You've got to love the people from the land downunder ...Imagine a "wine with a whiff of "cat's pee on a gooseberry bush".
And quickly, I paste another section of text from the article Sal sent me, For the record, the "cat's pee on a gooseberry bush" description -- usually attributed to British wine critic Oz Clarke -- was a compliment.
Sal said he would be sticking to Spanish wines but I lived in Marlborough a while, the Cloudy Bay winery was a short bike ride away and I remember falling in love with one of their white wines ... Pelorus, the premium sparkling wine there.
The pale straw colour and aromas of ripe citrus fruits indicate the chardonnay origins of Pelorus nv. A bouquet of apple and lemon complements fresh bready notes derived from two years bottle ageing on lees. The deliciously crisp palate displays toasty, creamy complexity, enhanced by a lingering nutty finish.
Winemaker, Alan Scott said, Demand for sauvignon blanc wines in New Zealand appears to be flattening off but foreign markets -- which in the year to June 2005 took 50 million litres of New Zealand wine or over half of total production -- still cannot get enough.
"The US is desperate to get sauvignon blanc, it's just scary stuff".
I rest my case Mr DeTraglia ;)
The photo ... taken when I lived in Marlborough, surrounded by Montana, Cloudy Bay, Allan Scott and many other delicious wineries. It was stunning country.
In all fairness, I've never drunk a glass of cat's pee.
ReplyDeleteWho knows? Maybe it tastes better than one would assume.
Sal
Well, you just try some and let me know ...
ReplyDeleteNew Zealand is delicious though, Australian wine too actually.
And anyway, the cat pee comment was a compliment ... obviously the guy had very favourable memories of gooseberry bushes covered in cats pee.
Dammit, my mind had protected me until that last sentence when it said 'Hey Di, didn't your mum have cats and didn't spend your entire childhood eating gooseberries from the gooseberry bushes.
Okay ... so clearly cat pee on sunwarmed gooseberry is a taste that children love and the Brit wine taster was clearly paying the wine the highest compliment of summer childhood revisited ...