Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Pouilly Travels--Part Deux


Last spring I traveled to the land of Pouilly-Fuissé. The wine is grown in the southern reaches of Burgundy, where the unoaked chardonnays are dry as a bone. I even stayed in the village at the Bergerie Fuissé, a bucolic B& B that faces a hillside of chardonnay vines and has beautiful white hens prancing in the yard.
In a few weeks, I’ll be in the land of the other Pouilly—-Pouilly Fumé, the world-famous Sauvignon Blanc grown in the Loire Valley west of Paris. Long before wine lovers ever heard of Marlborough, NZ, Pouilly Fumé was the measure of a Sauvignon Blanc--fresh with a bracing minerality. It was the first SB I had ever tried and I immediately fell in love with it. I do enjoy those new world SBs, too, with all that grapefruit and fresh cut grass, but they can sometimes seem disorganized and all over the place in their flavor profile. A little too herbaceous, a little too over-the-top citrus. That’s never a concern with Pouilly Fumé—it’s always an elegant expression of this very expressive grape.

No comments:

Post a Comment