Tag Archives: La Petite Perriere

Wine of the week: La Petite Perriere Sauvignon Blanc 2021

La Petite Perriere Sauvignon Blanc bottle
La Petite Perriere Sauvignon Blanc 2021/$10-$17

Want to fix the wine glut? Make more wines like this

The most important thing to know about this French white wine? This line from my tasting notes: “This is the kind of wine we need more of to bring people to wine drinking.”

The 2021 is is the fifth vintage of this wine to be a wine of the week, which speaks to its consistency and quality. It’s also famous – or infamous, as the case may be – as the wine my mom tried to buy at a Kroger subsidiary in Chicago because I was told it was for sale there. Which, of course, it wasn’t.

So, the details for the 2021 ($10, purchased, 12.5%): It’s a terrific weeknight sauvignon blanc – well-made, simple but not stupid, and neither too fruity nor too tart. That means a bit of mineral and stone, some citrus (more lime than anything else), and fresh and clean. In other words, what the wine business is trying to achieve by buying hard seltzer companies instead of trusting to wine.

If it’s not quite as impressive as some of the others (the 2016, the one my mom looked for, was exceptional), it’s still well worth drinking and a Hall of Fame quality wine. Chill this and drink it on its own, or pair it with something like roast pork loin or takeout chicken.

Imported by Taub Family Selections

Wine of the week: Saget La Petite Perriere Sauvignon Blanc 2019

saget la petite perriere
La Petite Perriere sauvignon blanc/$9-$13

The La Petite Perriere sauvignon blanc remains a terrific French white wine, despite its various travails and controversies

Never has a wine I’ve written about caused as much trouble as the La Petite Perriere sauvignon blanc. My mom was reprimanded by a Chicago supermarket employee when she asked if the store carried the wine. It was part of an availability controversy on the blog. And now, someone on CellarTracker, the blog’s unofficial wine inventory app, has chastised it for being acidic and not having much fruit.

Poor, poor La Peitite Perriere 2019 ($12, purchased, 12.5%).

Fortunately, La Petite Perriere, the Wine Curmudgeon is your friend. Those who think that the wine is too tart and doesn’t have enough fruit? It’s French. It’s not supposed to taste like it comes from New Zealand or California (where, at this price, it might have been tarted up with white grape juice to smooooth out the acidity and boost the fruit).

What it is supposed to taste like is what it tastes like: Some floral and mineral sort of aromas; maybe some lemon fruit; and that French-style clean and crisp finish. I’m not sure the 2019 is as interesting as the 2018, but it remains a terrific wine for this price.

So drink it, appreciate the differences between wine regions, and know not all wine is supposed to taste the same.

Imported by Taub Family Selections

Wine of the week: La Petite Perriere Sauvignon Blanc 2018

La Petite Perriere sauvignon blancThe La Petite Perriere sauvignon blanc is stunning $11 wine – suck on that, three-tier system

Two years ago, I wrote a glowing review of this wine. Best yet, I wrote in the post, the La Petite Perriere sauvignon blanc was supposed to be widely available.

Hah.

It wasn’t, of course, because of the three-tier system. That I actually believed the people who told me it was available in many other parts of the country shows that even I can be duped. And I know better.

This time, the La Petite Perriere Sauvignon Blanc ($11, purchased, 12.5%) should be available – even in these trying times. I bought the 2018 last week from wine.com. Suck on that, three-tier system.

This vintage of the La Petite Perriere is highly recommended, which means Hall of Fame quality and a spot on the shortlist for the 2021 Cheap Wine of the Year. And why not? It tastes like top-notch sauvignon blanc from France’s Loire, home to some of the best sauvignon blanc in the world. But it costs about as much as a plonky bottle of supermarket white wine.

Suck on that, three-tier system.

Which isn’t surprising, since the Saget family, whose company makes the wine, has been in business since Napoleon was emperor of France, more than two centuries.

Look for more lemon than grapefruit fruit, a pleasant change from the New Zealand style that predominates, even in non-New Zealand wines. There’s also a little something tropical in the middle (barely ripe melon?), and lovely Loire-style minerality on the finish. I drank this with socca on Saturday night; for the time it took to finish the bottle, I wasn’t stuck in my house during the pandemic, but enjoying wine and food the way they should be enjoyed.