Portes de Bordeaux white wine review
In the previous post we reviewed the bottle of red wine that the old lady asked for recommendation. It’s not frequent to get random chats with people at the wine section, it made the visit to the store somewhat more fun and something to talk about. She needed to buy one bottle of red and one bottle of white, and this is the white I suggested she gets for her targeted USD $5 price point. It was slightly higher than her target, but this is a bottle I bought many times over the years and had no problem recommending.
This 2015 Portes de Bordeaux white wine is a Sauvignon Blanc. After living in the US for a few years I noticed that US wines tend to lead their labeling with the grape varietal, while wines from Europe tend to lead with the region or the vineyard. Sometimes French wines don’t include the grape type at all on the bottle, even if it’s 100% the same grape and not a blend. But things are changing. It’s becoming more common for wines from France to include the grape varietal and this bottle is an example. It makes it easier for the consumer to get an idea of what they are buying, what the wine might taste like, especially for export markets where people know what a Sauvignon Blanc can taste like, but may have no idea about white Bordeaux.
2015 Sauvignon Blanc, Portes de Bordeaux white wine
This bottle is very simple with transparent glass to show the wine color without any alteration. The cork traditional i.e. not made of plastic or using one of the new twistable caps, more and more common in white wines.
This wine is true to a good Sauvignon Blanc: very smooth, citrussy, fresh, with no after taste of oak as it is often the case for Chardonnay whites. On one hand we could say there is nothing that stands out about this wine, nothing exceptional that would make a “wow” factor. Some wines are very unique in their flavors and stand out, while others just represent their grape variety while being very easy to drink. This Portes de Bordeaux is clearly the latter. It makes for a delicious complement to seafood. We used it partly for cooking mussels yesterday, and the rest of the bottle made the drink for lunch as we enjoyed those mussels.
