I recently tried new signle estate wines from TeAwa from New Zealand, which just joined Cognanc One's National portfolio.

New Zealand is usually associated with Sauvignon Blanc, especially in the minds of American consumers, so it was refreshing to try the different styles and varietals.

Te Awa ws established in 1992 by the Lawson family, acquired in 2002 by the NYC based financier Julian Robertson, and is currently managed by Chief Winemaker Ant MacKenzie.

I liked the 2009 Chardonnay, which is from Hawkes Bay. Different clones are used, and the soil types are mostly free draining gravel. Once pressed, the juice is settled before being run to barrels. Some of the barrels went through spontaneous wild yeast fermentation, and the balance were inoculated with selected yeast strains. Most barrels went through malo-lactic fermentation in spring, with the youngwine staying in contact with its yeast lee for twelve months prior to bottling. All barrels were tight grain French oak, of which 40% were new.

Resulting flavors are elegant and sophisticated, with vanilla and toast from the barrels.

The 2009 Syrah (99% Syrah, 1% Viognier) is selected from old vines, hand picked, de-stemmed, and tipped directly into a five tonne open top vat. After a five day cold soak it was allowed to warm up and ferment sponataneously with native vineyard yeast. The young wine was drawn off the skins and aged for 15 months in 300L French Oak Barrels.

The nose offers black berry fruits, cinnamon, and spice. The palate is medium boddied, the tannins supple, and the flavor quite rich and delicious.

The 2009 Sauvignon Blanc is crafted for the 'table not the bar" with orange peel flavors overlying a pure tropical melon base. In the vineyard, successive parcels of fruit were brought into the winery based on flavor and tannin ripeness, and the juices split into three categories: aromatic components, mineral components, and textural components.

The aromatic components were tank feremented with a special yeast selection that unlocks and highlights fruit characters. The mineral component was fermented warmer and left on lee after fermentation to accent the mineral / flint character. The final components were fermented in barrel andtank with a componation of yeast strains to promote layers of flavor and texture. The components were assembled and bottled following six months of maturation.  Fifteen percent of the wine saw the inside of a barrel."

Quite delicious!

"I don't get it," said a friend, holding two green-colored bottles of wine in either hand. We are in a wine store on a sunny day in New York City, and the store is buzzing with customers, but not a clerk to be found. "Both these wines are Sauvignon Blanc from Brancott. The producer — Brancott — is the same. The country — New Zealand — is the same. The year is the same, but the price is different. What's up?" I look at the bottles and see that one is "Reserve" (which often means different things, in different countries) and that the other one has an enormous, very fancy looking "B" in gold lettering directly etched into the bottle. Clearly they are different wines, but why?

The label of the reserve ($17) reads like a travel brochure, to visit New Zealand's Marlborough region with its description of bright sunshine, more than anything else. (Okay, the label did mention the alluvial soils, presumably to satisfy the curiosity of people who look for such information). The label on the Brancott Letter "B" series is more helpful, explaining that the wine is handcrafted (key word) from grapes grown on key Montana estates (another very key word) in Marlborough. Basically, this translates to a different quality of grapes (the Montana grapes are perhaps grown in areas where they have more access to the sun or better soil), and the wine is hand crafted with more personal attention. So, an extra six dollars ($23) buys you all the extra care.

Is the six-dollar difference worth it? Could anyone tell? To find out, I bought both (we needed two bottles for our dinner party) and rushed home to try them. Now before I continue, I'm sure you read about the study in which people rated a wine they were told was more expensive higher than they rated a more inexpensive bottle. Common sense might tell you that researchers have any number of psychological tricks (er, I meant "techniques") up their sleeve for them to get the data they want, depending on who might be financing the study. For that reason, I asked my friend to serve me the wines blind (meaning I could not see which one was poured) so I could make independent tasting notes.

Both Brancott wines had the crisp acidity characteristic of the Marlborough Region, with lots of grapefruit on the nose and palate. Yet I did prefer the Letter "B" series when it was revealed, even though someone very new to wine would find it hard to tell them apart. The difference — for me — is easily described as the difference between a picture taken of an attractive person using dated photographic technology, and a very crisp picture of the same person taken with the newest technology. The latter picture snaps out at you with its sharp-edges, while the other seems softer, rounder, and possibly less defined.

Guests at the dinner party struggled to find the difference, however, so you should decide if paying for the Letter "B" series is worth it. The "B" in particular lends itself well to aperitifs with its crisp flavors, and when served with a meal, is a great pairing with scallops and all manner of shellfish.

If you are like most people, it's hard to wrap your head around the concept of "mineral" in a wine. Most of us do not go around eating stones, or even smelling them. Yet tasting note after tasting note in all the glossy wine magazines refer to aromas of "wet stone" or "chalk" or "minerals." What does it all mean, and where does it come from?

