Region: Bergerac, France
Composition: 90% Sémillon, 10% Sauvignon Blanc
Background: Englishman and self-proclaimed Vinarchist and Terroirist Charles Martin founded Château de la Colline in 1994, and makes a small range of red and white wines. He learned his winemaking all over the globe: Napa Valley, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa. He was the winemaker at Château de la Jaubertie before, as the Charles Neal website insists, he won La Colline in a drunken leg-wrestle. (There is quite a biography of Charles Martin to be found there, worth a read and a laugh.) Martin has brought some new ways of doing things to the Bergerac region, things like using argon to protect the wines, high-density plantings, and mechanical leaf plucking. Oh, those wacky Englishmen!
The Bergerac region is on the north-east edge of Bordeaux and the area grows similar grapes to Bordeaux; except, as people like to point out, without the snottiness and prices of Bordeaux. This wine is a standard dry white Bordeaux-style blend consisting of Sémillon and Sauvignon Blanc. Sémillon is usually somewhat rich and kind of oily and heavy in nature, and can be a little flabby and free of acids to handle the fruit, so the Sauvignon Blanc (which is a lot more acidic and grassier/greener) is added to fix that problem and give the wine a little more zing.
Notes: Golden straw yellow in the glass, with a nose of apricot, nectarine, and honey, along with some sweet clover which gives it a lovely aromatic lightness. More nectarine on the palate, along with some sweet citrus. The fruit is so full and rich it is almost bitter, if that makes sense. A fairly zippy finish with some nice acids along with a lingering finish of honey and mineral made this a pleasant wine to have with some asparagus in garlic-lemon cream and pasta, as we did. It's definitely a fuller-bodied white, but pretty nice and balanced nonetheless.
Cost: $10
Overall: B
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