The Sauvignon Gris Grape

The grape known as both Sauvignon Gris and Fié is a white-wine grape originating in Bordeaux, where it was a mutation of Sauvignon Blanc; it is now also widely grown in Chile, and is quickly becoming well-established in Uruguay and especially in New Zealand.

While it long languished in the shade of its much better-known parent, it was coming to be appreciated for what it is, rather than disparaged for what it is not (which is to say, it is not an “alternative Sauvignon Blanc”). Its nose, in particular, is less ferocious than Sauvignon Blanc’s, but it has a concentrated fruit and citrus quality; moreover, it is less cuttingly crisp, and tends toward a round, rich quality. All in all, it is a fine varietal well worth being known better. Regrettably, that growing fame seems to have been a bubble that has now burst, and—at least in the U.S.—this pleasant little varioety has returned to oblivion.

Factoid: French AOC law dictates that wineries are not allowed to bottle Sauvignon Gris as a single varietal; those few who do must label it as a generic white Bordeaux. Weird people, the French.

Some Descriptions of Sauvignon Gris Wines

Wikipedia
“Sauvignon gris is pink color wine grape that is a clonal mutation of Sauvignon blanc. The grape is primarily found in Bordeaux and Chile, where it was imported with Sauvignon blanc and Sauvignon vert cuttings. The grape produces less aromatic wines and is often use for blending.”
Wine Searcher
“Sauvignon Gris is less aromatic than its blanc brother, but much more elegant and certainly capable of producing interesting wines. Wines produced from Sauvignon Gris tend to be richer and more voluptuous in texture than Sauvignon Blanc, with ripe fruit flavors of mango and melon as well as citrus notes. The wines are usually dry and tend to have some of the herbaceous notes so typical of the Sauvignon family…As a wine, [Fiéé offers much of the racy acidity and freshness of Sauvignon Blanc, but with an additional lushness that draws upon juicy stonefruit flavors. Fié is a highly scented grape variety and can produce high-quality wines.”
Bordeaux Undiscovered
“The grapes produce a wine which is less aromatic than Sauvignon Blanc but the acidity level is good and the pale straw coloured wines are rounded and rich. Sauvignon Gris is grown in Chile, Australia and New Zealand…as well as France, and the flavours can be of grapefruit, gorse blossom, passion fruit, lychee and pear with flinty notes of smoke and toast depending on where—and how—the wine is made.”
Urbanspoon
“[T]he flavours are out of this world. Think ripe gooseberry and herbaceous characters not unlike their famed Sauvignon Blanc, but mixed with poached pear, apple, and guava; characters often found in Pinot Gris.”
Wine Terroirs
“Fié Gris is a variety which is at the same time rich and fresh, vivid….”
Wine a Day
“The grape has a little more sugar content that the Sauvignon Blanc. Therefore it has a little more character and depth.”
Wine Geeks
“Sauvignon Gris has more of a pinkish hue to its skin (it is also known as Sauvignon Rosé) and has similar levels of acidity as that of Sauvignon Blanc. Sauvignon Gris does produce fruit with higher sugar levels than its cousin, which contribute to greater aromatics and a more rich and round feel to the wines. At one point these wines were highly prized yet due to the rediculously low yields that the grape produces it almost became extinct. Currently it is enjoying a small revival in the Graves region of Bordeaux.”
Wine Cellar Insider
“The grape is high in sugar with good acidity and the yields are often naturally low, which delivers good concentration of flavor.”

Some Sauvignon Gris to Try

Poor Sauvignon Gris: it has gone from little-regarded and scarce to unregarded and almost vanished. The listing below is all that remains on the U.S. market combining decent quality, price, and availability. Sad.

For a Splurge

This web page is strictly compliant with the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) Protocol v1.0 (Transitional) and the W3C Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Protocol v3 — because we care about interoperability. Click on the logos below to test us!

This page was last modified on Saturday, 30 October 2021, at 11:26 pm Pacific Time.

That Useful Wine Site