Drink This, Not That

The marketing of wine and spirits tends to be completely different. In the universe of distilled spirits, a bunch of executives get together and decide what the next trend will be, then spend as much as necessary to make it happen. Wine trends are usually consumer-led. The best examples would be the Merlot craze following the 60 Minutes episode about The French Paradox, and the film Sideways, which kicked off the current mania for Pinot Noir and decimated the demand for Merlot. Both wines were overproduced during the boom years, which resulted in some awful Merlot and tons of average Pinot Noir, although the latter is just as popular as ever.

Attempts to manufacture a wine trend can easily backfire. In the 1990s, some Master Sommeliers decided that the next hot grape would be Austria’s Gruner Veltliner, but they neglected to inform the public. I remember sitting in the Las Vegas outpost of Spago during that period, looking through four solid pages of Gruner Veltliner on the wine list. Few diners knew what those wines were, nor was there anyone handy to explain the phenomenon (Master Sommeliers seldom work the floor). The “trend” inevitably crashed and burned.

Now it appears that Sauvignon Blanc is the new hot grape, and the demand seems to be coming from consumers who drink it. Production is up in California even as overall grape tonnage is down, and the average Sauvignon Blanc is now slightly more expensive than Chardonnay, the favorite wine for decades among emerging sophisticates.

What’s going on? Some observers think that Sauvignon Blanc’s popularity was enhanced by Fifty Shades of Grey, although the wines in that film were predominantly French, so the grape variety wasn’t obvious on the label. Surprisingly, there’s even more SB coming out of Napa. For many years, very little SB was produced in the Napa Valley, for understandable reasons: the best land for SB is also the prime location for Cabernet Sauvignon, which fetches three or four times the price. The outlier has always been Honig, which produces nearly 50,000 cases of its “Classic” SB. Certain estates (Spottswoode, Duckhorn, Frog’s Leap, etc.) make a small amount of Sauvignon Blanc, but when a winery like Rombauer starts ripping out Cabernet vines to plant SB, it attracts attention.

There’s a cliché in the wine business that consumers talk dry and drink sweet. Because Sauvignon Blanc has a very high level of natural acidity, winemakers can get away with some extra sweetness; this makes it more attractive to beginning drinkers, a demographic that wineries are usually desperate to cultivate. There’s no way to verify this theory, since estates are notoriously cagey about revealing levels of residual sugar (sugar not converted to alcohol during the fermentation process). They’ll reveal where the wine was grown, the harvest date, the grape composition, how long it was aged and in what type of barrels, when it was bottled, the PH and the total acidity—but seldom the sugar level, since sweetness is a huge no-no among contemporary drinkers.

I looked at the tech sheets for about one dozen domestic Sauvignon Blancs, and the only winery to disclose the RS level was Matanzas Creek’s Sonoma County version (1.9 grams per liter, or 0.19%, safely in the dry zone). By contrast, most late harvest dessert wines contain between 120-150 grams per liter. In the case of Matanzas Creek, the total acidity was 6.6 grams per liter, making the wine not just dry but extremely food-friendly, a good match for shellfish, fish and white meats.

The problem with trends is that they change, and the biggest threat to Sauvignon Blanc now is the specter of overproduction. We’ve seen this scenario before, and here’s how it goes: when the new hot grape is anointed, the wineries already producing it are sold out. Everyone else starts planting, but vines need to be at least 3-5 years old to produce drinkable wine. If the demand is strong enough, the temptation to release wine from immature grapes is irresistible and causes a backlash among the public. This is what happened with Merlot. Any stock trader can tell you how difficult it is to time the market.

At this point, you’re probably looking for recommendations or at least preferences. In terms of value for money, Honig ($24) is among the most solid and reliable domestic choices. Spottswoode ($48) is lovely if you can find it, elegant and complex. If you can get over the sticker shock, Robin Lail’s Georgia ($185) is a lean and focused powerhouse, with mouthwatering acidity, flavors of citrus and green apple, a strong mineral underpinning, and a long, peppery finish. Historically, the gold standard in Napa has been Mondavi’s To Kalon I Block Fumé Blanc ($150), made from a five-acre parcel in one of California’s most celebrated vineyards.

Speaking of Mondavi, what’s the difference between Sauvignon Blanc and Fumé Blanc? Absolutely nothing—they are the same grape variety. As the story goes, Robert Mondavi was searching for a way to successfully market his SB during an era when French wines were viewed as preferable to their California cousins (i.e., prior to the Paris Tasting of 1976). He noticed that some Loire Valley wines were labeled as Blanc Fumé and simply reversed the words, which worked. Initially, there was a difference in vinification between the two, since Fumé Blanc tended to be aged in oak rather than stainless steel, but that practice has pretty much disappeared.

Cloudy Bay ($35) is the wine that established New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, but like Kim Crawford ($18), it has morphed from a low-production gem to a mass-produced item. My New Zealand favorites are Dog Point ($25) and Craggy Range Te Muna Road ($22). If you find yourself in the supermarket, pressed for time and cash, you won’t go wrong with the entry-level releases from Villa Maria, Brancott, or Oyster Bay. There’s not much point in talking about Sancerre, since the best wines tend to come from small producers and aren’t readily available (and if I’ve ever had a bad Sancerre, I can’t remember it). From Bordeaux, my go-to restaurant white is Château Carbonnieux, which you can generally find for under $100 on many wine lists.

Whatever you choose, Sauvignon Blanc is likely to be fresh, bright, lively and bracing—just don’t delay, because the next hot grape could be coming down the pike.