white
Blanchard Perez Sauvignon Blanc
Blanchard Perez
Vintage & Drinking Window
🍷
Drinking Window
Drink Now through 2028. Early Phase: Electrifying tension and brine. Peak Phase: Lemon softens to lychee.
Perfect time to enjoy!
Vintage Notes
THE VINTAGE STORY - 2024: The 2024 growing season in Southwest France was a dramatic, nail-biting narrative that ultimately yielded one of the most thrilling vintages of the decade for Blanchard Perez. The year began with a cool, relentlessly wet spring. For an estate strictly committed to organic viticulture, this constant moisture posed severe downy mildew threats, requiring vigilant, around-the-clock canopy management to maintain airflow. Just as the viticultural team braced for a challenging, diluted harvest, a miraculous climatic shift occurred in mid-July. A prolonged Indian Summer took hold over Gascony. The defining feature of August 2024 was extreme diurnal shifts: intense, dry, sunny days followed by shockingly cold nights. This phenomenon slowed sugar accumulation while allowing complex aromatic precursors to develop fully. As a result, the 2024 vintage is defined by its beautiful saline tension and chalky grip. It avoids the heavy, over-ripe tropicality sometimes found in warmer years, leaning heavily into brine, lemongrass, and sliced green apples. Ranked among the absolute elite vintages for this producer, 2024 is highly collectible for its pristine, crystalline nature. While undeniably ready to drink in its youth, this vintage has the profound concentration and structural acidity to age gracefully for another 3-5 years, evolving from raw ocean spray to richer, honeyed orchard fruits.
AI Confidence: 95%
$18.00 - $25.00 USD
92/100Outstanding
Sophie's Take
Listen to Sophie talk about Blanchard Perez Sauvignon Blanc
0:000:00
Grape Varieties
100% Sauvignon Blanc
Style: THE LEGEND & MARKET PROFILE: The story of Blanchard Perez is a transcontinental epic of bloodlines and borders. The narrative begins in the 1930s when Andres Blanchard Perez's great-grandfather, Nicolas Perez Ugarte, fled Spain for Argentina, taking a grueling post at Bodega Arizu. The family's legacy deepened in the 1960s when grandfather Florentino Perez Perez planted their first estate vines in Mendoza. While Andres achieved massive international fame in South America by founding Bodega Cuarto Dominio and Argentina's only white-wine-exclusive winery, Blanchard & Lurton, his soul was restless. He longed to honor his European heritage. Thus, the Blanchard Perez label was born: a passion project bridging Spain (via an Organic Cava) and France. The 2024 Gascony Sauvignon Blanc is his love letter to the Old World. Its arrival in the United States sent shockwaves through the market when Wente Family Estates-a legendary California heritage brand-chose to import this radical Argentine-helmed French wine to disrupt their own portfolio. This wine is famously elusive; it frequently flashes Limit Reached on major retail sites because it completely shatters the value hierarchy. PEER COMPARISON: In a blind tasting, this wine dramatically over-delivers against its peers. Compared to standard Domaine du Tariquet, Blanchard relies far less on overt tropicality, pushing a stricter, savory and saline profile. Against Marlborough heavyweights like Brancott, it eschews aggressive jalapeno for sophisticated white flowers and lemongrass. Most astonishingly, it drinks like a premium Sancerre from Saget la Perriere-boasting profound chalky and tense minerality-but at less than half the price. MARKET INTELLIGENCE: Retailing aggressively around $19.97, this is not a wine to buy a single bottle of-it is a case-buy collectible that sommeliers and insiders hoard. Its price trajectory is sharply upward as the US market catches on to Andres Blanchard's transatlantic genius.
Alcohol: 12.5%
Tasting Notes
Crisp acidity with flavors of grapefruit, green apple, and grassy minerality
Finish: A persistent, bone-dry mineral tail that grips the palate with lip-smacking saline energy.
Nose (Aerated): Unfurls to reveal pure lemongrass, vivid sliced green apples, and delicate white flowers.
