Jurancon Sec Chant des Vignes, Domaine Cauhapé 2010 review

… doesn’t play remotely hard to get: extrovert, fruit-laden, immediate

A closeup of the label of this Jurancon Sec half bottle from The Wine SocietyThis Jurancon — made from the outstandingly named Gros Manseng grape — has that grassy, springy, verdant burst that you associate with Sauvignon Blanc. And, like Sauv Blanc, it’s mightily accessible. A garden-friendly, pub-friendly, gob-friendly kind of wine. Not remotely playing hard to get, it’s extrovert, fruit-laden, immediate.

But here’s where it beats the pub Sauv Blancs. Yes, it’s got that front-of-mouth accessibility. But it stays in balance. It doesn’t gank up your mouth or descend into sugary blandness. Instead, it’s taut and toned throughout. Balanced, yeah?

Good, simple stuff. And, yes, I’m reviewing another half bottle. Because I like half bottles. Alright?

Rating ★★★ 3 stars (good)
Region Jurancon, south-west France
Grape Gros Manseng
ABV 13.5%
Price £4.95 for a half bottle from The Wine Society

Villebois Sauvignon Blanc Prestige review

… goes straight down the Sauvignon Blanc line. Doesn’t veer off at idiosyncratic angles or bisect it haphazardly like a drunkard playing hopscotch. Oh no. It goes down that line.

Closeup of the simple typography of this Sauvignon Blanc label — silver lettering on a black label

Imagine a line. You got it? Just a line. Make it whatever colour you like. Come on, get a move on. It’s only two dimensions, for Christ’s sake.

Right.

Well, that line you imagined? This Sauvignon Blanc goes straight down it. Straight. Doesn’t veer off at idiosyncratic angles or bisect it haphazardly like a drunkard playing hopscotch. No. It goes straight down that line.

What I’m saying is — in my achingly, piteously laborious way — is that this is a Simple, Straightforward Sauvignon Blanc.

So I don’t really need to describe it too much. It’s got that nettley, grassy, springy thing. That gob-pleasing blast that’s the white wine world’s equivalent of MSG. Accessible. Light yet tongue-clubbingly flavoured.

I get a bit bored of Sauvignon Blanc, to be honest. But a fucking massive bolus of people don’t. And for those people, Villebois is a solid choice. Because it’s not facile, like some SBs, nor is it so stuffed with zing that your poor gob is overzinged after the first glass. It’s got a bit of poise to it; it’s full, yet it doesn’t cloy.

And if you’re a Naked Wines member, it comes at an extremely attractive price.

So — depending how you like your wines and lines to interact (no, not in a druggy way, you foul cur) — you’ll either like it or you won’t.

Which is pretty much the level of insight you come to this blog for, right?

Rating ??? 3 stars (good)
Region Loire
Grape Sauvignon Blanc
ABV
Price £10.99 from Naked Wines (£7.33 to members) — but, oop, it’s sold out. Bah.

Domaine du Salvard Cheverny 2009 review

… is a welcome contrast to some Sauvignon Blancs, that are a bit like ketamine-laced teenagers, spoiling for whatever it is ketamine-laced teenagers spoil for

A bottle of Domaine du Salvard — typical French wine label, signed by Delaille

Ah, that’s rather a lovely Sauvignon Blanc from the Loire. There’s the grass and the snap of it — but also a swoonsome waft of blossom. Suck’n’swirl and you may find yourself encountering bit of sweet, toffeed, fudgy stuff in there.

It’s quite soft, even if you let it linger — in contrast to some Sauvignon Blancs, that are a bit like ketamine-laced teenagers, spoiling for whatever it is ketamine-laced teenagers spoil for. You’ve seen them. The rap singers.

Yeah. It’s gently, restrained. Not too harsh or zingy — it nibbles rather than bites. Elegant. And fine, fine value for thy wodge.

Rating **** 4 stars (very good)
Region Loire
Grape Sauvignon Blanc
ABV 12%
Price £7.50 from The Wine Society (link is to 2010 vintage, as 2009 is sold out)

Pouilly-Fume 2009, Seguin (half bottle) review

… is a sharp, acidic gob-flasher who reads Zola novels and plays the bassoon

A half bottle of Pouilly-Fume from the Wine SocietyThis is a delicious wine. Buoyant zing, spring leaves. I love it when a sharp, acidic gob-flasher like this is backed up by that bready wholeness that rounds it out and gives it depth.

