines tend to be fermented in New Zealand at a much lower temperature. So these very expressive chemical constituents are very fragile as well. And they tend to break down during a warmer fermentation. And in Sancerre, they tend to favor a slightly warmer fermentation, or a slightly warmer temperature during fermentation, slightly more unregulated fermentation attempt.

In New Zealand, they actually make way, like New Zealand, they make a ton of milk. It's like a dairy industry. Trump's even wine to this day. Because of that, like, they were innovators when it came to stainless steel tank design. And so they're really good. They're really good at making modern, clean wine with very precise controls over fermentation temperatures. So they got really good at kind of preserving these chemical constituents, which tend to disappear very early on in the life of wine for the sake of months. They disappear. You know, I think Sancerre, other good Loire Valley Sauvignon Blancs depend less on those fragile chemical constituents for their enjoyment. You know, if you strip a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc of its, you know, you know, grapefruit, you know, of its overripe papaya, you know, what's left.

Whereas wine as it ages tends to lose that primary floral fruit characteristic and then leans more on savory textural characteristics. You know, those are, you know, still extant in Loire Valley wines in a way that, you know, makes them very age-worthy. You know, that said, there are other people in New Zealand that are making wines, you know, that cut against the grain and that are, you know, age-worthy in and of their own right. So it's important not to make gross like generalizations, but, you know, Sauvie B, as it exists as a commercial product in New Zealand, is meant to be enjoyed as a young wine, like open and shut case. It doesn't work otherwise. Absolutely. Can you explain the difference between giving the grapes stress and focus, like we talked about a few weeks ago, but then also where this trauma comes in?

Yeah. So I, I, I was listening to this, I was listening to Levi Dalton's podcast. I'll drink to that. And he had a winemaker from Sauvignon on, and people talk a lot about stressing grapes. And the wine, the French winemaker from Sauvignon took issue with that. And he said, 'You know, he thought about it like rearing children. And, you know, for him, you know, the notion of vine health and vigor was not about stress. You know, you didn't want strung-out pre-teen Morrissey grapes, you know, because, you know, you can listen to The Smiths for a while, you go through a phase, but, you know, if you overindulge, it becomes, you know, somewhat problematic, you know, but, you know, you do want to focus their energy.' You don't want, you know, some kind of wise-eye fair, you know, Rousselian universe where the grapes can do whatever the fuck they want.

You know, that makes for unfocused, uninteresting, diluted wine. It's like the rich kids of wine. They're handed everything, you know, non-interesting individuals. He talked about, you know, ensuring health, providing for the plant, you know, much as limestone soils provide for Sancerre, but focusing their energy. And, you know, I love that notion of focus when it comes to viticulture, because I think at the end of the day, that's what it's all about. It's not about stress. It is about focus. And that means cheaply something that doesn't happen in mass-marketed New Zealand wines, but does happen for the sake of the wines that we're drinking today. Awesome. Can you talk a little bit about the de-evolution of Cloudy Bay? We have a listener who used to love it about 10 years ago, and now it's quite different.

The de-evolution has everything to do with the commodification of wine under luxury brands. So, Cloudy Bay was the first successful mass-marketed, New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, and it was a really good wine for what it was in Marlborough once upon a time. Enter, you know, transnational corporations, and they just, you know, screw everything up. You know, that is true in New Zealand. That is true in every corner of the globe. That's not a uniquely American phenomenon. That is a global phenomenon. So, Cloudy Bay was purchased by Moet Hennessy and Louis Vuitton, who also purchased a number of champagne houses, who they also fucked up. And they went from making a wine to making a reliable commodity at scale, and, you know, that's what went awry. So, you know, wine is an agricultural product.

