Sauvignon Blanc gets no respect. It could be that its vigorous nature and high yields fool people into thinking it has no character. Perhaps the rich, buttery depth of Chardonnay is more fashionable. But when you find yourself perusing one of those wine lists whose prices leave you breathless, Sauvignon Blanc can almost always be counted on to deliver a wine of great interest at a price that will still allow you to buy some food.

Sauvignon Blanc styles are innumerable--from the in-your-face herbaceousness of New Zealand to the mineral, Semillon blends of Graves, from the tropical, melon, lychee character of warm climates to the herbaceous, high citrus of cool regions. Sauvignon Blanc is many things to many people; but more than anything it is a great favorite of one of the Wine Business Monthly editors.

So we decided to find some experts working with this difficult grape. We wanted to know what it took to tame the vigor of the varietal without losing its character. We wanted to know about special techniques in the vineyard, and we wanted to know why winemakers, once smitten, fall in love with Sauvignon Blanc.

Mark Burch started making wine at Gallo Winery in 1980. In 1989 he moved to Sebastiani Winery, then to Kendall-Jackson Winery in 1994 and finally to Wildhurst Vineyards in 1998. He has steadily moved to smaller wineries and farther north in California.

Kristin Belair graduated from UC Davis and had her first harvest in 1981 at Trefethen Family Vineyards. From 1985 to 1997 she worked as winemaker for Johnson Turnbull Winery until moving to Honig Vineyard & Winery as winemaker in 1998.

Tom Rees started as a chemistry major at Purdue. Eager to get into the wine business, he started at Charles Krug Winery in 2002 working in the laboratory. Soon, he left for a position at St. Supéry as assistant winemaker.

What do we need to know about Sauvignon Blanc in the vineyard?

Kristin: There is still a lot we need to learn about various clones. Most Sauvignon Blanc is a Wente AKA1 clone or Musque clones. Newer clones haven't come into play, until recently, because there really haven't been many recent plantings of Sauvignon Blanc. Most of our fruit comes from St. Helena south to Oakville. The climatic conditions are similar for planting Cabernet Sauvignon, but the soils are too deep to have good Cabernet. It's kind of interesting; Sauvignon Blanc can grow just about anywhere and do well. I've seen it do well in lighter soils and heavier soils. It seems that canopy management has more of an impact on flavor profiles and wine style.

Mark: There have not been a lot of new plantings nor has there been a lot of research on the variety. We are most interested in the Musque clone and what it can do. You can do a lot of things on site with Sauvignon Blanc to get what you are looking for. Up in Lake County we are looking at yields between six and nine tons per acre. I work with a lot of different sites in Lake County. Some are on the valley floor, and others are on the hillsides. I find that trellising, leaf pulling and suckering come into play and influence the style of wine I am looking to make from a particular site.

If my site is on the valley floor, then I'm probably not looking for the fruit to be as big and ripe as on the hillside. On the valley floor I'm looking to pick at lower Brix, get more herbaceousness and a bit more acid. On hillside sites, I'm looking for bigger, riper, rounder character with higher Brix and pH. So site is a big determinant. It's hard to get big and ripe on the valley floor when the vine is putting so much energy into growth. On the hillside, growth is much more muted, and I can do a lot less canopy management and allow more exposure. I can get a lot more intensity from deficit irrigation or natural deficit water supply. That concentrates flavor and gives smaller berries which means less juice to skin contact. It's just natural to look to the hillsides for riper fruit and to the valley floor for bigger, fatter, greener character.

Tom: Most of our vineyard is planted to Clone 1. We have a little bit of Musque, which is good, but I still prefer Clone 1. We currently are doing clone trials with about five Entav clones. We're also in the process of certifying a vineyard clone from Dollarhide that has a lot of Muscat character. We've been working on these clone trials for two years now, and I've yet to find something that I like better than Clone 1.

Trellising methods and canopy management are the key to directing your style: working with the site, the temperatures and the orientation of the vineyard to the sun. The key for us is to keep the wine bright with acidity and relatively low Brix and keep them on the vines as long as possible, which for us is into late August.

What is it you do and what are you trying to accomplish with canopy management?

