Another well traveled grape that is finding it’s

fame in the Southern Hemisphere is Sauvignon

Blanc. Its roots are firmly planted in France.

It is an important grape in Bordeaux and the Loire Valley. It thrives on the gravelly soils of Bordeaux and is blended with Sémillon to produce fresh, dry, crisp Bordeaux Blancs.

Perhaps the most famous wines made from Sauvignon Blanc are further north in France; Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé. Here in the Loire it produces bone dry, highly aromatic, racy wines, with grassy and sometimes smoky, gunflint-like flavours. In New Zealand, a small region at the Northern tip of the South Island makes some of the worlds most recognisable wines. Marlborough and Sauvignon Blanc have become synonymous with extraordinarily intense pungent, gooseberry fruit wines.

It is now grown very successfully in Chile producing wines that are almost halfway between the Old and the New World in terms of character. Also, many South African producers are now producing very good quality rounded fruit-driven Sauvignon Blancs.