To make a good wine, you have to treat it as an agricultural product. To the extent that you're more worried about a brand image or maintaining an unattainable, you know, kind of consistency across vintages, you're gonna debase what was once a good thing. Awesome. I think I want to let you talk about the Green Glow and the Natural. Yeah. So, this is really fun. I think, you know, New Zealand has suffered a bit from its success for the sake of its Sauvignon Blanc in the sense that, you know, people associate it with, you know, particular subspecies of wines, and there's so much more going on there. You know, I think on the um every wine scene is just much more dynamic um than you would imagine um you know from the outside looking in i think that's you know that's true not only of wine but you know of life in general so um you know it's always important not to make gross generalizations and um i wanted to feature these wines for the sake of this lesson just to you know show some outliers to show you know what people are doing with this cliche of sauvignon blanc in kind of a different way um and these are two producers from the north island we have hawks bay again um for the sake of the supernatural um and uh we have cambridge road which is from a little further south um you're dealing with the um kind of southern end of the north island for the sake of cambridge road um and you have two um producers working biodynamically um so they are committed To, um, the vineyard as a self-sustaining entity, um, in this quasi-mystical, you know, kind of, um, almost religious, um, parlance that goes above and beyond normal organic viticulture, and then, um, they are committed to this notion of Sauvignon Blanc on the skins, so, um, I think, uh, this whole notion of, quote-unquote, orange wine, um, which is, um, wine made from white grapes but raised on the skins, has become a bit of a hipster sommelier cliché, and and I apologize, um, you know, for perpetuating that, you know, I deserve as much of the blame as other hipster sommeliers, I just don't have the tattoos for it, um, you know, uh, but I think you Know for those of us that like it as a winemaking technique what that skin contact gives you is this like added um uh kind of uh tool to play with in your winemaking arsenal and um Sauvignon Blanc in a cooler climate is a high acid grape um uh and giving it time on the skins um actually dampens that acidity so grape skin is very high in potassium and that tends to dampen the acidity in wine and raise the pH of the resultant wine um and I think looking at uh the the the the the the And also, you get all of these, you know, we're talking a lot about great chemistry, But you get all of these chemical signifiers that really lurk in the skins.

You know, a lot of the most interesting things about the flavor of a wine are in the skins. That's why red wine is as delicious as it is. The color comes from the red grapes. You know, if you pressed off most red grapes, you would get, you know, clear wine. You know, the good stuff is in the skins. And, you know, so leaving a white wine on the skins, you know, makes a whole hell of a lot of sense, especially if you're working in a non-interventionist modality, because a lot of the preservatives that allow you to work with less sulfur, which is a hugely important preservative in wine, those exist in the grape skins as well. So we have two wines here. We're going to taste the green glow first.

So this label glows in the dark. We're going to try something fun. Fun. For those of you at home, wait for it. Zoe. Ooh. I don't know. Oh, I can't see it. It doesn't work. Boo. That was my big reveal for those of you at home. It should glow in the dark. Wah, wah. And actually, so the winemaker here is Hayden Penny. He's a young guy, as you might imagine. He takes his cues from beer, the beer industry. He thinks that, like, winemaking labels are kind of stodgy and not fun, so he takes his cues from the beer world, which I think shows, you know, for the sake of his labels, and he's devoted, you know, himself to working with white grapes on the skins.

This is Sauvignon Blanc on the skins for two to three weeks, and, you know, goes to 11. And, you know, I think what's really cool about it is the texture. So it sees additional time on the lees, which we talked about for the sake of the Sancerre. It sees even more time on the lees. And it has this wonderful richness about it, which, you know, is fabulous with the right food. But then it has this, like, you know, ultraviolet intensity for the sake of those tropical flavors that, you know, you just want to lean into and have fun with. And, you know, it's a good exuberance. And there's no litter box in sight with this wine. You know, it's all tropical in a really cool way.

And then, you know, the textural piece is so cool. And that's something that both these wines share in common. And then the naturalist is equal parts Sabi B and Pinot Gris. And this one's from Martinborough Terrace, kind of comparable soils for the sake of Hawke's Bay. You know, for the sake of both reasons, you're dealing with kind of alluvial flood plains descending into the Pacific. Again, kind of heavier soils, but you tend to move away from the ocean and higher up on a series of terraces for the better vineyard sites. And that's true here as well. And this was New Zealand's first Petnat. So the Green Glow was like New Zealand's first Sabi B on the skins. Cambridge Road, the naturalist was very much New Zealand's first Petnat.