Tom: We want to maintain a good canopy because we are in a warm mountain valley and because we want to control our low yields. The biggest factor is hedging to control the amount of sunlight entering the vine. To avoid heavy herbaceousness, we want speckled indirect sunshine but not heavy afternoon sunlight exposure. Protecting the fruit from over-ripeness is the key. Suckering has the biggest impact on our yields, allowing us to maintain our four-ton yield, especially on the cane-pruned vines.

Kristin: Sauvignon Blanc is a really malleable variety. You can push the flavor profiles one way or another through canopy management to develop a sense of regional specificity. Lake County does. Napa Valley does. Certainly New Zealand. One of the main factors with Sauvignon Blanc is its grassy, herbaceous flavors. These flavors come from pyrazine, and you can influence those pryazine levels by how much and when you get light on the fruit.

If you allow speckled light, as Tom suggests, you might maintain small amounts of pyrazine and get bits of that herbal character. I've also worked with vineyards where they open up the canopy quite a bit, and you get more of those tropical, lychee characters. If you think of Sauvignon Blanc in the 1980s, we tried to cover it all up with oak because it tasted like asparagus. The canopies were so thick, you couldn't even find the fruit back then. Too much shade doesn't allow the pyrazines to break down, so you get this insanely green bean/asparagus character.

Mark: In Lake County, we deal with a lot of different microclimates within the county. Obviously there is a balance between fruit shading and fruit exposure. More shading definitely leads to higher pyrazine levels. The more sun exposure to the fruit then the more citrus, melon, tropical flavors you will get. I try to manage each different site based on what I think is happening. If we have higher rainfall and I think we'll be dealing with more growth, then I am likely to do more suckering but not hedge as much because I want that vine to express that vigor out into the canopy and not into the cluster itself.

I also think rootstock is very important. Matching your rootstock to your soil type is critical if you are going to control vigor, and with Sauvignon Blanc it is all about vigor. We use 3309, 101-14 and SO4. I think the 3309 is the most utilized, but soil can really impact that type. 101-14, at almost any site, will be a bit more vigorous, and the SO4 at almost any site will be a little less vigorous. They have a huge impact.

Kristin: Many of our vineyards are infected with fan leaf virus, so our rootstock is limited to 039-16, which is a very vigorous rootstock. It's all about trying to get the vines balanced, which means minimal, if any, water and cover cropping it to dry out the soil, and then the canopy control and hedging comes into play.

What are your keys for harvest?

Mark: I harvest per site relative to canopy style. Where I have larger canopies and more shaded fruit, I watch the acidity and tend to bring them in early. The pyrazine is going to be there no matter what, and they are going to be pretty intense, but I find those grapes ripening around 21.5° to 22.5° Brix. Some of that wine will be used in blends for alcohol management to offset my hillside Musque clone vineyards that ripen around 24° to 24.5° Brix. There I'm looking for that exposure, that golden fruit and fat style character. The more neutral upper Lake vineyards ripen around 23° Brix almost every year. High pH in Lake County for Sauvignon Blanc is maybe 3.5 with most of them closer to 3.3. Acidities range from 6 to 7.5 gr/l.

Kristin: Picking is all about flavor. There's a definite shift. It's not the disappearance of pyrazine so much, but there is a shift in texture and the flavor of the fruit. I can't really describe it, but it sort of goes from tasting green to tasting ripe. The skins have more flavor and break down in your mouth a bit more. It's a really narrow range. Typically, for us that's between 23.5° to 24° Brix. We're in a cooler region, so acidities just aren't an issue.

Tom: We're looking for the same thing. We're looking for physiological ripeness, which depending on the season may be a three- to four-day window. We're looking for that tart acidity to change to that crisp, ripe acidity. It's definitely a flavor thing, but we are always mindful of where the chemistry is on the fruit. We generally come in between high 22.5° and 23.8° Brix. The acids are usually between 7 to 8 gr/l.

There is definitely a flavor profile the palate picks up on when the fruit is just ripe. It kind of goes from a green apple taste to grapefruit. We don't want to push it too hard because we find that over-ripe fruit tastes great early but never tastes as good after the fermentation is over.

How do you handle the grapes in the winery?

Kristin: We have two completely different ways of handling the fruit. One way involves whole cluster pressing. The other way involves a more reductive skin contact regime. We'll de-stem the fruit into a tank with about 100 ppm of SO₂ to help prevent oxidation, let it sit on the skins for three to six hours at 55° to 60°F and then press it. We only do that with fruit picked at night or fruit from our own ranch because the fruit must be cold. This type of skin contact helps extract some of the grapefruit flavors from the skins.

