Experimenting in Tasting Wines..2008 Sauvignon Republic Stellenbosch Sauvignon Blanc

After my last column where I mentioned The Good Grape as one of my preferred wine blogs, Jeff Lefevere (anyone else think that's a lot of e's in his name?) was cool enough to actually post a comment on my page. As a total novice, I was honestly floored. If you read my response to it, you'll see that I really have nothing to say in reply. What he said though was really interesting: "Second, I would encourage you to completely re-imagine the tasting note / sensory evaluation process. Blogs are great for experimentation and doing something new, unique and novel will an asset to both you and your readers."
Ok, that's REAL advice from a pro, thanks again Jeff! Luckily, today my brain was engaged and I began to think about this, and to ask the question "What can I do to re-imagine the tasting note/sensory evaluation process?"
At the risk of sounding cavalier about wine blogging, my first inclination was to screw around with the methodology of tasting, the whole "swirl, sniff, sip, spit" thing. What if I blindfolded myself? How about not sniffing the wine (kind of hard, I tried)? What if I didn't spit! (Yes, that would be actually pretty awesome)? Expanding on those concepts certainly is fun, but does it provide value to the reader, who might actually want to hear about a wine and might actually want to see if I liked it or not?
None of them appear to. So let's go back to square one, re-imagining the tasting note/sensory evaluation process. Tasting notes are just a grouping of words to describe what you taste right? Hmmm, I could use different words or references, like the always awesome Gary Vaynerchuck. But see, I'd just be copying him, not to mention doing an invariably poor job. He's crushed it (to use his words) in that department. What else is possible? Something that's out there, but not too far out there so as to be stupifyingly obscure.

Anyways I tasted a wine tonight too, the 2008 Sauvignon Republic Stellenbosch Sauvignon Blanc...

It's quite good, and ridiculously cheap at $6.99. Great acid here, it's balanced and not overwhelming (hello N.Z. I'm talking to you). Beyond that lies a happy place of ruby red grapefruit, wet grass, wet rocks (seriously!), and some passion fruit or guava, can never really tell the two apart unfortunately. It's a quick finisher (that's what she said!..wait..damn it...) but because of that balance I alluded to earlier, things just seem to work. The wine also smells pretty good because you get all sorts of floral aromas, fresh cut grapefruit, meyer lemon, almost a hint of like whipped cream too or something..like lemon meringue cream where it's not super sweet but still is sweet enough. Upon sipping it again, I detect a bit of that fleshy, almost creamy character on the mid palate too. Oh and I changed my description, it's more of a key lime pie thing going on, but one where the person who was making it got drunk off mint juleps and added 50% more limes than necessary. I even want to say there's something oddly persimmon-like, I tasted dried persimmon slices the other day and this vaguely reminds me of them.

So yea, very very solid A- for this wine. I really like it! In fact I'm probably going to buy some more. Now if you're read the other blogs I've written you know at the beginning I usually give background and detail about the wine. This time I didn't, I rambled on about something. Your background is this, www.sauvignonrepublic.com. Check it out, they are doing some really awesome stuff with a varietal that's near and dear to my heart. We're done for now, I'll post some more stuff this weekend and keep thinking about the advice Jeff gave me. As always, please post comments, questions, whatever. Let me know what you like and don't like, I deeply appreciate feedback. I also deeply appreciate free wine samples. If you want to follow me on twitter, I'm @UCBeau and will of course reciprocate.

Beau Carufel