Of Words and Terroir
This week, in a rare combination of wotsits, I went both Tuesday and Wednesday to the local wine shop & drinking establishment. (Hadn't been there since April, when I'd got freixenet's birthday bottle of wine.) Two different visits, two different groups of people with which to socialize, but on each occasion I had a glass of the same excellent wine -- a Ferrari-Carano 2009 Fume Blanc.
(Please imagine the proper accent over the 'e' in 'Fume' in all usages in this post.)
As Jancis Robinson notes in The Oxford Companion to Wine, the very term 'Fume Blanc' is a constructed one: "In the early 1970s, California's famous ideas man Robert Mondavi had one of his most famous inspirations, that of renaming his unfashionable Sauvignon Blanc Fume Blanc, thereby imbuing it with some of the glamour of imported French Pouilly-Fume. It also gave it some oak aging...(entirely alien to Pouilly-Fume)."
The Ferrari-Carano 2009 Fume Blanc, a California product like Mondavi's, was a delight -- light but not empty, a lovely fruit bouquet, nice finish, not as brash as the big Marlborough (NZ) Sauvignon Blancs and thus (to my taste) more drinkable.
The linked description says that Ferrari-Carano pulls from several different vineyards in Sonoma County. (All of the vineyards are F-C's, all using best eco-friendly practices.) That mix, of course, is New World rather than Old -- it's not emphasizing terroir*, the taste made from one particular piece of land. It's about blending.
*I imagine James May spitting out that word in disgust at the French ponciness of it all, and I have to laugh. Still, it's a proper word, yes? More so than Fume Blanc. ;-) And I'm beginning to wonder what Morgan and Alice think about terroir...
The wine guru sold me another Ferrari-Carano bottle, to be opened soon -- Bella Luce, a white wine wherein blending has gone mad. Seven wines [Edited: varietals, sorry] are mentioned, is all I'm saying. I'll share the results later. Maybe I'll even make up a word. :-)
May your approach to your weekend be perfectly blended!
(Please imagine the proper accent over the 'e' in 'Fume' in all usages in this post.)
As Jancis Robinson notes in The Oxford Companion to Wine, the very term 'Fume Blanc' is a constructed one: "In the early 1970s, California's famous ideas man Robert Mondavi had one of his most famous inspirations, that of renaming his unfashionable Sauvignon Blanc Fume Blanc, thereby imbuing it with some of the glamour of imported French Pouilly-Fume. It also gave it some oak aging...(entirely alien to Pouilly-Fume)."
The Ferrari-Carano 2009 Fume Blanc, a California product like Mondavi's, was a delight -- light but not empty, a lovely fruit bouquet, nice finish, not as brash as the big Marlborough (NZ) Sauvignon Blancs and thus (to my taste) more drinkable.
The linked description says that Ferrari-Carano pulls from several different vineyards in Sonoma County. (All of the vineyards are F-C's, all using best eco-friendly practices.) That mix, of course, is New World rather than Old -- it's not emphasizing terroir*, the taste made from one particular piece of land. It's about blending.
*I imagine James May spitting out that word in disgust at the French ponciness of it all, and I have to laugh. Still, it's a proper word, yes? More so than Fume Blanc. ;-) And I'm beginning to wonder what Morgan and Alice think about terroir...
The wine guru sold me another Ferrari-Carano bottle, to be opened soon -- Bella Luce, a white wine wherein blending has gone mad. Seven wines [Edited: varietals, sorry] are mentioned, is all I'm saying. I'll share the results later. Maybe I'll even make up a word. :-)
May your approach to your weekend be perfectly blended!