Life After Chardonnay

It’s a mild sickness, this disease I have. I like Semillon.

Unlike most maladies, Semillonitis has no cure. Symptoms include surreptitious skulking around wine shops looking for old bottles of Semillon and trying to figure out what food goes with them.

Friends know of my ailment and tread lightly around the subject. They whisper about me behind my back; they silently pray a cure will be found. Chances of that are slim. It’s a rare affliction that affects few of us, but once you have it, it’s persistent.

So to avoid being cast as a curiosity, I have embarked on a plan I hope will take the onus off me. I will attempt to infect others with this malady.

However, the odds are against me. Semillonitis is an ineffectual little virus, so it’s not particularly communicable. The only possibility you have of catching it is if someone should sit you down and pour you a good glass of Semillon. And since there are probably only a dozen or so of us in this country who are infected with this bug, you’re fairly safe.

Semillon, in case you’re wondering, is a grape variety that can produce some remarkably dull wine when it’s grown in the wrong regions. We know this because it grows in a lot of places in the world where it’s so warm the variety produces a liquid with a character closer to water than wine.

To most wine drinkers, the world of wine starts with Chardonnay and ends with Cabernet. Anything else is too exotic to consider. As they gain confidence, they may like Burgundy or Champagne or Port, perhaps a Rhone now and then, but after that, interest in wine wanes.

In its greatest form, however, Semillon can make classic wines, such as those of Sauternes--wines like Chateau d’Yquem--elixirs of incomparable sweetness and honeyed concentration that the rest of the world has often tried to copy (only rarely has even a poor facsimile of it been made).

But outside of the dessert wines, Semillon can also make a subtle yet flavorful dry table wine. Some of the greatest white wines I have ever had were Semillon-based wines--for instance, Chateau Haut-Brion Blanc and Chateau Laville Haut-Brion. These are so expensive, however, that they don’t offer much of a lesson to budding Semillon drinkers. Moreover, these wines are just half Semillon; the rest is Sauvignon Blanc and Muscadelle du Bordelaise. It’s the Semillon that is the heart of them for me, though.

Recently I praised the white Graves of Chateau La Louviere and Chateau de Fieuzal, both Semillon-based, and I have had some exciting experiences with Semillons from Australia, where the Semillon grape is treated with even more dignity than in France.

Semillon, when it’s made dry, can take on wonderful bottle bouquet with just a few years of age, yet so few people buy them at all that almost no one has any experience with aged bottles. Those who buy a good, well-made Semillon and who “lose” it in the cellar, only to find it a decade hence, may find a wine of incomparable richness and finesse, but even then the lucky owners will likely not know they are experiencing a rare treat.

Once a year I get together with a few friends who are Semillon freaks, and we taste whatever current releases we can find. Wine shop owners scurry for cover when they see us coming. No matter how much digging we do, we rarely come up with more than a dozen each year. The nice thing is, rarely do they set us back more than $8 or $9 a bottle.

A number of California and Washington wineries have made Semillon as a varietal wine for years, but no one advertises the fact. Wine makers seem almost embarrassed they make it, even though the wines are often excellent.

A problem here is that young, dry Semillon usually needs time to show its true colors. Only after some aging will it round out and become more complex. When Semillons are released, they can be a tad on the shy side in terms of both aroma and taste.

Semillon’s flavors are akin to those found in Sauvignon Blanc, though usually milder. Made from grapes raised in a cool climate, the wine can have the character of green grass or new-mown hay, not unlike Sauvignon Blanc. It can also display an even more herbal note. One word used to describe Semillon aroma is “fig,” though I prefer “melon” and “pear” in many wines, with a lemony note when the wines are young.

The tasting I assembled a couple of weeks ago--called “Semillon silliness” by a close friend who shares my love for these wines--was a blind evaluation of 14 Semillons that are currently available. However, a few of them are in short supply, and a couple of others are available only at the winery.

Prices are in the $7 to $10 range, few higher; almost all are discounted. Indeed, occasionally older vintages of Semillon that haven’t sold will be deeply discounted because of wine shop owners’ misunderstanding about how they age, and you can sometimes get a great bargain.