Tom: About 99 percent of our fruit is harvested at night, so it comes into the winery between 45° to 50°F. The machines pick the fruit into two-ton bins, and there is a certain amount of juicing, so we get six to 10 hours of skin contact sitting in the cold bins. Once in the winery, we go straight to the press. We press very slowly and generally get 85 to 90 percent free run juice. From there we go to a tank for cold settling.

Mark: We do a combination of skin contact for our machine-picked grapes, and everything else is whole cluster. If we are trying for the crisp, clean style of Sauvignon Blanc, then I want very low solids for fermentation. That means we'll go whole cluster with cold grapes. Everything is in half-ton bins that go directly to the press. Early on, I used low pressures at the press, but now I'm getting very aggressive with my whole cluster pressing. I want immediate free run extraction with minimal skin contact, and by increasing pressures early on I'm decreasing solids immediately so I'm decreasing phenolic contacts. I use enzymes, 48 hour settling and then rack off crystal clear juice.

If I am doing a barrel fermentation, then I'm not as worried about solids. We're talking about no enzymes, a 24-hour rack off the heavy solids and going to barrels with some solids left in the juice. On machine-picked fruit, I make sure I have cool fruit. I let it sit on skins in bins for nine or 10 hours. This stuff gets pressed a little lighter because more solids are present and I'm trying to avoid any heavy phenolic extraction. Then I come back with enzymes and clean it up for fermentation. We also use SO₂ in the bins to minimize oxidation.

Low oxygen contact from start to finish is a big part of Sauvignon Blanc production to help capture those fruity esters. We heavily CO₂ the tanks. We use SO₂ early off the press, basically anything we can do to prevent oxygen pick up.

Kristin: When we whole cluster press, we don't add SO₂ until it's in the tank. We settle for two days, and we go for low solids for a clean fermentation. We add yeast, usually VL 3. We settle the juice at 45°F. We ferment around 55°F and finish up around 60°F. We just want a healthy fermentation that maintains the fruit characteristics. We usually need to add nitrogen to accomplish that.

Tom: We settle at about 50°F, rack after two days and look at solids as well. We like to ferment relatively clean. We inoculate with a number of yeasts. In any given year we are working with five or six different types. We have pretty good nitrogen levels, so sometimes we add nothing at all, but some of these yeast strains will consume that pretty quickly and that leads to stress. In those cases we add nitrogen.

We like good kinetics, about one and a half Brix per day. We don't want the fermentations to go too fast because they will get ahead of themselves and starve and get reduced. If they go too slow, they struggle and we have the same problem. I try to manage the kinetics by dialing back on the inoculation rates a little bit to maybe 1 pound per 1,000 gals.

Mark: I work fermentations in much the same way. My yeasts of choice are VL3 and VL2 . I use VL2 when I think I have a higher alcohol potential. It's critical to maintain a balance between yeast addition, temperature and nutrients. I use about 1.5 pounds per 1,000 gals. I ferment about 60°F but try to never go above 62°F. I like about a 2° drop per day. Once I get down to 7° Brix, I turn the jacket off. It really encourages the yeast to finish strong.

Tom: We back off to about 60°F at 6° Brix.

Kristin: We do the same. It depends on the fermentation. If it is chugging along fine, we leave it alone. We'll stir the tank if it is struggling, and we might add some yeast hulls.

Mark: Nutrient addition is really important as well. I try not to push it in the beginning because it just excites the fermentation way too much. I would rather see the yeast not struggle or starve in the beginning, but just be somewhat happy. We spend a lot of labor hours monitoring those fermentations, just from an aroma standpoint. From that we determine our nutrient additions.

I would rather add half a pound per 1,000 gals four or five times during a fermentation than wallop it with a couple pounds per 1,000 and get it moving too quickly. I'm not real keen on these long fermentations at all, but I don't want to see things power through.

Do you think it's better to blend different lots of Sauvignon Blanc or can you make good single
vineyard wine from the variety?

Mark: You can do single vineyard bottlings. You need to know the vineyards. I know certain vineyards have higher pyrazine vineyards, regardless of canopy management. Others are on the riper side. I just think that having the tools for component blending allows you to achieve a greater level of consistency. That's not to say I don't appreciate being able to deal with one vineyard and trying to bring that vineyard to what you think is its best every year.

