IF we're in for a series of steamy weekends, as is devoutly to be wished shared between the weathermen's high and a hot Olympic fug around the telly then certain basic preparations should be made. Whatever you do, don't forget to provision the fridge with a couple of bottles of Sauvignon Blanc.
Sauvignon is a perfect warm weather wine hugely refreshing, with its razor sharp acidity, and smelling of summer as it wafts up at you the scent of gooseberries and long grass. Sauvignon is beautifully adaptable. It goes just as well with a nibble of creamy cheese as with a groaning plate of seafood, and will also taste good sipped on its own as you gasp your way around the track with Sonia.
That, at least, is how I feel about it strongly enough to urge an immediate purchase but it may be as well to admit, right up here in paragraph three, that not everybody will agree. There is a small elite for whom the only serious white wine in the world is Burgundy (and on the rare occasions when these purists waver, it is only because they have remembered Riesling). Beneath them is a giant market for who the only familiar white wine in the world is Chardonnay Burgundy's grape, given the pleb treatment. And until relatively recently, Sauvignon Blanc stood on the sidelines pining.
It has not been helped by the fact that Sauvignon's distinctive aromas and flavours are not to everybody's taste, or may take a bit of getting used to. "Cat's pee on a goose berry bush" was Jancis Robinson's damning description abandoned only when she fell under the spell of top PouillyFumi producer Didier Dagueneau, a Sauvignon Blanc messiah whose fine wine sells at upwards of £35 a bottle.
(It says a lot, incidentally, for the up front style of Australian winemakers that one has recently launched a new Sauvignon Blanc called Cat's Pee On A Gooseberry Bush.)
Pouilty Fumi on the upper Loire and Sancerre across the river are the twin strongholds of traditional, French Sauvignon Blanc very crisp and dry with a flintiness coming from the region's gravelly terrain. Sancerre, which tends to be the tangier and leaner of the two, had a burst of popularity back in the mid 1980s. Business lunches were powered by the stuff it was (and indeed still is) poured into front cab in airline passengers like human jet fuel all regrettable, in view of the copious quantities of inferior Sancerre launched on the market to meet the demand. At its best, Loire Sauvignon whether from Sancerre and Pouilly Fumi, or from lesser known little appellations such as Minitou Salon, Reuilly and Quincy is superb, but as quantities are limited you can't expect it to come cheap.
Another Sauvignon which certainly doesn't come cheap first appeared in that mid 1980s boom time. Cloudy Bay, the now sofamous you can't find it any where wine produced in New Zealand by Australian winemaker David Hohnen of Cape Mentelle, changed the way the world looked at Sauvignon Blanc. The stylish label may have had something to do with it, but more important was the heady perfume, the lush grassiness and topical fruit flavours more instantly captivating than the steeliness of the Loire.
Besides those mentioned below, there are many other New Zealand wineries producing terrifically fresh, aromatic wines that strike the magic balance between ripe fruit and piercing acidity. Look out for names such as Martinborough, Nautilus, Rothbury, Babich, Matua Valley, Wairau River and Forrest whose wines are produced, with dazzling panache, by a couple with strong Irish connections. The only curb on your excursions through New Zealand the smallest wine producing country in the world, and hence a stranger to economies of scale may once again be price.
The answer, if you like that distinctive New World style, is to look elsewhere in the southern hemisphere Australia, South Africa and Chile, for instance.
And where then, on the Sauvignon Trail? Back to Europe, perhaps. You could always look at Collio in northeast Italy, where it has been a speciality for yonks, or Languedoc where it's relatively new. Goodness, there's even Rueda in Spain to consider. That may be something to keep up your sleeve as a distraction when not another second of the Olympics can be swallowed.