Cristaldi: The age of cellar-worthy California Sauvignon Blanc

Sauvignon Blanc that ages like a red? Believe it.

Over the past decade, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve sat down with winemakers across California who are immensely proud to show off their ‘Bordeaux Blanc-style’ ageworthy white wines.

The conversation surfaces most often in Napa and Sonoma as well as throughout Mendocino and Santa Barbara, centring on Sauvignon Blanc-based wines that might include a touch of Sémillon – or more rarely, Sauvignon Gris or Sauvignon Musqué.

It got me thinking: what does it mean to be California-based and profess to be making a white wine in the mould of superlative Bordeaux standouts, like Haut-Brion Blanc, Château Smith-Haut Lafitte Blanc from Pessac-Léognan, or Château d’Yquem’s Bordeaux Supérieur ‘Y’ (Ygrec)?

These three wines frequently crop up as inspiration for California producers striving to craft structured, ageworthy whites.

Scroll down for Jonathan’s pick of ageworthy California Sauvignon Blanc

There’s an undeniable echo of Old World familiarity in these New World whites – citrus-led, with pronounced minerality and vivid acidity, supple textures, and an array of nuances from fresh and dried flowers to honey, honeycomb, honeysuckle, orchard and stone fruits, hints of vanilla, and some subtle nuttiness, typically like crushed Marcona almonds.

While much of this character stems from site nuance, unquestionably the winemaker’s tool kit plays a significant role: prized fruit handled through a mix of native and inoculated fermentations, often begun in oak (with varying levels of newness and maybe even whole cluster), followed by regular bâtonnage, extended barrel ageing, time on lees before blending and bottling – and, in some cases, extended bottle age before release.

Only in recent years have I fully appreciated how many Napa-based producers are pursuing their own Bordeaux Blanc ideal.

As I make my rounds tasting Cabernet Sauvignon for my annual vintage report, winemakers inevitably uncork a white as a palate refresher to close our session.

More often than not, these wines are strikingly weighty, with layered textures and complex flavours that leave me wanting more, usually prompting me to ask if any older vintages are on hand. There are almost always bottles lying in wait.

Recipes for success

At Arkenstone, owner and co-founder Susan Krausz and her son, Jake, hosted me for a vertical tasting of their Howell Mountain-grown Sauvignon Blanc with winemaker Sam Kaplan presenting each vintage from 2006-2022.

The winemaking approach at Arkenstone has been remarkably consistent over the years. As described by Kaplan, Sauvignon Blanc grapes spend around 11 months on the lees, ‘with Sémillon blended in after the first racking’.

While the percentage of new oak was initially modest, ‘it has gradually increased over time’, he explains, adding that ‘native yeast fermentation has been a hallmark of our style, and we conduct native in barrels and, more recently, in concrete eggs’.

Long, slow, and cold ferments preserve freshness as plainly evident in my first sip of the 2006. After 18 years in the bottle, it was startlingly fresh, layered with enticing savoury chamomile tea, straw, and confected caramel, toffee, candied apricot, and orange zest.

Silken, braced by acid tension and focused. The colour alone, lemony-bright with gold hues, belied its age.

Susan Krausz thinks the extended sunshine hours on Howell Mountain contribute to the ripeness they see in their Sauvignon Blanc, while the volcanic ash soils aid in preserving lower pH levels – and hence, freshness.

At Lail Vineyards, a partnership between fourth-generation vintner Robin Daniel Lail and her daughters, Erin and Shannon, winemakers Maayan Koschitzky and Philippe Melka craft the wines.

I listed their 2019 Lail Vineyards Georgia white – a 100% Sauvignon Blanc from Lail’s Totem Vineyard in Yountville – as one of my top fine wines of 2022.

The first vintage produced of Georgia – named after Robin Lail’s first grandchild – was the 2002. I was able to sample 10 vintages between 2005 and 2022 with Robin Lail and Maayan Koschitzky.

The lemony Sancerre-like style is remarkably consistent because, as Koschitzky points out, ‘the winemaking has been consistent since the beginning, with fermentation and ageing in 100% new French oak for about 20 months, on the lees, with bâtonnage.’

The resulting wines are silken with bright citrus, stone fruits, and gravelly mineral thread. The finished pH is typically very low, between 3.0 and 3.2.

