Oct 21 • Wine Reviews
For the Love of Chenin Blanc
A good wine buddy and I were having dinner at Legal Seafood after a particularly grueling Italian Wine Industry event in Boston. Grueling, because there must have been 40 tables with at least a dozen bottles on each table. A good percentage of wines were from Piedmont, and all that tannic astringency from the hailed Nebbiolo grape got us desperate for a Riesling! But I digress…
We Uber’d to Legal’s and ordered Chilean Sea Bass and a bottle of dry Vouvray - and my great god in heaven, it was delightful, we still talk about that wine to this day!
And so began my pursuit of dry Chenin Blancs! Spoiler alert - they are hard to find. :(
I learned that unless the label on a bottle of Chenin says DRY, or SEC on a bottle of Vouvray (surprise, the grape in a Vouvray is Chenin Blanc!) - it’s going to have some range of sweetness to it in terms of the residual sugar (RS) left in the wine after fermentation. There is almost no other indicator of RS on the bottle, they don’t tell you the RS percentage…but they WILL give you the ABV (Alcohol By Volume) percentage. TYPICALLY the lower the ABV, the sweeter the wine. A 12.5% ABV Chenin will probably be sweeter than a 13.5% ABV Chenin. The higher the alcohol, typically the less sweet (or more dry) the wine will be.
Fast forward to today - this bottle of Saldo Chenin Blanc from California had me curious! I’ll admit, I am a sucker for a clever label - and it’s made by The Prisoner Wine Company. I was hooked. $21.99 on sale at Luke’s in Dennis Port on Cape Cod.
13.5% ABV! Boom!! I was wondering how dry it would be - and it is only SLIGHTLY sweet! A perfect accompaniment to the tortilla chips and medium queso I was snacking on at the time…but this wine would SING with any light seafood or chicken dish, white pizza, light appetizers, or just a bag of salty snacks.
It’s a blend of 90% Chenin Blanc, 7% Muscat, and 3% Verdelho. Aromas of pineapple, white peach, and brown spice. Tastes of pineapple and honey crisp apple. Food pairing suggestions - whipped goat cheese crostini, lemon risotto, and scampi spaghetti.
My take? I would not pair this particular Chenin Blanc with the Chilean Sea Bass we had at Legal’s, it’s simply not dry enough. The residual sugar in this wine softens the acidity a bit, which in turn will not adequately cut through those fattier pieces of seafood. Scallops, Shrimp, Cod, Haddock, and Pollack? SURE! Lobster, Crab, Sea Bass, Halibut, Swordfish - no way. That’s where you want a true dry Chenin/Vouvray. But compared to other Chenins out there? This one has my heart for pure enjoyment and drinkability. Worth the money, in my not-so-humble opinion!
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For the Love of Chenin Blanc
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