Zenith Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc

[Innkeeper]

2002 Zenith, Sauvignon Blanc, Marlborough ($11 SHWC). Fresh muscadines on the nose, transforming to ripe pears upfront. Asked my truelove (a Georgia/Floridian) if she detected any guava. She said it was "a little like banana guava, but not cherry guava." Grassy complexity with lovely acidity across the palate. Dan Berger found gooseberry, hay, and olives in it; not us. A very, very nice finish. Matched it with broiled sea scallops, and green beans almondine. Wonderful! We would get this again without any problem if found on a winelist. We prefer the less grassy Hawks Bay SBs better.

[Auburnwine]

Muscadines?

I must get some!

[ShortWiner]

Muscadines? Good lord, I don't even know what those are in theory!?

[Thomas]

It ain't theory shortwiner, it's a grape variety in a southern American grape spieces.

[Auburnwine]

Keep hanging around with us and we will seriously expand your tasting vocabulary.
Muscadine has perhaps the most intense flavor of any grape I know. It is the essence of the Southern woods on a flawless autumn day. My belovéd and I were exiled in Lubbock, Texas for seven years. We would open a bottle of muscadine wine whenever we needed a little Mississippi.

There's a wonderful image in one of William Bartram's or Audubon's journals of gigantic ivory billed woodpeckers getting drunk on fermenting muscadines and falling out of the treetops. (Without naming names, much like one of our fellow posters).

I'm sure that there's a wine out there that has the aroma of kudzu blossoms. Now THAT would be something worth tasting.

[ShortWiner]

Grapes, fancy that. Adding it to the list.