I also visited with Cherie and Philippe Melka to taste every vintage of their La Mekerra Vineyard Proprietary White, which comes from the 10.1 hectare La Mekerra Vineyard in Sonoma’s Knights Valley – a stone’s throw from Peter Michael’s L’Après-Midi source.

The Melkas acquired La Mekerra in 2008. Just 0.8ha of Sauvignon Blanc vines growing between 700 and 760 metres are rooted in the site’s clay soils. The first vintage bottled and released was the 2011.

French touch

‘We barrel ferment and barrel age in all new French oak,’ explains Philippe, who speaks with absolute sincerity when he says: ‘l love Haut Brion Blanc and I wanted to see if I could make it here in California.’

Melka waxes poetic over the structure of whites, such as Robert Mondavi’s I-Block white and Fumé Blanc, which are made from older vines. Since Melka can’t will vines into old age, he looked for a hillside site to ‘obtain the complexity we wanted early on’.

La Mekerra is half native fermented, half inoculated with bâtonnage over 18-22 months, bottled, and aged 18 months before release. In recent years, Melka says he has reduced the new oak to 45-60% depending on the vintage, begun doing multiple vineyard picks for varying degrees of ripeness for blending, and traded out more typically 225-litre barrels for 265-litre cigar barrels, while reducing bâtonnage.

The most recent vintages (2019-2021) show a heady mix of subtle tropical fruit, flinty aromatics, honeysuckle, and lemon zest—or even flamed orange peel. On the palate, they are expansive, driven by racy acidity, wet slate minerality, and balanced tension.

At the same time, the older bottlings boast dried herbs, riper stone fruits, chamomile notes, and layered spices with grippy tension.

Finally, the wine that inspired this article is Steve Matthiasson’s Napa Valley White Wine – a wine I’ve enjoyed for over a decade and is in a blended class all its own.

The first vintage of this wine, the 2005, was inspired by Matthiasson’s trip to Friuli, where he says, ‘I observed the blending of different white grape varieties to craft a harmonious white wine.’

As such, Sauvignon Blanc is not the star grape, but is typically the majority of the blend, including Ribolla Gialla, Sémillon, and Tocai Friulano. The grapes are native yeast fermented in barrel (roughly 20% new) and aged nine months before bottling. There is no bâtonnage and no malolactic fermentation.

Matthiasson’s Ribolla Gialla and Tocai Friulano are sourced from the Bengier vineyard (formerly Vare Vineyard) in the Oak Knoll District in the cool, foggy climes of Dry Creek Canyon, where vines are rooted in rocky, fluvial soils (George Vare obtained budwood from Josko Gravner in 2001 for the site).

The Sauvignon Blanc and the Sémillon are from Ryan’s Vineyard, planted on a stretch of alluvial gravel off Big Ranch Road in the valley’s centre in south Napa.

‘The Sauvignon Blanc forms the acid-driven core,’ explains Matthiasson, who has farmed these sites for more than two decades, ‘while Ribolla Gialla contributes the mineral finish, and Sémillon adds flesh and honeyed beeswax notes. The Tocai Friulano acts as the binding glue.’

Steve emphasises that low alcohol —the wines are typically 13% or even under. ‘We want to drink wine with moderate alcohol to enjoy it with our meal,’ he says.

Steve’s white wine is always remarkably fresh, balanced, and vibrant, defying its age. It showcases a typically solid acid-driven core around which notes of lemon and lime citrus, grapefruit, apricot, white peach, and pressed white flowers, framed by tension-defying acidity, are key to their cellar potential.

The case to call it ‘California style’

It’s hard to imagine a future in which California’s current and emerging producers don’t continue to draw inspiration from the benchmark style of Bordeaux Blanc, often describing their wines as such.

And while the comparison may seem obvious – and indeed offers a familiar point of reference for collectors – the truth is far more compelling.

Across California, a growing number of dynamic, delicious white wines rival the excellence of those few, famous bottlings made within a handful of kilometres of the Garonne River.

They’re crafted from exceptional vineyard sites from across the state, separated by hundreds of miles, with varying winemaking approaches to barrel fermentation and ageing – and many are built to cellar for decades.

Below are a handful of selections I’ve come across in the last couple of years, of ageworthy California whites from Santa Barbara to Mendocino, with blends primarily focused on Sauvignon Blanc.

Ageworthy Californian Sauvignon Blanc:

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