A night at the Opera

Last weekend , my wife and I went to the theatre to see the Kentish Opera perform Carmen. It was a very good performance. Which was more than can be said about the Chilean "Sauvignon Blanc" white wine which was on sale. The wine had and overpowering smell of cat's pee, yes cat's pee, which is derived from the metoxypyrazines compounds in the wine. These compounds give wines, like Sancerre, from the Loire valley, their characteristic herbaceous aroma. Some of the metoxypyrazines also lend a hint of cat's pee as they are actually a byproduct of cat's metabolism. The aroma should not , however, be overpowering and any Sancerre style wine should also have other fruit characters to add complexity to the wine. The Chilean wine is trying to mimic the Sancerre style, but it fails miserably to leave a one dimensional wine which simple tastes of chemicals . It was almost undrinkable. The name was easily forgotten. There was only one redeeming feature; the the length of time that the aftertaste left was very short. This was obviously a bulk wine trading off the name of "Sauvignon Blanc".