Sauvignon Blanc

Wine Style:
Grassy & herbaceous flavors and aromas mark this light and medium-bodied wine, sometimes with hints of gooseberry & black currant. In California it is often labeled Fume Blanc. New Zealand produces some of the finest Sauvignon Blancs in a markedly fruity style.

Flavors:

Origin:
France

Found:
Chile, New Zealand, and France

This is an important white grape in Bordeaux and the Loire Valley and rose to fame in recent years in New Zealand and now Chile. It thrives on the gravelly soils of Bordeaux and is blended with Semillon to produce fresh, dry, crisp AC Bordeaux Blancs, as well as more prestigious Cru Classé White Graves. It is also blended with Semillon, though in lower proportions, to produce the great sweet wines of Sauternes.

It performs well in the Loire Valley and particularly on the well-drained chalky soils found in Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé, where it produces bone dry, highly aromatic, racy wines, with grassy and sometimes smoky, gunflint-like nuances.

In New Zealand, Cloudy Bay in the 1980s began producing stunning Sauvignon Blanc wines with extraordinarily intense nettly, gooseberry, and asparagus fruit, which set Marlborough firmly on the world wine map. Today many producers are rivalling Cloudy Bay in terms of quality and Sauvignon Blanc is now New Zealand`s trademark grape.

It is now grown very successfully in Chile producing wines that are almost halfway between The Loire and New Zealand in terms of fruit character. After several false starts, many South African producers are now producing very good quality rounded fruit-driven Sauvignon Blancs.

Further Reading:
About.com
Appellation America
SF Gate: The many faces of Sauvignon Blanc
Wine Pros
Wine.com
Wikipedia