From rather obscure beginnings in Bordeaux, France, where Sauvignon Gris was nearly wiped out by the devastating phylloxera epidemic of the 1860s, plantings there today are minimal. Interestingly, the grape is used only for blending in this appellation – some of the premium producers use it in their Bordeaux Blanc blends – as French AOC law forbids bottling it as a single varietal wine.
In the Loire Valley, however, a few producers do make a 100% Sauvignon Gris. However, Sauvignon Gris has found itself an unlikely but happy home in Chile, where it first arrived in the late 1890s. A pink-berried mutation of the Sauvignon Blanc grape, it was often confused with that grape. Some 100-year-old vineyards still exist in the Colchuga Valley and the variety is now scattered across other parts of the wine world, including Uruguay, the United States, Switzerland, New Zealand and now (drumroll required) in South Africa!
Julio Bouchon of Bouchon Family Wines’ great-grandfather planted Sauvignon Gris on his Angostura farm in Colchagua in 1912. A century later, David Nieuwoudt, together with his friend-in-wine, Julio, became the first to grow this variety in South Africa in the remote Cederberg mountains, thereby producing the country’s very first Sauvignon Gris.
This charming wine, the shyer cousin of Sauvignon Blanc, pops with fruit flavours once in the glass and pairs perfectly with a wide variety of food, in particular fish, shellfish and cheese.
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