Saudade Blanc

Some years ago I acquired a cookbook, entitled Taste, that presented David Rosengarten's collection of recipes of things that, damn, he just loved to eat. Turns out my favourite dishes and his overlap a lot: gazpacho, gumbo, crostini properly grilled over a hot fire. As an appendix, he added some notes about wine (and beer, at the time I was very titillated to see him write that Rolling Rock has a fine place with food), and basically said that you can't go wrong with New Zealand Sauvingnon Blanc, especially the ones from Marlborough. Although this is now a cliche, the book dates from ten years ago, and it was daring advice that I took to heart, even ordering Cloudy Bay Sauvingnon Blanc at a memorable dinner at Union Square Cafe, the kind where you're 25 and trying to prove sophistication to your date and, more importantly, the staff. It's never done me wrong, but there's a world of difference between that and the pure, heady infatuation I feel right now for Kim Crawford's 2004 edition. I freely admit that I picked this bottle up because the Wall Street Journal's always entertaining wine columnists, Dot and John , chose this as their best-of-tasting a few months ago in a roundup of NZ SBs. And there's no argument -- this wine's sheer force of personality is irresistable. Featuring one of the most intense noses I've ever encountered in a white wine, the kind where I'm happy just to sniff and enjoy the foreplay without wanting the main event, it's a carnival of gooseberry (yes, I've actually had gooseberries in my life, I'm English) and grass. The kind you mow. In the mouth, it's bracing in that way that causes the two back sides of your tongue to water, and while offering alluring references to all the classic sauvingnon blanc flavours, from stone fruits through to herbs, it settles finally on passion fruit. I spent some time in Belem, Brazil, and became deeply, irrevocably addicted to passion fruit, ie., maracuja. I ate them as jam, I ran them through blenders with sugar to make juice, I sucked them straight out of their skins just off the vine tart and warm from the equatorial sun. I decided then that it was the single best, most satisfying flavour in the world, and have had no reason to think otherwise since. My one small caveat about this wine is that it is so domineering, so lusciously intense, that it might be too much for light foods. It would make sole disappear, and rather clashed with the contents of the the neapolitan escarole pie I just had for supper, except for the rich shortcrust pastry which it cut through like a samuri sword sharpened for seppuku. This is not the Sauvingnon Blanc to serve with goat cheese. I bought this for $14.99, which is less than you often see it for; it is until the end of this week $11.24 at Astor Wine, if there's any left after I get back there.