For those of you unfamiliar with Petnat, it's a shortened form of Petion Naturel. It is made in what's called the method Ancestral, which is a different way of making a sparkling wine than is typically practiced in Champagne. You're dealing with one continuous fermentation, basically you bottle the wine early or seal it with a crown cap. You seal the cap early before the fermentation is finished. There's like a release in sugar in the bottle. It finishes fermentation under pressure and you're left with this delicate little bead. This is unfined and unfiltered and super cider-like. This one, you know, is less recognizable as New Zealand's Sabi B. You know, the fact that it's bottled without sulfur, the fact that it's on the skins and has this cloudy, you know, unfiltered, you know, dimension to it.

You know, I think that tends to erode varietal character. It tends to erode. You know, what the French call Tipi Cité, you know, it tends to, you know, steer things in this like more kind of ubiquitous natural wine direction, but, you know, for the sake of this wine, I think it's a fun place to go. And you know, I really dig that about it. And then I love, for the sake of Pet Nat, that lighter bead, you know, you know, Champagne bottle that, you know, six, seven atmospheres worth of pressure, you know, it could be a little aggro, CO2, you know, it is, is, you know, it kind of takes over the party sometimes. But for the sake of Champagne, this is, you know, kind of like more playful, more delicate in a really fun way.

And I think Pet Nat is a really fun, like gastronomic wine that way. But these are both great signposts for the sake of what's happening in New Zealand. For, you know, smaller producers that are, you know, bucking the image of New Zealand as a source of supermarket, you know, Kim Crawford, you know, kinds of wine. It should be said that I know a lot of people commented on the crown caps or bottle caps, you know. And the screw top for the Te Mata, 99% of New Zealand wines are bottled without a cork. They're very forward thinking when it comes to that. Both the screw cap and a bottle cap are actually less oxygen transmissive than cork. Cork is much more permeable. Cork can also poison the wine for the sake of cork taint.

And the Kiwi is very modern, very forward thinking. Almost have universally eradicated cork as a closure for the sake of their wines, for better or worse. But you'd be hard pressed to find a New Zealand wine, whatever it is, whether it's, you know, more serious Pinot meant to lay down for decades or, you know, Kim Crawford that doesn't have a screw cap. But I think these are both, you know, super fun, you know, kind of alien wines that, you know, for those of you that think, you know, New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, kind of, you know, force you to, you know. To reevaluate in a pleasant way. Zoe, any questions about this or New Zealand at large? Yeah, absolutely. What is the difference between the North and the South Island?

You know, one's North, one's South, which is the most facile answer I've ever given. And it made me sound like a huge asshole and I apologize to the questioner in advance. You know, I wish I was more expert when it came to the geography of New Zealand. You know. As you move further away from the equator, obviously you get cooler temperatures for the sake of the wines. The North Island of New Zealand is much more populous, historically more of the vineyard facilities were there. The South Island is kind of like newer on the scene as the source of fine wines. You know. I think. It's hard. It's hard to make gross generalizations from one place to the next in New Zealand about the North and the South Island.

I would say, you know, most of the, you know, major growing regions on the North Island are a little warmer. So Hawke's Bay is actually famous for Bordeaux-style Blenheim. So it produces the bulk of, you know, kind of prestige red wines in New Zealand. You don't really see any of that in Marlborough. You do see some of that in or a good deal of it on the South Island, but that's in the central Otago. Which is kind of further inland and more of a continental climate. But you see some Chardonnay on the North Island as well. But you know, you know, by and large tends to be a little warmer, you know, than the South Island. But, you know, there's always an exception to the rule, you know, from one corner of the country to the next.

