Wednesday, August 5, 2009

2007 Provenance Sauvignon Blanc, Napa Valley California

Terry post:

This is another in a series of posts regarding good or great wines to be found in restaurants for $30 or less.

From time-to-time we'd find a really good wine at a really good price and we'd feature it on the wine list. We'd highlight the name in bold print and list it as
a, "Restaurant 213 BEST VALUE Selection". Now, our intention was to highlight those wines which were good, good with food, and a good (or great) value

Funny thing about customers: sometimes they don't pay any attention to what you tell them.

In previous postings I have highlighted the fact that virtually every restaurant's wine list contains a few clunkers. It isn't intentional. It just happens. Perhaps that was the issue when we highlighted this wine - that our customers thought we were trying to pull a fast-one on them by discounting a clunker. That certainly wasn't our intention. It was a great wine. In fact, sauvignon blanc's generally do quite well but this one didn't sell well as long as we featured it as a "Best Value". Curious. Once we took it off that feature, its sales picked up.

My impressions: Fragrant pear, lemons and wet stone notes. Very acidic. Medium bodied with the pears and herbs at the finish. We sold it for $27 per bottle (restaurant price, should be lower at the wine shop) and it was, in my opinion, a great value. There were over 12,000 cases of this wine producted, so it should not be too difficult to find.

As is typical with sauvignon blancs, this one is wonderful with most any white meat (fish, chicken, pork) but it would not stand up well to red meats. While very acidic for a sauvignon blanc, I still would not pair this with any dish whose base featured butter or cream.

My personal favorite pairing of this wine is with oysters broiled, Rockefeller or raw on the half shell.

~ Terry

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