Fifteen years ago, Wayne Stehbens, the winemaker at Katnook Estate, sent me, on his insistence, two bottles of his Sauvignon Blanc. At the time, I was writing an article on the merits of Australia's better SB's (a difficult assignment back then) and was having trouble securing a bottle of the well-regarded Katnook, hence the contact with the winery. The two bottles were 10 years apart in vintage - a bottle of 1983 and the recently bottled, 1993. So the reasonably impressive 1993 bit the dust and was duly written up. But it was with some trepidation, and some coniderable time later (I dug up my old hand-written notes, in fact, the actual date was 25/02/95), the 1983 was opened. And what a revelation! A gloriosly honeyed and toasty nose, somewhat similar in construction to an aged Semillon, of herbed bread and roasted capsicum followed by an intriguing and most enjoyable palate that revealed not a trace or cat's pee, rotting vegies or any sign of degradation but possessing wonderful green melon/herb-tinged fruit backed by sufficient acidity and freshness to live for a few years thereafter! Served blind to a fellow member of the Canberra Times wine tasting panel, his positive assessment merited a score of 17.5 points (a solid silver medal on the Australian Wine Show circuit) which sat well with 18.0 points I'd already allocated the wine. My associate was totally dumbfounded when I revealed the wine's identity.
So, my first question is - Do Australian and New Zealand Sauvignon's last and, if so, for how long? Has anyone even bothered to keep and monitor them? If so, how do they develop?
A few years back (circa 2006) I was given a glass of (masked) 1998 White Graves (cannot remember the maker (but obviously, someone pretty darn good) or the the exact percentages; the owner of the wine, later told me he thought it mostly Sauvignon, only a relatively small percentage of Semillon that had seen very little oak). The wine still displayed an incredibly bright pale straw colour, an enticing nose and palate of cut grass and green melons with a piercing spine of minerality and masses of lively acidity on a monumentally long, crisp, refreshing finish. I would not have guessed it being French and thought it a mere pup, perhaps a year or two old! It still had years and years of drinkability written all over it!
Which leads to my second challenge - how do the crafty, cunning French manage to create Sauvignon wines with such longevity, whereas, seemingly, so many others elsewhere, either can't or just don't?
TIA for anyone willing to contribute to this rather boring topic.
