Most of the praise heaped on De Bortoli Yarra Valley in the past few years has centred around its reds: syrah and pinot noir in particular. The advances have been just as stellar with the whites, and at a tasting a couple of weeks ago of the top end De Bortoli white wines, it occurred to me that everything winemaker Steve Webber has been saying over the past few years has now settled beautifully into place. The De Bortoli Estate and Reserve chardonnays (the latest are from 2007, to be reviewed shortly) are the best they have ever been, and the sauvignons are seriously on the money. De Bortoli’s white wine head honcho, Sarah Fagan, should be rightly proud.
This 2008 De Bortoli Sauvignon undergoes full malolactic fermentation and is one highly textural beast. Two things hit me straught up: how dry this wine is, and how textural. The combination is something to behold. It’s got lots of floral aromatics, spice, apple seeds and pippy fruit, but the wine’s structure, mouthfeel and tension is where the real quality resides. Excellenti. Drink : 208 - 201 93 points Campbell Mattinson, The Wine Front
What's the story One of the best locally produced sauvignons on the market, it's as good with food as without. Tastes Expect layers of guava, mango and cashew. The palate is creamy and direct with terrific intensity of flavour and great balance." Matt Skinner, Australian Good Food, December 2009
"This Sauvignon Blanc, simply named "Sauvignon" has snappy lemon and floral notes with plenty of minerality. The palate is bright with flavours of ripe white peach and nectarine, citrus and minerals but it is also has a wonderfully creamy texture with a lovely weight on the palate." Wine Diva, www.winescores.ca (Canada), October 2009
"The De Bortoli winemakers make their Yarra Valley sauvignon blanc more like a chardonnay (fermented in old barrels and so on), in an effort to subdue the grape's overt pungency and emphasise it's chalky, minerally texture. The effort has paid off, too: this is fabulously lean and bracing." Max Allen, Australian Gourmet Traveller, 20 Sexy Sauvignon Blancs, January 2009"
This is a refined and bright style of Savvy, gently worked into smoothly honed shape and trading on terrific fruit quality. Resolved, intense and slick, gentle tropical, some citrus and fine lines of acid sparkling through the finish." 92 points Nick Stock, WBM100, November 2008 Appearance
Pale straw with hints of green.
Bouquet
Subtle Sauvignon fruit, quite expressive and minerally.
Palate
Creamy and elegant. Fine, slate like flavours with good length and texture.
Vintage Conditions
2008 saw timely December and January rainfall followed by warm dry days and cool nights. Harvest dates were earlier than normal.
Winemaking
Estate Sauvignon Blanc is selected from four distinct sections of estate vineyard at Dixons Creek. All cane pruned, shoot thinned and hand picked. Fruit is whole bunch crushed and pressed until there is nothing left in the skins, the phenolics being an important textural component in the wine. The wine is roughly racked to older casks with lots of solids. The wine is allowed to ferment naturally and part of the wine undergoes malolactic fermentation. Lots of battonage over a five month period. The phenolics we extract during partial crushing and subsequent pressing are vital to producing wines with texture and minerality. This combined with hand tendered vineyards, hand picking and sorting, a little ‘roughing up’ with a crusher and the use of older casks, produces a style with some unique characters.