And, you know, again, I'm no, I'm no New Zealand expert. You saw yourself short. Can you talk a little bit more about this? I'm very confident. This is a very complex and seems very tense relationship between Savvy Bee and Hawke. And what the heck is our American version of Beaujolais Blanc? Yes, that's a perfect segue, Zoe. Thank you to the questioner. So lest we forget, we have a couple of domestic wines in the mix here. And a few things. So I think, you know, Savvy Bee has developed this relationship. Relationship with oak, you know, whereby I think the prevailing style is unoaked. But I don't think the prevailing, I can tell you, you know, you know, in terms of market data, the prevailing side style is, you know, whistle clean, unoaked, doesn't go through malo-lactic, you know, is a young wine meant to be, you know, consumed within the current vintage, you know, here today, gone tomorrow, you know, alcoholic lemonade.

But it can take on oak really well. You know, I find with Savvy Bee and Hawke, it can be hard to work with for the sake of oak. Sometimes an oak is a fascinating variable when it comes to winemaking. You know, you have to find grapes that can wear oak well, you know, in the context of our, our last lesson, I talked about my own fashion sense and, you know, having to, you know, lean into, you know, classic tailoring as opposed to, you know, really, you know, more. Or, you know, fun, you know, zoot suits and stuff like that. You know, I think Sauvignon Blanc is a grape that typically needs more classic styling. It's not a Merlot, for instance, or a Zinn that, you know, can wear whatever it wants.

But there are exceptions. And I think, you know, for me, the best exception to that rule would be Bordeaux Blanc. And I think, largely, that's because Bordeaux Blanc. Also. Bordeaux Blanc also sees this balancing influence of Semillon, which is this weightier, kind of waxier wine that, you know, is a perfect yin for me to Sauvignon Blanc's yang. And I really like that relationship and wish people would drink more Bordeaux Blanc because it can be really stunning wine. And it does take on oak really beautifully and historically sees oak almost with, without exception. The greatest Bordeaux Blanc to date. So, I would like to see more of that. In California, you have seen, in the New World more broadly, you have seen producers, you know, play with that more.

Mary Edwards would be the, you know, kind of one of the premier exponents. And we're selling her wine. It's funny, Jill came to me and she was like, you know, I can't believe you brought in the Mary Edwards. And, you know, yes, you know, that is available everywhere. And, you know, I think that's a good thing. You know, it's a bit of a cliche as such, you know, for, for certain wine drinkers, but, you know, I think it's important to celebrate icons and touchstones where they exist. And Mary's been in the game for over four decades. She deserves huge credit for putting the Russian River Valley on the map for the sake of three grapes, Pinot, Chard, and Salvi B.

I mean, that's, you know, you know, one of those contributions is worth a lifetime's worth of, of, of work as a Vigneron and, you know, she's done, she's done it all. And, you know, I, I think sometimes people in my position, you know, we, you know, lean into that, you know, kind of high-fidelity, you know, jazz record store, you know, this person doesn't deserve this, you know, rare record, you know, kind of elitism. And, you know, is equally important to celebrate the, the trailblazers, the pioneers, the, you know, and Mary Edwards makes a great wine; it's not. You know, a natural wine; it's very different than what Cambridge Road is doing, you know, for the sake of, of their wines, but I think it's nonetheless worthwhile in a really cool way.

But, you know, circling back to that question about Sauvignon Blanc in California, it was first planted in the Livermore Valley in the mid-1800s, or in the mid-1800s; I don't think people fully appreciate the extent to which California had this massive wine industry before prohibition. So, a lot of people that came out west to make a fortune in the gold rush fell flat. The really smart ones opened general stores, and they made all the money. Just like I think in the restaurant industry, the really smart people are the ones who sell me like glassware and designer restaurants, like, I'm the idiot, I'm the one panning for gold. But, you know, at any day, at any rate, like Charles Whitmore, he is a newspaperman, so he's kind of like a Mark Twain figure.

