“We’re all American now” is a slogan for many a political pressure group in the USA and after tasting 47 Sauvignons from the Loire, New Zealand and Constantia in the old cellar on Buitenverwachting yesterday afternoon, the Sauvignon-shocked tasters at the end of the first event in this weekend’s Ayelsford Constantia Fresh Festival would have been forgiven if they’d launched into the Cyndi Lauper hit Sisters of Avalon, with a little editing:

She is awakening in dark swells and mystery
Unbridled nightmares powerful and running free
You could still hear her cries reverberating through the trees…
For the trampled flowers, the daughters of Eve, the Sisters of Sauvignon…
Sisters Of Sauvignon… Sisters Of Sauvignon…

For we’re all Sauvignonistas now. The tasting settled several things:

1) Sauvignon Blanc does not make serious wine – well it does as the various Sancerres from François Cotat and Sébastien Redde, present in his curly glory like a young Bacchus, ably demonstrated;

2) Sauvignon Blanc does not age – not so, as Lowell Jooste’s perfectly preserved ’86 and ’87 vintages of Klein Constantia proved;

3) Old and New World Sauvignon blancs are a world apart – so why did only two people realize that the first flight were all French? The overwhelming majority voted that there was at least one SA stunner in the line-up, when there wasn’t.

My favourite SA Sauvignon was the 2009 Buitenverwachting of our host Lars Maack (wine #43) and my best overall was 2006 Pur Sang from the late, great Didier Dagueneau (wine #21). But the biggest personal surprise was the 2009 Gouverneurs Reserve from Groot Constantia. The hint of terpene had me speculating that well known joker, organizer Jörg Pfützner, had slipped a Riesling into the flight.

Or “brought a knife to a gunfight” as Jörg himself explained the last time he did it at a tasting at Jonathan Steyn’s Belthazar restaurant. A landmark tasting that provided the spark for this Sauvignon festival. Given the amount of flint in the air, this gunfight at the Sauvignon Stockade was a three-way duel with flintlock pistols between the three great national exponents of Sauvignon. Not a bad way to end a week or start a weekend.

Lars and Jörg

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