How Italian Sauvignon Blanc adds a little yellow in the flavour of wine

I've been describing Italian Sauvignons as 'yellow' for years, but what do I really mean by that? And if you're looking for a little yellow in your wine, which Italian Sauvignon Blancs should you try?

I should start my substack with a confession:

I am not Sauvignon Blanc’s biggest fan.

Perhaps then it’s odd to kick-off this new blog adventure - which I hope will inspire you to read about and excite you to taste some new wines - with a piece of Sauvignon Blanc. But then again, this is probably the best way to start. It will inform you that my taste for wine is not necessarily one you’ll share, or it might excite you because maybe you’ve found your crowd. We’ll hopefully get to know each other over these and, if you like some of the wines I do, then this will hopefully be a rewarding relationship.

Sauvignon Blanc, for me, is Green. I like to talk in colours when it comes to taste because I feel like it brings up all sorts of connotations. Green can be herby, fresh, ripe for something floral. It can mean apple, or lime. I like green because I like acidity in my wine.

But Sauvignon Blanc green is rarely a deep or abstract green you can get lost in. It is a pungent, bright green. It’s intensely aromatic of ripe gooseberries. It’s cat piss, apparently. It can also be sneeze-worthy, such as with Chilean Sauvignon’s intense green grass aromas. It can be bittersweet green capsicum.

For my palate Sauvignon can be too much, overpromising on the nose or just one massive uppercut to the nostrils. Then on the palate it can be underwhelming and insipid, sometimes thin or often boring.

I think this comes from years of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc winemakers cannibalising their nuances to stand out in a sea of competition and commercialisation. New Zealand winemakers and agents played a blinder more than a decade ago positioning Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc as premium but accessible, dry and reliable, packed with ripe fruit and easy to drink. But it’s gotten too comfortable in its cookie cutter style. The best examples are once again found in its traditional French homeland of Sancerre, or in broader blended examples like Pegasus Bay’s Sauvignon-Semillon from Waipara (£23.00, Waitrose Cellar) or the excellent value Château Saint Jean-des-Graves Sauvignon Blanc (£11.00, Waitrose Cellar).

I don’t entirely dislike this green-style Sauvignon Blanc. The Jackson Estate Stitch Sauvignon (£15.00, Waitrose Cellar) has long been one of my favourites of the past decade. But what these Sauvignons really don’t do for me is offer something that I believe is genuinely value for money. Sauvignon largely, to me, is like the US tech stocks - overpriced because of demand.

When the scale starts to tip is when you move closer to the Mediterranean. I used to imagine drawing a series of lines through Europe: the first would run across its north, near Loire and through Germany, which would be ‘Green’ - your “just ripe” steely sorts of wines; it would then drop a few points south to the middle of Europe, a line along the Mediterranean’s northern coastline that would be ‘Yellow’, from the innovation of Languedoc-Roussillon to the foothills of the Italian Alps and along to Slovenia, Croatian Istria and Romania; and then finally in the hot, more arid tones of Sicily and Greece, it would go almost ‘Orange’.

For Sauvignon a little yellow can be magic

My thoughts around this colouring of Europe was to assign a sort of reference point to acidity and fruit-style, originally for Chardonnay but really just as applicable to Sauvignon. The Yellow style would balance a grapefruit bittersweetness with just ripe stone fruits and juicy apples. Orange would have a very soft acidity, sweet-like fruit, and a boldness from alcohol.

Sauvignon, for me, thrives in its value when it takes on the middle line, this ‘Yellow’ character. It starts to tone down its aromatics without losing its buzz-like acidity, and introduces stone fruits and phenolics from the riper skins because this ripeness allowed the winemakers to impart some skin contact that is balanced rather than surprising. After all, great wine is all about balance.

Normally I would advocate for the indigenous grapes to shine - and, to be honest, with Italy your choice of indigenous grapes is abundant. But with these international grape varieties planted in such saturation, the value often comes from the more unusual corners - and in Sauvignon’s case that little bit of yellow can be magic.

Italian Sauvignon Blancs that should be on your taste list

Many of the good quality Italian Sauvignons in the UK can be a little on the pricey side, despite delivering good value for money. They occupy that strange commercial ground whereby so few are looking from them, but those “in the know” will snap them up. Also, either thanks to their slow rate of sale or welcome forethought from their importers, they tend to have a little age - something you stumble upon a great deal when dining out in Italy, but is frustratingly absent in Italian restaurants here in the UK. And it’s worth it; aged Italian whites, even a little, deliver so much more.

One of these pricier picks is La Spinetta’s Langhe Bianco Sauvignon 2021, found in Great Wine Co. for £55.00 (or £49.50 in a mixed dozen). Langhe is located in southern Piemonte and has hot, almost tropical long summers with a higher diurnal range than northern Europe, giving the grapes intensity while preserving their acidity. La Spinetta’s 2021 has ripe peach flavours combined with peach skin-like phenolics, bright acidity, and just a hint of almond and nettle leaf. It is a pleasant mix of both Sancerre’s mouth-watering electricity (albeit a little more restrained) with those ‘yellow-like’ stone fruits delivered by the Mediterranean sun.

A slightly better priced example from Great Wine Co. is Vistorta’s Brandolini Sauvignon Bianco DOC Friuli 2023 (£19.99, or £17.95 in a mixed dozen). Clean and fresh from its temperature-controlled, more “commercial” winemaking, it nonetheless delivers a more red apple-like fruitiness that’s perhaps unusual for Sauvignon wines of France, Chile or New Zealand. Friuli’s climate is moderated by the Alps and Adriatic, but the plains here are sun-drenched and the acidity is not quite as bright as La Spinetta’s example. Unlike some Sauvignons though, this wine gains its charm as it sits on your table, slowly warming to ambient and accompanied by a grazing lunch of leafy salads, fresh fish, and cured meats. It is what every great Italian wine should be: a delight with food.

If this is enough to whet your appetite for something properly serious, then you could (if you’re reading this fast enough) invest in one of the last couple of bottles of St. Michael-Eppan’s The Wine Collection Sauvignon DOC Alto Adige (circa €140 on Vino.com for the exceptional 2019). Alto Adige is one of my favourite Italian wine regions (I am a sucker for acidity) and St. Michael-Eppan wines have a style that is very lightly oxidative from soft, slow pressing of the grapes and vinification in barriques and tonneaux. The white peach character and familiar gooseberry notes are the top yellow and green notes to a lightly nutty, subtle spice backbone that gives the wine breadth and endless appeal. I tasted this wine more than a year ago now, so who knows how it has developed, but anyone who was already one of the yellow converted, this, I’m sure, remains a gem.

An afterthought

If you’ve read this and your mind begins to wonder a little about how we “visualise” a tasting note, then I’d refer you to two interesting people. The first is Sarah Heller MW, a wine expert and visual artist who paints her own tasting notes. Sarah’s work inspired our designs for the Varietal Range at Canned Wine Co. back in 2019, which were designed by Neil Tully MW at Amphora based on my tasting notes. The second person is Nick Jackson MW, whose book Beyond Flavour (£14.98, Waterstones) is an interesting take on the structure of wine to support blind tasting. It is a favourite of students for the Master of Wine course.