Kristin: I don't think one is better than the other. They present different challenges. Our Rutherford Sauvignon is essentially a single vineyard wine. Even with a single vineyard I might split it up into different components or skin contact part of it and not the rest. Even within a single vineyard situation, you can create several components.

Mark: You can pick a single vineyard all at one time and come up with a single dimensional, straight-forward wine, or you can do different things and create a single vineyard wine that has more depth and complexity.

Tom: It depends on the size of the site as well. We typically pick over a thousand tons of Sauvignon Blanc over a two to three week period from a single vineyard. We have more than 20 different vineyard parcels, and each has different characteristics. It's not about being more or less ripe. Some are good showing lime, others show tropical, still others show spice or grassiness. You need to learn where the best potential is from each block.

How would you go about making Sauvignon Blanc in a Chardonnay style?

Tom: We make a wine that tries to wean people from Chardonnay. It's barrel-fermented in neutral French oak barrels, and we add some Semillon to make a Graves style wine, but I think it is impossible to make a Sauvignon Blanc like Chardonnay. Chardonnay is at the opposite end of the spectrum. Chardonnay has less varietal character and tends to benefit from barrel aging and a malolactic fermentation to give it its distinctive style. Sometimes the less you do to Sauvignon Blanc, the better.

Mark: You are especially dealing with a different character when it comes to the lees. Sauvignon Blanc lees can make the wine very reductive. Chardonnay lees are almost always a positive influence. I agree with Tom. I don't know that there is really a Chardonnay-like Sauvignon Blanc. What you have is the crisp style of a stainless steel ferment versus the barrel influence, whether it's from fermentation, aging or lees contact. It's a style of broader mouthfeel.

Kristin: We make a Sauvignon Blanc where we barrel-ferment over a third in new wood, put it through malolactic and stir the lees. We add some Semillon as well. The minerality of Sauvignon Blanc makes it a challenge to oak. The phenolics of the oak can clash with that minerality. Oak can be used judiciously, but you have to remember that you are making Sauvignon Blanc, not Chardonnay.

What is the attraction of Sauvignon Blanc?

Kristin: All the different things you can do with it and the flavor profile. I mean, how can you go wrong with melon and tropical fruit, lime, grapefruit and lychee? There is an amazing range of fruit flavors and aromas, and you can put them together to make something complex, both from a flavor and texture standpoint.

Tom: With Sauvignon Blanc it is all about instant gratification. When you are tasting the fruit on the vine, you know, to a relative extent, how the wine will turn out. The flavors are just abundantly clear, and by the end of September you know how your vintage is shaping up. The flavors are so descriptive, so bright and so well-defined right away. We bottle the wine in January, and by March it is ready to drink.

Mark: Sites give it individuality. There is so much to like about it. It responds well to canopy management and site and maturity level. When I can bring all that together, I feel like I really have a wine that reflects what I love to do. It reflects on the winemaker's art.

CONCLUSION

Instant gratification: what a great thing to have when you are making wine. Over the afternoon we tasted eight Sauvignon Blancs. All were well made, and each one was breathtakingly different from the others. There were more flavors and aromas coming out of those glasses than at the Jelly Belly factory in Fairfield, California. Grapefruit, apple, melon, grassiness, herbs, lime, mineral and lychee were just some of the descriptors that danced around the table.

Sauvignon Blanc usually has good acidity, so it pairs well with a lot of foods. It is not shy, it's more of an in-your-face charmer, so it stands up to more powerful flavors. It's crisp, fruity, dry and served chilled, so it is perfect for summer picnics. The yields are high and the release dates are early, so it's good for the bottom line. Generally, the wines are reasonably priced, and that makes them accessible to consumers.

There is really nothing not to like about Sauvignon Blanc. The question is why haven't consumers jumped on the bandwagon? Why does it linger in the shadows like the unpopular sister of plump, mediocre Chardonnays? Beats me but I am sold. After an afternoon with these great winemakers, sipping their wines, I am a convert. I'll be ordering a lot more Sauvignon Blanc when I'm out in restaurants. wbm

Editor's Note: A product review on yeast strains for Sauvignon Blanc will appear in the June 2009 issue of Wine Business Monthly.