When a collector friend offered me a glass of Screaming Eagle recently, I automatically pictured the cult winery’s polished, pricy red. Instead, I got my first taste of its sophisticated, wildly expensive, almost entirely unattainable white.

Chances are, when you think of Napa Valley, you think of red wine. Well, get ready to be surprised. In this classic cabernet territory, dozens of top-end wineries are focusing the same kind of every-detail-matters approach to whites that they’ve long lavished on their more prestigious reds.

Fortunately, to try any of them you don’t have to splash out as much as you do for Screaming Eagle’s 300-bottle-a-year sauvignon blanc that I tried. 

A New Look at a Classic Grape

Napa sauvignon blancs used to be known as bean counter wines, a way to improve cash flow through quick turnaround; you can harvest the grapes in the fall and sell the wine the following spring.  Only a handful of wineries, such as Robert Mondavi, Spottswoode, and Eisele Vineyard, took the grape seriously.

But all that’s changed. When California winemaker Julien Fayard, founder of Azur winery and the Empreinte label and a native of Provence, was in New York a couple of weeks ago, he shared his rich, unctuous, powerful Empreinte sauvignon blanc. Despite making only 250 cases, he’s launching it outside California. “It develops with age,” he said. “It’s a wine you can collect.”

He’s one of a growing list of producers making age-worthy sauv blancs, such as Arkenstone, Coup de Foudre, Dana Estates, Favia, Hourglass, Illumination, Inglenook, Marciano, Rudd, and more (see below).

The amounts may be tiny (Dana Estates makes 85 cases; Favia produces 98), but they serve a practical purpose: Many Napa winemakers simply want to serve a white at the beginning of a dinner. And from May through October, when Napa temperatures often hit 95F, the guests you’re entertaining on a porch don’t feel like drinking only reds.

Vineyard 29, a winery just north of the town of St. Helena noted for its unctuous cabernets,  took this idea to a new level last spring when it introduced a $60,000 private al fresco dinner party at the winery for 50 wine lovers. The experience, which one person or a group of friends can purchase, features whatever crustaceans are in season along with plenty of its complex but overpriced $150 sauvignon blanc. You’ll also go home with a barrel (25 cases) of the white.

Read more at source: Bloomberg