The Auswine Forum

Dear all,
I still need to learn a lot, especially about wine. So I was hoping to get some help with this one.

Over the last 3 months I've tried 4 bottles of this Cape Mentelle Semillon Sauvignon Blanc which was praised by Halliday (95pts). '...reliable example,... gold-plated'. What struck me is that everything in this wine is dominated by green capsicum or bell pepper, (is that what it is called in Australia?). Particularly the smell on the first day. It disappears slightly after a 2 days, but the wine still seems out of balance because of this. All four bottles had this. In the background there are all the nice flavours like nice gooseberry, citrus and minor honey. 6 bottles left (anyone really into capsicum out there who'se interested?)

Is this faulty or intended? And, is this what some of you sometimes refer to as 'stink'?

Cheers
Eric

Hi.

The green capsicum smell is a reasonably common character in sauvignon blanc in Western Australia. Another award winning SSB blend recently (the Houghton Line range 2004) also smelt very strongly of this. I believe that it is more common, however, for the green character in Margaret River SB to show as a grassy smell instead of capsicum. Perhaps the judges liked the difference?

Bottle stink, on the other hand, may range from somewhat sulfurous to something like the inside of an old sneaker (or even like something bad stuck to the bottom of a sneaker... )