He turned winemaker. And he helmed the California Viticultural Commission, which he established, helped establish. And he took cuttings from Château Yquem, which makes Sauternes, in which Sauvignon Blanc plays a smaller part, Semillon is a star player, but Sauvignon Blanc is an important supporting player in those wines, and he introduced it to California and established its name, sadly, under the name Sauternes. Just like under the name Chablis, you know, it was a bulk wine. It was like sold in a jug and, you know, you saw, you know, people drinking it straight out of the jug. And it bore little resemblance to the Sauvignon Blanc we know today, and it was intended to be sweet. Typically, it was more like a Mad Dog 40-40 kind of fortified situation. But leave it to Robert Mondavi.

Another. Another California OG who deserves more credit than he, you know, commonly gets to save Sauvignon Blanc from bulk wine status. He pivoted. He said, you know, we have this Sauvignon Blanc, people associate with the bulk wine. How do we pivot? How do we rebrand? And he recognized Pouille Fumé as a useful, you know, antecedent. Fumé means smoke, essentially, in French, and he took that word and he said, you know, let's rebrand here. Let's call it Fumé Blanc. We're not making, you know, Sauvignon Blanc or jug wine like Sauternes. We're making Fumé Blanc. It's a luxury product. And he did that, you know, beginning in the 60s and 70s and re-established Sauvignon Blanc as a worthwhile grape in California. And his Tocalon Vineyard has vineyards planted in 1949 for Sauvignon Blanc, which are some of the oldest in California to this day.

So, yeah. We're celebrating a Savvy Bee here for the sake of wine for class. And hails from Doug Margerum, who is a pioneering winemaker in the central coast of California from Santa Barbara. So, if you've seen Sideways, you know Santa Barbara. They weren't in Napa. They were in Santa Barbara because they were coming from L.A., and the Hitching Post is a hugely lauded, you know, kind of winemaker hangout. In that corner of the world. It's cartoonishly beautiful, especially set to, you know, that cool jazz score. And they work with some really awesome grapes. It's a much cooler climate than people associate with California. So, you are along the Pacific Coast and much as Hawke's Bay and Marlboro and New Zealand have a maritime influence, Santa Barbara and these other central coast vineyards in California have a maritime influence.

So, you have the Humboldt Current, the California Current, which sweeps up from the south. And makes the vineyards of Santa Barbara, you know, 10 degrees cooler than it would be on the Napa Valley floor at the height of summer. And so that you can grow a grape like Sauvignon Blanc that thrives in a cooler environment and do it justice. And this Margerum is bottled at 12, under 12.5% alcohol, which is a minor miracle. And it's a really fabulous wine. So, Doug Margerum is a sommelier by training. He first started his business in the United States. Featured the work of, you know, some of the pioneering viticulturalists in Santa Barbara throughout the 80s and 90s at his restaurant and then became a winemaker, you know, himself.

And Margerum, obviously, his private label for the sake of this wine. He's one of the Rhone Rangers. So, he has championed grapes from the Rhône Valley of France as, you know, being favorable for California. But he equalizes. He equally celebrates Savy B. And I just think this is a really lovely wine. It tastes, you know, fuller fruited than the Sauvignon, or than the Sancerre, rather. But it kind of avoids those, you know, unfortunate excesses that you get out of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc sometimes. And, you know, I think that's really well we're celebrating. And then the East Coast side of the ledger comes from a good friend of the restaurant, Mr. Jim Law. We love Jim to death. Linden is a place name.

Jim is very much the father figure for the sake of those of us that love Virginia wine. He was making serious wine out of Virginia before anybody else. He took a former apple orchard and made it one of the great wineries on the East Coast. And he is a great wine lover. He is singularly devoted to understanding what Virginia has to offer and establishing this notion of terroir, of growing this notion of terroir, this sense of place that takes time to unravel, that takes time to develop and fully discover. And that's what he's all about. And what he says about this Sauvignon Blanc, which comes from the foothills of the Blue Ridge, a site that is formed by his partner, Sherry Avinias, and named for her. He says terroir trumps varietal.

