tiny wine blog: White Bordeaux: It's what's for August

August: White Bordeaux
It's hot. I want more white wine.
In Bordeaux, apart from making some of the greatest red wines in the world, they also make some lovely white wines. For real. Need a nice white wine for dinner tonight? You can't really go wrong with the majority of the dry white wines from Bordeaux.
They also tend to not cost that much money (especially compared to their red siblings (then again, solid gold rocket cars can seem like good values compared to some wines from Bordeaux)).


Tasty
My mouth hole's first reaction to these wines is crisp. Crisp and refreshing. I find them perfectly balanced between this crispness and the fruit flavors (lemon + lime) and a slight richness that fills it all out nicely. It may be marketing or some sort of bias, but I find these wines perfectly composed and constructed. Equillibrium. Yin yang. That stuff.
There is an elegance that I don't find in a lot of other white wines.
We had one with tacos the other night, but this is also the wine I'd serve at a hoity toity lunch with the Queen (we lunch a lot together).

Summary: from tacos to queens.



Grapey
Traditionally these white Bordeaux are a 60/40 blend of two grapes. Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc. If you prowl any wine shelf, you are probably familiar with Sauvignon Blanc as it is popular just about everywhere. On the other hand, Semillon, while one of the most widely planted white grapes in the world, isn't very familiar to most American folk.
These grapes are blended because they are almost a perfect compliment to each other. Semillon produces huge yields. It can age and tends to be quite neutral when young. It has body, although can be characterized as being flabby if the acidity isn't there.
Sauvinon Blanc has high acidity and lots of aromas and flavors (commonly grassy notes and elder flower (which is something wine dorks always say and then are surprised when you don't know what elder flower smells like)).


Where
The main areas for white Bordeaux are south of the city of Bordeaux along the Garonne river in the region of Graves and it's sub-region/neighbor Pessac Leognan as well as the large-ish Entre Deux Mers region.
But, in a wine store, just ask for the white Bordeaux. Unless it's a dorky wine store, they probably won't have that many to choose from.

View Drinking White Bordeaux in a larger map

Best wine in the world (IMHO)
As a quick aside (as I have wine to go drink) this same combination of grapes is used in the sweet wines of Barsac and (the world famous) Sauternes.
More on those later.



Read more at the electronic library
WSJ: White Bordeaux, Well Worth Seeking Out

NYT: White Bordeaux: Oft-Forgotten Bliss

Bordeaux Undiscovered: White Bordeaux

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