Wowique Single Vineyard Lenswood Sauvignon Blanc 2016
($28; 13.3% alcohol; screw cap)
Warwick Billings is a brave man.
At the peak of my ranting about catpissy/battery-acid/lawn-clippings Sauvignon blanc, the great cider and perry maker sent me his new Savvy-b. With a note. "A bit of the weed from highest Lenswood," he wrote. "Was trying to avoid excess NZ and has spent all its life in barrels. I think it works!"
So does it work?
To start, it doesn't smell much of oak. It smells of Sauvignon blanc. Not that rank reek of the capeweed you just ran over with the mower, but the clean, sharp oxalic acid of oxalis and rhubarb. It's sort of lemony; sort of gooseberry (Ribes grossularioides - also tellingly known as the catberry).
If you let it warm a little, it grows a thin spread of lemon butter and its dry dusty burlap and hessian aspects become more prominent. Okay, okay, the trained hooter can smell some neat oak. But it's not a fumé blanc like the smoky, complex Sauvignons of the Loire.
Drink. It's lean, but it's not all oxalic. It has bones as well as leaves and stems and gooseberries. But it has plenty of those, too. The trick is not to chill the poor bugger: pour it when it's just cool, like Adelaide cellar temperature. Late winter Casa Blanca windowsill in the shade temperature. Chet Baker cool.
This is a personal matter. I'm in neither lust nor love - but I dribble at the thought of cooking a big wild chook slowly in the Le Creuset in scrumpy cider, capers, garlic, juniper berries, a big handful of fresh tarragon and some shallots. Grind some white peppercorns over it, and serve it with a glass of this very fine example of a Sauvignon made with a great deal of thought and a buzz of the thrill of risk.
To summarise, it smells like the top of Coldstore Road, Lenswood, where everybody's called Green - I went to school with Marilyn - there are perfect apples everywhere, and on some spring days the northerly blows a gentle breath of the bush over the ridge from the Torrens Gorge. On a good one, everything there smells so vibrantly verdant it's brittle as much as sweet. And in my experience, any countryside that grows fine pines and apples with ease is damn fine for wine.
O'Leary Walker The Lucky Punter Adelaide Hills Sauvignon Blanc 2016
($18; 11.5% alcohol; screw cap)
Clean, clean, clean. Pristine. Pretty little flowers, like Mimosa pudica; maybe even chamomile. This is a Nick Walker white: fanatical in its purity and crystalline reflection of its family and its source. You gotta dance with the one who brung ya. So why am I searching the wine so hard for everything other than typical pristine Sauvignon blanc characteristics?
It's like being a large white bloke called Whitey at this point in politically correct Australian history. Hardly comfortable, but you do try to be an outstanding example and not like the rest. Which never impresses everybody.
It's pretty good - nah it's rock'n'roll; rockabilly - with soft fetta in good fine oil and herbs and some crunchy green olives. And an apple from a tree, not a friggin supermarket.
Grown in one of the first Oakbank vineyards, south of the racecourse, this has always been a Hills Savvy-b that makes Niewzillun unnecessary. And if you find the tiny Unitarian Cemetery there where the great sculptor and Rat of Tobruck, John Dowie lies, go check his inscription, which says "this is the best I've felt in years." Then breathe the tiny wild orchids.
PS: If you promise to keep totally schtum about it, I'll tell you something else, like beyond peppercorn squid, I like to do with these prime crunchies. If you get a posh Shiraz that's like $80 and disappointingly dead with alcohol and lumberjacks and somebody's humourless greed, or a stale one of any price, or a hippy one that smells of roadkill in the summer, hit it with a tiny dribble of the blue-eyed blonde sauvignon.Odds are on it'll shock it back to life, and knock the rusty convict shackles off it. Like just one teaspoon per glass. In spring, if you get a slightly flat Riesling, a dash will help there, too. Or Chardonnay. Have a liberation.
1 comment:
Pinot Gris does ok too
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