Pale straw yellow color with bright, clear appearance
Palate (Mid): Beautiful concentration and balance, shifting from Mediterranean herbs to pineapple.
Palate (Texture): Viscous yet tense, riding a tightrope of bracing acidity and mouth-coating lychee.
Professional Ratings
James Suckling: 92/100
Serving Recommendations
Temperature: 8-10 C (46-50 F) to preserve the delicate tension and floral aromatics without masking the fruit.
Decanting: Wait 15-20 minutes in the glass. Short aeration blows off subtle struck-match reduction to reveal white flowers and lemongrass.
Food Pairing:
Goat cheese and light cheeses
Fresh seafood and shellfish
Grilled vegetables
Salads with vinaigrette
CLASSIC: Warm Crottin de Chavignol goat cheese over organic arugula. The wine's electric acid pierces the rich cheese.
CLASSIC: Pan-seared sea scallops in brown butter over a Meyer lemon and English pea risotto to complement the lychee.
SURPRISING: Charcoal-grilled asparagus with tarragon hollandaise. The nervy Mediterranean herbs bridge flawlessly.
Asian cuisine with lighter preparations
Winemaking & Vineyard
Production Notes:
TERROIR & CRAFT - WINEMAKING: Andres Blanchard Perez approaches this Gascony Sauvignon Blanc with the same obsessive precision he uses for his acclaimed South American whites. 100% organically grown grapes are harvested strictly during the coldest, pre-dawn hours. This is critical in the Southwest of France to prevent the oxidation of delicate volatile thiols, ensuring the preservation of the wine's signature lemongrass and passionfruit precursors. Upon reaching the winery, the clusters undergo a brief, low-temperature cold soak (maceration) to gently extract aromatic compounds from the skins without picking up bitter phenolics. Fermentation occurs slowly over three weeks in temperature-controlled stainless steel vats. To maintain the wine's trademark chalky and tense profile, absolutely no malolactic fermentation is permitted. The electric acidity remains fully intact. The wine is then aged on its fine lees (sur lie) for several months. This critical step builds the impressive concentration and overall balance noted by critics, giving the mid-palate a deceptive weight that buffers the high acidity. It is lightly filtered and bottled un-oaked, capturing a naked, pure expression of the vintage. Production volume is kept remarkably small for a regional wine, driving extreme scarcity on retail platforms where allocations routinely hit Limit Reached status.
Vineyard Details:
TERROIR & CRAFT - VINEYARD: The Blanchard Perez Sauvignon Blanc is sourced from meticulously selected, organically farmed parcels in the Cotes-de-Gascogne of Southwest France. While the region is vast, this specific project isolates high-elevation micro-blocks defined by their strict clay and limestone terroir. The topsoil consists of shallow, heat-retaining clay (Plateau d'Argile) that allows the Sauvignon Blanc to reach optimal physiological ripeness, developing notes of lychee and pineapple. However, just centimeters below lies fractured calcareous limestone bedrock. The old vines, forced to plunge deep into this fossil-rich marine sedimentary rock, extract profound mineral elements. This geological tension translates directly into the glass, imbuing the wine with its signature savory and saline character and unmistakable crushed oyster shell notes. By maintaining strict organic farming protocols, the viticultural team ensures the soil's natural microbial life thrives, allowing the vine to fully express the maritime-influenced Gascony microclimate. The proximity to the Atlantic Ocean provides cooling maritime breezes that dramatically lower nighttime temperatures, preserving the grape's natural acidity and nervy Mediterranean herbs aromatics even in the hottest vintages.
Awards & Accolades
• 92 Points - James Suckling (2024 Vintage)
• Houston Rodeo Uncorked Int. Wine Comp - Recognized Producer
• Wente Portfolio Innovation Import Selection
Learn More
Explore Sophie's guides about this wine:
Fun Facts (0)
No Fun Facts Yet
Be the first to share something interesting about this wine!
Reviews (0)
No Reviews Yet
Be the first to review this wine!