Ironically, this is well higher in ABV than the marjoram. So kind of an inversion of roles, East Coast to West Coast. But there's a purity to it that is worthy of the old world. And it's a great example of this wine. And I think for everyone that kind of poo-poos Virginia wine, I hope that, A, you're giving this a try and you do like it. And B, that you're enjoying it. You know, when the world allows that you visit Linden, because it is a really magical place. And Jim is a really lovely human being. And the more business we send his way, the better I'll feel about myself. So that's the new world, kind of, or that's rather the American Savvy Bee scene. But it is fascinating to what extent to which Savvy Bee has really succeeded.

You know, it's a brand that owes everything to New Zealand. But it's taken on a life of its own, you know, beyond, you know, Kiwi Savvy Bee. We tasted a South African Savvy Bee last week, you know, that, you know, has become a brand of itself. Chilean Savvy Bee, Northern Italian Savvy Bee. It's everywhere. And, you know, it has a really strong varietal imprint, as does Cab Sauv, you know, in a way that, you know, can explore. It can express a sense of place, but, you know, also is reliable from one corner of the world to the next. What have you got, Zoe? I have some more questions about cat pee and wine. All right. All right.

Before we get to that, I want to twist it out just for the sake of those of you participating from home and give you a license to go on with your lives, if you'd like to. Thank you so much for joining us today. You know, again, I want to circle back. I want to circle back to this notion of guilty pleasures. There should be none. You know, I think a pandemic, you know, ongoing pandemic theme is treat yourself, you know, whatever, you know, treats you enjoy. And when it comes to wine, you know, the world is full of wine experts that will tell you what to like, what not to like, you know, please disregard them, enjoy the ride, find out for yourself.

Drink out of a solo cup on ice, like man, if you want to, you know, drink all the Kim Crawford in the world, if that's what floats your boat, you know, you know, at the end of the day, you know, if you're living in the mystery, you know, and celebrating wine as a sustainable and agricultural product, you know, then, you know, the rest is gravy. So, thank you for joining us as always, alone, together. Cheers. Zoe, cat pee, hit me. Yeah. So, does it dissipate with further bottle age? Kind of like some of the beer too. Yeah, it would actually, um, uh, the chemical constituents absolutely would. Um, I kind of want to run that experiment. I kind of want to, so I actually, I have this like huge weakness for aging wines that people don't think of as ageable.

One of my favorite wines that we've served at Chalup Goat was actually this 2006 Pinot Noir Rose from Hermès. It's a German Beemer. Um, A, nobody thinks about aging Rose, B, nobody thinks about aging Finger Lakes wine, C, nobody thinks about aging Rose from the Finger Lakes. And we doubled down on it and it was like stunning. Um, it wasn't recognizable as its younger self at all, but it had this like, you know, saline, you know, savoriness that was just seductive and amazing. Um, you know, so I want to run that experiment. I kind of want to throw down, you know, you know, a, a Kim Gray. Kim Crawford vertical, um, you know, just for shits and giggles, um, just to see what happens.

Um, but I would imagine that the cappy thing would wane, um, and you would be left with, um, and it's a good wine that you would, you know, not enjoy older, um, you know, but you know, I'm, I'm willing to be wrong, you know, I'm willing to, you know, be exposed as a charlatan and, you know, um, realize that Kim Crawford is the one of the world's most age-worthy wines. What else you got? Um, what other varietals act like that other than Sauvignon Blanc? Great question. Um, uh, Gewurztraminer. Um, uh, so Gewurzt is, uh, uh, uh, genetically linked to Sauvignon. Uh, that's a thought to be, it has a, a parent-offspring relationship with Sauvignon Blanc. Uh, but, uh, the bulk of evidence indicates that it's, it's the parent of Sauvignon Blanc.

