Words: Liinaa Berry
Publication: CityMag

Sauvignon Blanc has never been my go-to white.

I often find it to be a harsh wine to drink; simple, one dimensional, depleted of any texture and layers, almost like eating a dry celery stalk.

See, I much prefer biting into a ripe and juicy peach.

Add to that, I find the overt perfume a bit of a turn off – the wine equivalent of a squad of fresh-out-of-the-gym youngsters, breezing along the footpath trailed by a heavy waft of Lynx Africa.

When we talk about Sauvignon Blanc, we often think of overtly-perfumed wines with the typical passionfruit, pithy flavours, sometimes pungent hints of cat’s piss on a gooseberry bush, and notes of capsicum, asparagus, freshly cut grass, depending on the wine’s origin.

But this prejudice against Sauvignon Blanc, I’ve found, was actually a lack of education on my part.

I recently visited Austria for Wine Summit 2019, an epic multi-region journey through the country, organised by the Austrian Wine Marketing Board. I travelled the borders of Slovenia and Hungary, and I tasted a huge range of the Sauvignon Blanc with precision, elegance and complexity.

If not for the Summit, I would probably still be wallowing in my ignorance.

We travelled from the Austrian-Czech border in the winegrowing region Weinviertel, near the Slovakian border; and Neusiedlersee, Mittelburgenland and Eisenberg, all adjacent to Hungary; through to Vulkanland Steiermark, bordering on Slovenia.

These regions showed me entire dimensions to Sauvignon Blanc I had never experienced, and I found myself wondering what exactly made these wines so different.

The variety’s reputation has suffered due to the aggressive, quick stainless steel vinification method often used by winemakers, who will then release the wine only a few months later

Read the full article, along with six 'real Savvy' recommendations, here.