Ten good sauvignons 18 October 2007

A new award from Wine magazine

Wine magazine has converted its annual tasting of sauvignon blancs into a ‘Top 10’ affair – a useful bit of rebranding, no doubt, as it gets them sponsorship (money, that is) and a bit more publicity.

The organisers have learned something, perhaps, from the occasional public squabble over scores and rankings in their Shiraz and Chenin Challenges, and the inaugural list of sauvignons is unranked –although as Cape Point scored half a star more than the others, which all rated four stars, it was clearly the winner. And in fact there are eleven wines in the Top 10, as there was a tie at the bottom end. A perfectly respectable list of mostly cooler-climate sauvignons it is too – the majority of them from the 2007 vintage. In alphabetical order the wines are:

Alexanderfontein 2007

Backsberg John Martin 2007

Bloemendal Suider Terras 2006

Cape Point 2006

De Grendel Koetshuis 2006

Diemersdal Eight Rows 2007

Fleur du Cap Unfiltered 2007

Graham Beck Pheasant’s Run 2007

Groote Post Reserve 2007

Nitida 2007

Springfield Life from Stone 2007

Incidentally, a significant statistic given in the press release says that, for the 112 wines assessed for the award (it doesn't explain why all the other local sauvignons weren't assessed – Veritas judged 209 of them), the average price was 'only R60 a bottle'; whether winelovers will easily agree with that 'only' is surely far from certain.