Trying to Make Peace with Sauvignon Blanc By The Drunken Cyclist

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It would not take a genius to figure out that I love wine. We are less than a week away from the thirteenth anniversary of this blog and I am closing in on my 3,000th post, the vast majority of which have at least a tangential connection with wine. So yeah, it is safe to say that I am into the stuff.

Except.

I really don’t like Sauvignon Blanc.*

*[ed. note: unless it comes from Sancerre, a small town in the Loire Valley of France which many argue makes the best Sauvignon in the world.]

If this were the only other choice, though?

It’s not that I hate the variety but I would choose a Bud Light over Sauvignon Blanc in most situations. And even though it is often touted as one of the six “noble grapes” I am really not a fan. In fact, Sauvignon Blanc comprises less than one percent of all the wine I currently have in my house and if I were to exclude samples, that drops to less than four tenths of a percent (I have a total of seven bottles, all of them, you guessed it, Sancerre).

As I continue to slog through my mound of samples (I am making progress! I am only six months behind at this point!), I noticed that I had amassed a fair number of bottles of Sauvignon Blanc and I decided to rip off the band-aid and taste a bunch of them in rapid succession.

Mid-way through the process, I discovered that my disdain was misplaced; it is not that I dislike the variety, I have a problem with bad Sauvignon Blanc. Happily, there were a few bottles in my sample pile that were quite tasty. Don’t get me wrong, I am not running to the store to stock up on Sauvignon Blanc but I might opt for one of these the next time the only other choice is from Anheuser-Busch.

2021 ARIDUS Sauvignon Blanc, Arizona: Under screw cap. 12g/l residual sugar (off-dry to medium sweet). Pale straw in the glass with lemon rind and lychee on this first-ever for me Arizonan wine. I will be completely honest, I was not ready for the sweetness of this wine. While it is far from cloying, it is certainly on the sweeter side of off-dry, and I am struggling with how I feel about that. There is good fruit on the palate, with a nice level of acidity, but I just wonder why they left it sweet (stuck fermentation?). While many will like this and my mother-in-law would drink the bejesus out of this wine, I am still not sure. Very Good. 87 Points.