Um, but Gewürzt, um, is, is loud. Gewürzt is actually even louder than, um, uh, Sauvignon Blanc. Gewürzt is like, um, you know, um, spraying your sister with the fragrances at the department store, you know, um, for fun. Um, it's, it's a, it's a huge, uh, wine. Um, uh, so I, I think Gewürzt is, is, is a logical one. Um, uh, Gewürzt actually ages just really well in this, like, beguiling way. Um, it loses this, like, um. Rose petal, like, floral ostentatiousness that it hasn't infused and then takes on this, like, textural weirdness that, um, you know, is kind of, like, oolong, you know, kind of, uh, orange, orange, uh, like, picot-y kind of thing that, that I think is, is really seductive.

Um, maybe it's not a wine that you just, like, throw black reflexively on a patio, but, um, it's fun nonetheless. I think in terms of other varietals that are famously aromatic, um, the Malvasia. Moscato family, I think, is a little bit like that. Um, honestly, the Riesling family, uh, can be like that. And, and Riesling, you know, as much as I love it, can be similarly divisive, um, you know, um, in terms of, like, you know, how it, how it, uh, expresses and, and shows, uh, for people. Um, you know, vis-à-vis, like, that, like, cat pee, uh, signifier specifically, I can't really think of another grape that, that has that. Like, Cab Franc and, um, Cab Sauvage. Um, will get green. Um, people say green.

They'll have that, like, asparagus, kind of artichoky, um, uh, thing going on, um, when under ripe. Um, but, you know, um, it's something that Savvy Bee, um, you know, really, kind of, um, carries the banner for. Um, one of my final questions of what about it in the pet nap process, um, makes the wines just so cloudy, um, that being, like, confined and filtered or being bottled with a leaf? Yeah, so that hasn't actually, like, that honestly has nothing to do with the process of introducing gas to the wine. It has more to do with the finishing of the wine. So, um, you know, most wines, especially white wines, um, that are, uh, sold commercially, are, um, either fined or filtered. Um, and that's just about stability.

Um, Sauvignon Blanc typically doesn't go through what's called malolactic fermentation. Um, and for wines that don't go through that, you know, kind of secondary phase of the fermentation process, it's necessary to either add sulfur or filter them. Otherwise, they tend to re-ferment, um, in the bottle, um, if you're not careful. Um, and, uh, you know, um, on top of that, sparkling wine, because it, um, whether you're making wine like Champagne or, or in the Methane Ancestral, um, undergoes this, a, a fermentation process in the bottle itself. Um, typically people, uh, find a way to expel, um, that leftover sediment, um, so, um, they'll, um, kind of carry out this process, uh, it's called rumage, whereby they, you know, slowly but surely turn the bottle and work, um, that sediment into the neck, um, and then, uh, plunge it in an ice bath, freeze, um, pop the cork, expel, and you're left with something that's a lot cleaner and clearer than it would be otherwise.

Um, Cambridge Road, um, being devoted to, you know, natural methods and, you know, no additives, um, from vineyard to bottle. Um, you know, issues that, and, and they, they think that, you know, the wine as a living being on those leftover lees is a big part of the enjoyment of the wine. Um, you know, I will say from personal experience that wines that are bottled, especially sparkling wines, that are bottled with the lees like that, um, you know, they tend to be, uh, wines of process, um, I think more than they are wines of place. Um, I think the Cambridge Roads of the world would, would disagree with me, but I think in terms of, you know, um, the way that they express, especially if you poured them side by side in a blind tasting context, um, you know, they lean into that cider-like, you know, sour beer-like, um, place and, you know, they all kind of, all roads converge and it doesn't matter whether you're working with Sauvignon Blanc or Pinot Gris or Gewurztraminer or, you know, any other number of white grapes, you know, they're going to land in that place that tastes like lees and tastes like unfiltered natural wine. And that's just where they converge. And that can be an enjoyable, like an enjoyable place to live. But part of my frustration with like the natural wine community is they want to pretend that, you know, um, that convergence doesn't happen. They want to pretend that, you know, that convergence is a true expression of Sauvignon Blanc.

