What if he's right?
Once again: this does not smell like wine. This does not smell like Sancerre, Quincy, or anything else. I'm not even sure it's sauvignon blanc, but I think it's the most likely candidate. (Thankfully, the Google backs me up on this one; nothing like a search engine to give me at least the illusion of cred.) When I smell this, it smells like a head shop, like obscure herbs Thomas Keller grows out back for his restaurant, like wine that's flirting with oxidation, and suddenly, briefly, like Marlborough sauvignon blanc, but not grassy, not tropical.
Viscous, creamy, rich, and yet with a spicy, peppery acidity that underpins the long finish reminiscent of cloves and spiced bread, this is an utterly delicious drink, more a dessert wine (in the sense that it's big enough all by itself, perhaps so big it wouldn't work well with food) than something to drink with dinner. It's not sweet, though, so if you're more a fan of cheese than chocolate after dinner, this might be what you're looking for.
When I taste a wine like this, I wonder about the winemaker (Abe Schoener in this case). He's doing everything wrong - growing the wrong grape in the wrong place, leaving too much alcohol in the wine, right? - and yet the outcome is wonderfully very much itself. Could it be the secret to New World wines is to ignore tradition entirely, strike out on your own, and hope that in one or two hundred years we know what grows well here, what styles suit our land best? Given this wine, I think that might just be the case.
Once again: this does not smell like wine. This does not smell like Sancerre, Quincy, or anything else. I'm not even sure it's sauvignon blanc, but I think it's the most likely candidate. (Thankfully, the Google backs me up on this one; nothing like a search engine to give me at least the illusion of cred.) When I smell this, it smells like a head shop, like obscure herbs Thomas Keller grows out back for his restaurant, like wine that's flirting with oxidation, and suddenly, briefly, like Marlborough sauvignon blanc, but not grassy, not tropical.
Viscous, creamy, rich, and yet with a spicy, peppery acidity that underpins the long finish reminiscent of cloves and spiced bread, this is an utterly delicious drink, more a dessert wine (in the sense that it's big enough all by itself, perhaps so big it wouldn't work well with food) than something to drink with dinner. It's not sweet, though, so if you're more a fan of cheese than chocolate after dinner, this might be what you're looking for.
When I taste a wine like this, I wonder about the winemaker (Abe Schoener in this case). He's doing everything wrong - growing the wrong grape in the wrong place, leaving too much alcohol in the wine, right? - and yet the outcome is wonderfully very much itself. Could it be the secret to New World wines is to ignore tradition entirely, strike out on your own, and hope that in one or two hundred years we know what grows well here, what styles suit our land best? Given this wine, I think that might just be the case.
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