Come to Where the Flavor Is, Come to Marlborough (Wine) Country

Fast Facts on this Week’s Featured Wines:

• 2019 Kirkland Signature Ti Point Sauvignon Blanc, Marlborough, New Zealand ($6.99 @Costco in California – Item #301904)
• 2019 Sauvignon Republic Sauvignon Blanc, Marlborough, New Zealand ($6.99 @Trader Joe’s in California)

 

Can I tell you a secret? These two wines are – hand’s down – the two most popular wines in my house. My wife and I never tire of New Zealand “Sauv Blanc” and these two pack a lot of bang for the buck. What’s more, they are almost always in stock at our local Trader Joe’s and Costco.

With the days warming, and daylight savings time returning this weekend, now is a good time to think about white wines.

This week’s featured wines have a lot in common. Same vintage.  Same grape variety. Same region and country of origin, namely Marlborough, New Zealand. They also both share the same $6.99 price – and high QPR.

 

 

Sauvignon Blanc, the grape that put the Kiwis on the world wine map in the 1980s, is the country’s largest planted variety at +/- 50,000 acres. And the wines here are distinctive.  It is not too much of a stretch to say that the Sauvignon Blancs from New Zealand taste like no others in the world. A combination of a cool yet sunny climate, low rainfall and free-draining, moderately fertile soil produces uniquely vivid wines.

 

This Week’s Featured Wine from Costco:

 

Tasting notes:

From the bottle: “The Kirkland Signature Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc from Ti Point Vineyard in Marlborough, New Zealand, has an abundance of tropical fruit flavors coupled with vibrant lemon-lime citrus notes. The palate shows good richness and finishes with crisp acidity leaving flavors of guava and lime zest. From my notes: “tart, clean citrus flavors with a bracing acidity. Classic.”

 

This Week’s Featured Wine from Trader Joe’s:

 

Tasting notes:

Mango aromas mix with citrus on the tropical nose. The flavors build on the tropical ones adding lemon lime, passion fruit, grapefruit, and gooseberry, all harmonized nicely.  The wine finishes with a lively minerality, acidity and some lasting pucker, but it is not as tart and dry as its Costco counterpart, above.

 

Food Pairing Suggestions:

Since these wines taste relatively similar, BOTH would pair nicely with seafood, shellfish and sushi. They would also complement soft cheeses and dishes with creamy sauces.

This is not our first “visit” to Marlborough to taste their Sauvignon Blancs.  Au contraire. This wine from Costco was one of my favorites in 2019.  We also reviewed this pair of NZ SBs from Trader Joe’s.

 

Our Throwback Thursday Selection:

Some 5 months after we first reviewed it, my local Costco still has this wine.  The vintage hasn’t changed. The $13.79 price hasn’t changed. And James Suckling hasn’t changed his 94 point rating.

If all this reading about white wine in this weeks review has you thinking about red, click through on the link above and start planning your next steak dinner!

Cheers!