Berger: Looking at local sauvignon blancs

It has been less than 20 years since sauvignon blanc first came from New Zealand to the United States and changed the way the grape variety was viewed here.

In fact, the first few years here for NZ SB were dicey ones, with many American wine buyers mystified by a wine that even its producers said could smell like cat’s pee.

By 2004 or so, however, against rather long odds, Americans came to appreciate the wildly tropical, lime-scented, olive-flavored, gooseberry-leaning wine.

Today, New Zealand’s most popular white wine may be credited with being the key reason we are seeing an amazing renaissance in a grape variety that in the 1960s was so disparaged that its name was even changed.

Robert Mondavi, a visionary in so many areas of the wine business, always wanted to make a classic (i.e., dry-styled) sauvignon blanc like those in the Loire Valley. After founding his winery in 1966, he realized that the grape was not always associated with greatness.

So he renamed his version fumé blanc, which began a push to get more Euro-styled versions into the market.

David Stare of Dry Creek Vineyards in Sonoma, a dedicated Loire Valley-ophile, adopted the fumé blanc name; Louis Foppiano chose the name Sonoma fumé, and many others adopted “fumé” and began to have success with it.

For a time in California, the wine was jocularly called “poor man’s chardonnay,” even though aromatically it was 180 degrees from the grape of Burgundy.

Most domestic sauvignon blancs of the 1970s were herbal and green-leaf scented, and not always met with enthusiasm by wine buyers.

By the late 1980s, it was known that the herbal notes in SB could be tamed by removing leaves from sauvignon blanc vines and getting more direct sunlight to the grapes. However, some growers went too far, stripping the plants of most if not all of its herbal imprint.

This led to a decade of utter blandness for SB in which the grape was robbed of its natural varietal character. Meanwhile, efforts to broaden the mid-palate of the wine by putting it into oak barrels were only marginally successful, since oak in a non-distinctive liquid can be utterly boring.

Even at home, New Zealand’s first efforts with SB in the mid-1970s also were met with raised eyebrows. But by the mid-1980s, it was beginning to gain acceptance at home, and by the late 1990s the first SBs from NZ were trickling in to the United States.

Curiosity about the wines, as well as their very reasonable prices, captured adventuresome wine buyers, who began to cherish the herbal scents. To this day there is broad acceptance of these wines, the majority of which still sell for less than $20 a bottle.

But there are still people who prefer a more delicate style of sauvignon blanc, including many winemakers.

Among them are literally dozens of Napa Valley winemakers who have (belatedly?) realized that Napa can make simply sensational sauvignon blanc. The public has begun to sense this too, and demand has risen precipitously in the last two years for Napa’s top sauvignon blancs.

In some cases, prices for them are rising as fast as did Napa cabernet sauvignons in the 1990s.

Wineries like Chateau Montelena, Mayacamas, Frog’s Leap, Grgich Hills, Mondavi, Cakebread, St. Supery and dozens more are now making stellar SBs with a Napa character that is enticing and not NZ oriented. Part of the reason is that Napa is a warmer growing area, and doesn’t lend itself naturally to herbal SBs.

Could a case be made that sauvignon blanc is Napa’s real calling, not cabernet sauvignon?

Margo Van Staaveren, winemaker at Chateau St. Jean in Sonoma Valley, likes SB but doesn’t prefer the strong herbal scents of the grape. Following house tradition, however, she makes a wine called fumé blanc that comes from the cooler Russian River Valley, which could well be a bit herbal.

Instead, she tames the herbs by judicious use of barrel aging in mostly used barrels, and gets a delicate level of herbs, more like lemon peel, merged with a glorious texture. And its price is a lot lower than many of the Napa versions.

Dan Berger lives in Sonoma County, where he publishes “Vintage Experiences,” a weekly wine newsletter. Write to him at winenut@gmail.com.