The top four wines of the event were from different growing regions. They were 1989 Hogue from Washington State, 1989 Niebaum Chevier (made by an Inglenook wine maker, Judy Matulich-Weitz), 1989 Navarro and 1988 Davis Bynum.

The Hogue has a melon/pear fruit quality and a delicate mouthfeel, relatively soft, but the wine is not sweet. If served too cold, the fragrance is muted.

Light herbal notes mark the fragrance of the Niebaum, but they are in perfect harmony with the fruit. The wine appears to be a trace drier than the Hogue, but with a creamier texture. Gorgeous wine.

The cool Russian River Valley provided the fruit for the attractive Bynum. The wine showed a spice and delicate herbal complexity, and the balance of the wine was leaner than the other two wines.

My favorite of the top four, by a hair, was the Navarro from Mendocino County. Most of the wine was bought in bulk from Parducci, aged in French oak puncheons for complexity, then blended with a small amount of Sauvignon Blanc. There was wonderful fruit here, and a spice component more obvious than in the other three wines, with a hint of fig/melon in the aftertaste. There is almost no retail sale of this wine, but it’s available at the winery, by mail and at selected local restaurants. (For details write to Navarro, Box 47, Philo, Calif. 95466.)

Other excellent wines in this event included 1987 Wildcat (Sonoma County), with an herbal and green bean component, fairly complex and distinctive; 1988 Simi (green bean, earth, pepper and pineapple; available only at the winery), and 1989 Kendall-Jackson (an interesting Riesling-like aroma adds to an orange blossom element, and the wine appears to be a trace sweet).

Others tasted were also good, but not indicative of great Semillon. They were Seaborne Santa Monica (from Chile, simple flavors); 1989 Inglenook (aroma of hay, grass and oak); 1988 Signorello (a load of oak covers most of the varietal components); 1988 Girard (interestingly green, but with a coarse finish); 1987 J. Carey (aldehydic, with a smell of geranium); 1989 Chateau Julien (nice fruit, indicating hay, but with an oxidative note).

Later in the evening we tasted a flight of seven so-called Meritage white wines, blends of Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc, and all the wines were wonderful, made in slightly different styles.

The winner was 1989 Merryvale, which we later found out was 90% Sauvignon Blanc and only 10% Semillon. But the richness of the wine combined with marvelous lemon, mint and spice components to make the most complex wine of the flight.

We also loved the 1988 Vichon, a more delicate wine with roundness, as well as the 1987 Merlion Sauvrier, which shows just how a couple of extra years of bottle age round out these wines. The herbal components are quite attractive, and the wine reminds me a bit of the Loire.

Other excellent wines included the 1988 Lyeth, 1988 DeLorimier Spectrum; 1988 Inglenook Gravion, and 1988 Benziger Tribute.

For various reasons we were unable to try a number of other good Semillons. We couldn’t get the 1987 Clos du Val (unreleased) or the 1989 Alderbrook (sold out).

For dinner that evening, to continue the theme, we tasted a bottle of the newly released 1989 Soliloquy from Flora Springs, a wine made entirely from Sauvignon Blanc.

With this wine, wine maker Ken Deis inaugurates a new style for Sauvignon Blanc that is more complex and sublime than Sauvignon Blanc has typically been in California. The wine was aged on the lees (the spent yeast cells) for almost a year. The result is wonderfully complex notes of spice and mint, with delicate herbal notes in the background and a marvelously deep, rich texture.

This wine and the efforts of many California wine makers with Semillon in the last few years leave me hope that the style of wine we saw in this event will become more popular. There is life after Chardonnay. And it’s a lot less expensive.

Wine of The Week

1989 Bianco di Custoza, Lamberti ($9)-- This is one of the best Soave-type wines I’ve ever tasted. It’s made from the traditional Soave grapes--Garganega, which is the heart of Soave and Trebbiano. A single-vineyard wine, it offers racy spice and a mild, fruity quality. It is actually less expensive than some other single-vineyard Soaves and a great match with lightly prepared seafood dishes.