A flasher who reads Zola novels and plays the bassoon.

Almost criminally drinkable, it’s lovely, balanced, fresh. A long-lasting tongue-tingler. And it comes in a half-bottle, alright?

Legend.

Again, here’s what Sauvignon Blanc can do, kids. (And when I say ‘kids’, obviously I mean ‘over-18-year-olds’.) Sauvignon Blancs can be exquisitely balanced — fresh, immediate, springy — yet non-cloying.

Lovely stuff.

Rating 4 stars (very good)
Region Pouilly Fume, Loire
Grape Sauvignon Blanc
ABV 12.5%
Price £7.50 for a half bottle from The Wine Society

The Society’s Exhibition Sauvignon Blanc, Elim, 2008

… is a breathtakingly, audaciously barefaced, joyously ebullient, in-your-face cliche of a sauvignon blanc

A bottle of this South African Sauvignon Blanc from the Wine Society. Classic Exhibition range label

Man alive. Here’s a wine that almost seems like it ought to crunch in your mouth. See, it’s like biting into a crisp, raw, juice-spurting green pepper.

This is a wine that’s so incredibly Sauvignon-Blancish that it’s almost a caricature. Almost like a bunch of satirical wine-makers got together and decided to make something that was so goddamn Sauvignon Blanc that it’d prompt shouts of incredulous laughter.

New World Sauvignon Blanc is generally pretty damn accessible — and this wine exaggerates all those accessible characteristics to such a degree that it’s almost (paradoxically, dude) inaccessible, it’s so full-on accessible. It’s a breathtakingly, audaciously barefaced, joyously upfront, in-your-face cliche.

And I rather like it.

It’s fruited, dry, and slips down leaving nary a cloy or a clog. It’s not sugary and simplistic (those are all-too-common SB characteristics it doesn’t exaggerate). As well as the green pepper, there’s fresh chilli, herbs. Hell, it’s like a blinkin’ stir-fry.

So if you’re in the mood for a bit of sauvignon satire — a wine that’ll throw your friends’ efforts into the sauvignon shade — this is for you. The one New World Sauvignon Blanc to rule them all, the one New World Sauvignon Blanc to bind them. &c &c.

If you don’t much like Sauvignon Blanc, though — um — actually, you probably don’t need me to finish this sentence.

Rating ★★★ 3 stars (good)
Region Western Cape
Grape Sauvignon Blanc
ABV 13%
Price £9.99 from The Wine Society (no longer available, I’m afraid)

English Bacchus Reserve, Chapel Down

… will give you a subtly blossomed English caress — but perhaps leave you dreaming of ecstatic frenzy and phallic symbolism

A bottle of English Bacchus from Marks & Spencer. Stylish black, red and gold label

Trust the Romans, eh?

Those unimaginative Romans, who came along and — without a by-your-leave — pinched the Greeks’ pantheon of gods, slapped a bunch of considerably less poetic names on them, carried out a few changes to make them altogether that bit more shit, and touted them as their own.

The Romans were a bit like Microsoft.

Anyhow. Bacchus was the Romans’ rebranded version of the Greeks’ Dionysus, god of wine — a tantalisingly androgynous kind of chap, holding (according to the oracular Wikipedia) ‘a fennel staff, tipped with a pine-cone and known as a thyrsus’.

For my next profile picture, incidentally, I intend to brandish a thyrsus, sure in the knowledge that I’ll thereby attract a large following of ecstatically raving bacchantes — female devotees who, via dancing and intoxication, ‘lose all self-control, begin shouting excitedly [and] engage in uncontrolled sexual behaviour’.

(Not to imply that I don’t already enjoy such a following, natch.)

Anyhow. Bacchus is also — and I hope this doesn’t come as too much of a crashing shock to you, after all that deity stuff — a grape variety. Grown in England, of all places.

So from Olympian heights, we find ourselves in the wine aisle of Marks & Spencer.

Mundane enough for you?

