Pouilly-Fumé
The title of this piece may say nothing to you at first… but after the lines that follow, you’ll uncover another secret of the fascinating world of wine.
Some wines mark us so deeply that we can’t resist tasting them again the moment a chance arises. That is what happened to me at the end of last week. Before I knew it, I was ordering a Pouilly-Fumé once more. It isn’t one of the world’s most famous regions, but it is there that some of the finest examples are made from a widely known and celebrated grape, Sauvignon Blanc.
It was undoubtedly New Zealand that turned Sauvignon Blanc into one of the best-known grapes in the world. Marlborough, in the north of the South Island, gave the world a style of wine from this grape that made it a phenomenon — remarkable when you consider the grape was only introduced there in the late 1970s, and as an experimental variety, to blend with another, Müller-Thurgau.
New Zealand was also what first made me fall for this grape’s qualities, but the region that raised it to my own benchmark of excellence was, without doubt, this stretch of the Loire, neighbour to Sancerre, called Pouilly-Fumé.
My passion for Pouilly-Fumé goes back more than a decade, to when a friend from the wine world brought along a bottle of Silex from the producer Didier Dagueneau — a perfectionist winemaker who experimented, took risks and, in the end, earned cult status, showing the world that this grape can also age for many years in bottle when well grown and well handled in the cellar.
Until then, Sauvignon Blanc was, to me, the power of aromatic expression — a wine to drink young and enjoy for all its aromatic richness. But from that day on, the grape took on another dimension, and this region a place among my favourite wines.
From the page to the glass
Not a comparison — two Portuguese whites for anyone who arrived here through Sauvignon Blanc.
- 1808 Sauvignon Blanc — Sauvignon Blanc at 550 metres, where cold nights hold the aromatics.
- Cabo da Roca Reserva Arinto — Arinto at 20 metres, picked in the last week of August. Citrus, minerality, salt.
