Breaux Brings Brazen Bordeaux Bad Boy

After a number of decades of grape growing in Virginia, people who know way more about this than me seem to be figuring out which grapes do well here.  Viognier and cab franc come up a lot.  I also heard people talk about petit verdot and petit manseng as grapes that do well in VA.  Jordan, from Tarara, also talks a lot about how well syrah can do at some site in VA.  A grape you don’t hear a lot about, however, is sauv blanc.  Sauv Blanc is one of the white grapes of Bordeaux, but while you hear a lot about the success of red Bordeaux grapes in VA, you just don’t hear as much about the whites.

That said, I’m a fan of this grape, so I’m always intrigued to try a local offering.  The Glen Manor sauv blancs continually impress me, and I’ve often been a fan of those from Linden and Veritas as well (taking vintage variation into account).  I have not, however, loved all the ones that I’ve tried – I think it has something to do with the acid balance…  Recently we got a chance to taste a sauv blanc from yet another winery – Breaux Vineyards – thanks to the inclusion of the 2010 cellar selection sauv blanc in our most recent wine club shipment.

This wine offered a grassy nose with lots of grapefruit, and there was also plenty of citrus on the palate – primarily grapefruit and lime zest.  Given that we opened this bottle on a 100° day, all that tart citrus was incredibly refreshing.  This isn’t my favorite sauv blanc, but 2010 was such a hot year that it’s hard to draw many conclusions about how a grape normally does at a given site without a whole lot more experience than I have.  I will say that it was very popular with cellar club members, however, as the bottles not included in club allocations were already sold out by the time we got to pick up our club wines.  Hopefully we’ll get a chance to try another Breaux sauv blanc in future years.

 

Join the Club?

We held out for a long time before joining any wine clubs.  Beyond the financial commitment which can be a bit daunting for those of us living on budgets, as a polyamourous VA wine lover, I found it hard to commit to a winery enough to join a club.  Over the last year, however, we’ve joined a few different clubs.  Some we’ll likely stay with for some time while others will be allowed to lapse, but we have found that club memberships can let us learn more about a winery – especially if the club membership gains you access to special, club-only wines.

The Breaux Vineyards cellar club is one we joined this winter, and when we signed up, one of the wines we took home was a bottle of ’06 Cellar Club Chardonnay.  We’re not huge chardonnay fans, and we’re generally bigger fans of the reds from Breaux than the whites, but part of the benefit of a club membership is that it gives you a chance to try wines you might not otherwise purchase.  With no particular expectations but an open mind, we popped the cork on this bottle.

I found a nose redolent with crisp apple flavors along with a hint of smoke.  Once I started to sip, I again noted apple along with some light, toasty oak notes.  Honestly, the wine was fine; that said, I was a bit surprised that it was a cellar club wine as it didn’t particularly stand out to me.

This is the drawback of wine clubs.  You get some bottles that just aren’t for you.  Of course, this is also why you need to stick with a club for a while so that you can see if the bulk of the wines offered are ones that make the membership worth it for you.  Having had other Breux club wines, I still feel that this club is a good fit for us, but this wine did remind me why I’m often hesitant to join a club.  Risk is definitely not my middle name.