But let’s stave off thoughts of our own desperate mortality and get some of the stuff down our gullet, shall we? (Reminder: if you actually are in the wine aisle of M&S, you should probably buy the bottle and get it home before you do this.)

So — what’ve we got? First off, bacchus bears more than a passing likeness to sauvignon blanc. It has that springy zing to it. But here, there’s an appley softness, too. A subtly blossomed caress, if you want to get all wanky about it.

Yeah, it’s rounder, more welcoming, less showy-off than your everyday sauvignon blanc. Not quite as ‘June is bustin’ out all over’, y’know? But still with that crispness, that green taste to it — if you’ll forgive me coming over all synesthaesiac on you.

Nice and long and dry, with rather a lovely balance.

Yeah, it’s on the pricey side (which keeps it from earning that oh-so-coveted fourth star) — but perhaps that’s what you have to stump up for a subtly blossomed English caress, these days.

Alternatively, blossomed caresses be damned: just get yourself a thyrsus and bring on the ecstatic frenzy of those bacchantes. Who’s with me?

Rating ★★★ 3 stars (good)
ABV 12.5%
Price £10.99 from Marks & Spencer

Moroccan wine and food in Marrakech

… in which Old Parn chronicles his imbibitions during a brief sojourn to the city of Marrakech in Morocco — including Medaillon Sauvignon Blanc and Cabernet Sauvignon

Three women in colourful Moroccan dress walk along a road shiny with recent rainfall

I return to your screen, dear reader, revitalised by a brief sojourn to the city of Marrakech. A city where the streets are narrow and the mopeds are fast.

Composite image. On the left, a man rides his moped through a crowded Moroccan souk; on the right, a narrow Marrakech street

This is not the place for an exhaustive travel diary (indeed, there is no place for an exhaustive travel diary. Because that crap is boring as hell.) So I’ll limit myself to the tastes of Marrakech.

And what tastes, what tastes.

I think of bitter lacings of the chargrill, the zing of salt and lemon, the matt tang of cheese. Cinnamon, sugar, prune and lamb. Thrilling collisions of sweet and savoury.

An array of Moroccan starters in beautiful, multicoloured earthenware bowls

And the wine? Well.

Wine ain’t all that easy to come by in Morocco. Religion’n’all, y’know? But most any restaurant seems to have a few bottles around.

A golden-labelled bottle of Medaillon wine, as served in a Marrakech restaurantSo, during our stay, we sampled Medaillon Sauvignon Blanc, Medaillon Cabernet Sauvignon and a Syrah the name of which I foolishly neglected to note. All were Moroccan.

Impressions? Curious beasts, the lot of ’em — the white perhaps most odd of all (a slight tingle of fizz, stewy fruit, decaying blossoms), but all far from usual. A common feature seemed to be a whopping old dose of residual sugar (both reds had a mild whiff of communion wine to them), meaning that all three were far sweeter than you’d expect.

Finesse-wise, they were sorely lacking. But, you know what? In the context, they were damn nice. Perhaps simply because, after a day of being harangued, near-run-over, sun-beaten and bewildered, an alcoholic relaxant was delicious in any form. But also, I suspect, because Moroccan cuisine is so impressive in its marrying of the sweet and the savoury that many finer wines would’ve been entirely out of their depth. Paired with the food, all that sugar actually made a lot more sense.

And, y’know, sometimes (yes, it may sound heretical, but I’ll say it) — sometimes, the wine is just a backdrop.

Anyhow, normal reviewing service will be resumed shortly. Meanwhile, I cordially invite you to peruse my photographs of Marrakech, should you so desire…

Mistral Sauvignon Blanc, Naked Wines

… will underwhelm you. But the people selling it to you? They’ll whelm yo’ ass right off.

A bottle of Mistral Sauvignon Blanc in the foreground, with colourful abstract art on the label. In the background (out of focus) a glass of white wine.

Naked Wines underwhelmed me with this one.

But then (hot damn!) they went right in and fucking whelmed me something proper.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s talk about the underwhelm, first.

So. Mistral Sauvignon Blanc. A disappointing wine. I mean, it’s not bad. It’s just, well, rather uninspiring.

A bit empty, a bit nothingy.

Rather like Old Parn running the 400m, it starts off energetically enough (though already people are whispering that it’s worryingly thin and pale) — but then it has a really poor finish.