And for me, you know, I think a truer expression of Sauvignon Blanc, you know, maybe God forbid is a wine that sees a little bit of salt. Uh, last question for you. Um, talking about New Zealand wines and the Māori, um, indigenous people, how they don't have too many wineries, um, but are there any that you specifically suggest or if there's just, um, any knowledge drop that you want to talk about? Yeah, that's, that's an amazing, amazing question. Um, Keimata refers to a peak and obviously is a Māori term. Um, the estate, um, actually endowed, um, the New Zealand Poet Laureate. Prize. So the news, all of it, like, and this is in the nineties. So, you know, the Poet Laureates of New Zealand, um, they actually get this traditional Māori walking staff carved, um, by the vignerons at, um, uh, Te Mata.

Of course, the winery is owned by a bunch of people that look like me originally from Northern Ireland. Um, uh, I don't know. I, that's a, that's a really good question. And I wish I'd done more digging for the sake of this lesson. Honestly, I think, you know, that question of, um, you know, minority representation in the wine world is one that, you know, should always be at the front of our mind, regardless of the lesson. Um, and, um, you know, James Busby didn't, you know, he didn't enter terra incognita, you know, there were, you know, he didn't plant vines on the North Island, um, you know, uh, in a vacuum. Um, he wasn't the first person to discover, um, New Zealand, you know, there were, um, you know, uh, indigenous, uh, occupants.

And New Zealand history certainly doesn't start with him. Um, even though, um, Western winemaking history does. Um, I, I'd love to do, I'd love to do more digging. And, and, you know, I thank the questioner, um, for, for asking as much. Um, uh, it should be said that, like, um, I love the Kiwi sense of, of humor. Uh, and Teo Waikiki, uh, Waititi, uh, uh, who, um, uh, is behind, um, you know, a series of vampire flicks and, uh, other, you know, New Zealand expressions of culture. And then, you know, um, you know, uh, Jermaine Panant, uh, who's behind the Flight of the Conchords. They both have, um, you know, uh, indigenous ancestry in New Zealand. Um, so there's definitely, like, you know, uh, indigenous representation, uh, there, uh, in pop culture.

And, and I'd love to, uh, explore that further, uh, for the sake of the wines. But, um, you know, in as much as I live along the Potomac River, um, but there are no, um, aboriginal, um, you know, occupants of, um, you know, the Potomac tribe. Uh, indigenous. Um, Te Mata bears a name that, you know, doesn’t necessarily, uh, have a lot to do with, uh, the people that do the winemaking, though. That’s all I got. Yeah, yeah. Uh, it feels like a bit of a, you know, that's, that's a tough note to end on, but, you know, a worthwhile one, uh, at any rate. Um, um. We can ask the question about cat pee. We can just, like. No, I think we, we. We can just, like, call it.

I'm thinking about that horse. That horse is dead, Zoey. Um, uh, it should be, it should be said that, like, we had a lot of, you know, a lot of lot of questions about uh slutty as a wine descriptor and and Zoe that was your that was your descriptor so I'm gonna put you on the spot I I have used that uh vis-a-vis wines before um why did you say slutty when it came to Sauvignon Blanc for the sake of uh summer wine enjoyment I'm gonna try to use my words so diplomatically right now so diplomatically do not want nasty emails um you know I guess with great communication and if you're an open honest relationship because being slutty isn't a bad idea maybe that's the same exact thing that you can talk about wine with yeah exactly I think I think too I I think like uh this comes from like at tail up goat wine school I think we we are this is a sex positive wine school uh there's no slut shaming here I think we want to speak in terms of of forward wines and you know we have all been we've all had that moment in our lives you know where you know that little bit of you know sluttiness has served us well and um you know been been fun um you know God forbid um and I think we all need a little bit of that uh in in our lives uh right now so I I think that that's important to to celebrate it is a human uh tendency it is a wine tendency and you know i for me it just can you know a wine that's that's forward you know wine that gives it all up you know on the first date a wine that you know you don't even have to stick your nose in the glass to readily identify it you know comes for you um and you know that that is um you know equally equally worth celebrating so um cheers to that cheers to you zoe as always cheers to you all of you uh joining us from home have a lovely week i love you all.