Those Darling Wine Discovery Moments

So, normally I wouldn’t do a wine review on this blog - I use Cork’d to track my bottles and thoughts - but I’m going to talk today about a particular discovery.

I’ve been drinking wine for about three or four years now. Before that, I rarely drank any at all. In fact, I rarely drank. But then I made a discovery, saw a new side to wine, and I was hooked.

And the great thing about pursuing wine as a total hedonistic and aesthetic pursuit is that you get to keep having discoveries. Wine is an inexhaustible subject, one that is always changing, with a seeming endless novelty. Producers matter, vintages matter, weather matters, aging matters, the ambiance in which the wine is tasted matters, the food matters… it just goes on. So what I wanted to do is share a sample of what a discovery looks like when made by someone with quite a bit of wine exploration already under his belt.

And so, with no further ado… Graves!

All the wine I’ve ever had, I’ve never had one made mostly with Semillon. I don’t think I’ve had more than one or two white Bordeaux wines either. Last night changed that. Here’s how it happened. I was asking the owner of one of my local liquor shops to recommend a good wine from Graves. I was told to try one by another wine dude. So he emailed me a few recommendations, and added that Graves is his favorite expression of Sauvignon Blanc. Really? What about Sancerre? Yes, those are great, but he said Sauvignon Blanc is just a bit different in Graves, and in the wines he recommended blended it with Semillon.

So I picked up his recommendation: 2008 Chateau La Grave d’Arzac. 90% Semillon, 10% Sauvignon Blanc. $9. Seriously. $9.

First, I have to admit, I screwed up the pairing. I served it with shrimp, but there was a touch too much pepper on the shrimp for this wine to handle and the wine was really dwarfed by it. I didn’t notice the wine’s true character until I poured a second glass after dinner.

The sniff: A little sweet, like a honeydew melon, but mostly it smelled like a subtly grassy Sauvignon Blanc, even though that grape only made up 10% of the blend. Lovely.

The taste: Wow. Not a Sauvignon Blanc at all. Such a viscosity coated my mouth and tongue, and on the finish a striking minerality showed itself. And the effect it had on my mouth was that of when you drink something and it whets your thirst, it made me want to sip it again, and again. It was lightly sweet, again similar to the mild sweetness of a melon, had the crispness of a Sauvignon Blanc, and had the mouth feel of a Riesling. All these elements in just the right proportions, playing off one another in turn, like music. Balance.

The effect: I began to daydream about France, and her magical soils. This is the nicest white wine I’ve discovered in a while, both its main varietal and its region being a novelty to me, and I was handsomely rewarded.

In summary: DISCOVER!

It truly is the journey, not the destination.

Cheers