You’ll be snuffling and flaring your nostrils like something out of The Witches in an attempt to get much out of this wine: aromatically, it’s very closed down for so zingy a grape variety. And what aromas you do get out of it are typical, a tad uninteresting. Except (alas) for a faint waft of nappy. I’m sorry. Really, I am. But there it is.

Verdict

Increasingly, I’m coming to think that there’s a small problem with Naked Wines’ model: the ‘full price’ figure seems rather inflated. You see, I’d be chagrined if I’d spent £7.50 on this wine. In fact, I had it for a reduced rate (part of a taster case). But because I have £7.50 as an RRP in my head, I’m psychologically primed for a £7.50-quality wine. Even if I’ve actually paid a good deal less than that (hell, this is a £5 wine if you’re a member — in which light it suddenly seems a heck of a lot less disappointing).

Alas, £7.50 is still the yardstick I’m measuring it up against. And it falls short.

Don’t take this as an attack on those fine Naked fellows. I remain intrigued and impressed by their business model — and I enjoyed the first two bottles of theirs I reviewed (whilst still harbouring the slight impression of over-optimistic ‘full’ prices, I might add). While this specimen is definitely less good than those other two, it’s still by no means terrible; just unexciting, middle-of-the-road.

So I suppose I’m just saying that, psychologically, their pricing model isn’t quite hitting the right note for me.

Then again, I’ll tell you what is hitting the right note: the fact that, a few hours after I’d casually tweeted a message about my disappointment with this wine, one of the Naked guys was contacting me to offer me my money back on it*.

That, in case you are wondering, is fucking uberwhelming.

Rating * (1 star) — but ***** for customer service
ABV 12.5%
Price £7.50 from Naked Wines (£5 if you’re a member)
* Fo’ yo’ info, I didn’t take him up on his offer. It may’ve been disappointing, but it wasn’t bad.

Waitrose Sancerre, Joseph Mellot 2009

… will light up your palate with a triumphant blaze of verdant Spring

If I had to walk into an unfamiliar (or familiarly unreliable) pub and order a glass of white wine, I’d go for Sauvignon Blanc.

It’s a forgiving grape: a bad Sauvignon Blanc (hereafter ‘SB’) tends still to be drinkable, because it’s such a fruity wine. The hoofingly powerful gooseberry-type flavours that almost inevitably dominate SBs can throw a veil over many sins.

But there are two sides, of course, to this. Safety and reliability can all too easily become predictability. And SBs can be a bit like Walkers’ Cheese & Onion crisps: appealingly, tastebud-bombingly gratifying in the short-term, but leaving an acrid artificiality lingering in their wake.

Thank Christ, then, for wines like this damn, damn nice Sancerre (100% Sauvignon Blanc, y’know).

It’s fruity, sure. But it gambols over the pit into which so, so many of its fellow SBs tumble: that of being too fruity — overwhelming, concentrated, one-dimensional.

It slides silkily onto your tongue, before lighting up your palate with a triumphant blaze of pure, verdant Spring — dancing, tingling, mouthfilling — and yet manages to follow this extroverted exposition with a demure, elegant development. Just at the point when a lesser SB would be beginning to strain, to reveal its limitations, this chap eases into a lovely, smooth 5th gear. And goes on.

And on.

It has an excellent finish, in other words: the youthful greenness (gooseberry, yes — but also the crisp spurt of biting into raw green pepper) blossoms into late-summer roundedness. Peach, firm-fleshed young plums — where the golden flesh is turning vermillion, close to the stone. It is mouthwatering, seductive, addictive. So impressive is the lack of any bump in the transition between the initial excitement and the subsequent warm expansiveness that one’s almost mesmerised. I find myself taking mouthful after mouthful (yeah, any excuse), continually marvelling at the finesse with which this transition is accomplished.

Verdict

I know it’s not a cheap wine, but for this level of complexity — this excellent balance — I’d happily pay a lot more than £12. Deservedly award-winning, this is a very fine wine indeed. Serve it to somebody you want to impress — or somebody you’d like to intoxicate in the most beguiling way imaginable.

Rating *****
ABV 13%
Price £11.39 from Waitrose