Right now I am sipping Stoneleigh Sauvignon Blanc, 2007, from Marlborough New Zealand. You've probably had a NZ wine before and perhaps can even identify that grapefruit-intense, bright style in a line-up of Sauvignon Blanc wines from around the world. Yet in reading about this winery, it appears Stoneleigh was so named because of the sunstones in the vineyards.

Typically, when stones are present, a few things happen. First, it forces the roots of the vines to dig deep — actually very deep — into the soil to tap into water and nutrients. This possibly contributes to the mineral-rich aroma and palate since the roots are so far below the surface. Another benefit of a soil filled with sunstones (apart from the groovy, New Age image with its associations with ecology) is that the stones capture the sun's heat during the day, and that heat keeps the vines warm at night.

According to winemaker Jamie Marfell, the unique flavors in this wine (think fat, lush passion fruit with a squirt of refreshing pink grapefruit) are a result of both the stony free draining alluvial (riverbed) soils and slightly warmer climate of the Rapaura area. Indeed, when compared to its cooler climate NZ cousins, the wine seems softer, plumper, and with the kind of generous body that pairs well with a wide variety of food, especially first courses or luncheon dishes such as salads, seafood such as mussels, dressed crab, sautéed scallops, and brunch dishes such as quiche.

As delicious as this wine is, one of the most rewarding aspects of enjoying wine is understanding the "why" behind the flavors. The more you study wine and the effect that altitude, soil, and weather have on the wine, the more wine becomes less of a beverage and more of an enjoyable mystery. This is especially true when blind tasting wines, as the taster must ask "How did (the aroma or flavor) get there?" before beginning to deduce an answer.

The vineyards of Stoneleigh actually sit on an ancient riverbed, which in wine speak translates to the phrase "alluvial soil." It takes time, tasting, and serious reading to understand why "poor" and "stony" soil is a good thing for wine. Most of us assume that any crop, grapes included, do well in fertile soil; but grapes like a challenge, and vines make it their mandate to survive - whatever it takes.

As is often the case with humans, the more obstacles you give grapes, the harder they try to achieve their goal. In grape-speak, this means the determined vines dig down deep into the soil in order to snatch up the nutrients and water available to them.

Curious to learn more? Grab a bottle and share it with friends to see if you can detect the sunstones and mineral nuances.

"Austria!" a friend exclaims, nearly chocking on his sip of Sauvignon Blanc. "They make Sauvignon Blanc in Austria?!"

People have been making wine from the Sauvignon Blanc grape in regions around the world for hundreds of years. For most of us Americans, Sauvignon Blanc is a wine to break out during summertime picnics (or order with shellfish at our favorite restaurant), and most Americans make the assumption that the "best" Sauvignon Blanc comes from a region of New Zealand called Marlborough. For whatever reason, many people mistakenly assume New Zealand is a warm, beach-oriented climate.

New Zealand is actually quite cool, and you will be hard-pressed to find any wineries on the west side of the island because of the cold wind. Yet it is that cool weather that gives their Sauvignon Blanc such high acid and flavor.

Perhaps this is also why Sauvignon Blanc is also made very well in Austria, a climate everyone knows is quite cool. Though the wine geeks are touting Styria (Austria) as the country's best region for growing Sauvignon Blanc, the wine I have just poured from the region of Traisental — Ludwig Neumayer "Giess" Sauvignon Blanc 2006 — is so elegant, delicate, and rich with a myriad of layered flavors, I just have to talk about it.

In some ways, Neumayer's Sauvignon Blanc shares characteristics of the best Rieslings. On the nose, you detect intense minerality, along with an elegant lacing of delicate ripe fruit and succulent white flowers. Minerality transfers also to the palate, lending low notes to the ethereal high notes of flowers and ripe fruit. The length is long and seemingly never-ending with a finish of more minerals, flowers, and fruit - much like the moment of silence following a Mozart concerto.

If you want to read up on Neumayer, or even the region of Traisental, you will not find much on the Internet. However, this valley is an ancient winegrowing region. As early as 1673 the wines of Inzerdorf (an area in Traisental) were rated higher than those of the Wachau, Austria's most famed wine growing region. Traisental is noted for its complex geology.

In the east (towards the Danube) deep layers of clay soil predominate. In the West (towards Wachau) you can find classic prehistoric stony soils, known as granulite. In the area around Inzerdorf there is a narrow transitional zone between these two formations where the soil consists of a poor, chalky conglomerate (to winemakers, the poorer the soil, the better the resulting wine). Chalky soils typically yield wines with high acid and lightly coloured crystal clear wines with lively levels of acidity. Their delicate balance makes them impressive.

In the words of winemaker Ludwig Neumayer, "Do not look for grassiness in my wine!" Or cat's pee, for that matter. He does not want anyone to confuse his wine with the profile of a typical New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. With this wine as my initiation to the complexity of Austrian Sauvignon Blanc, look forward to profiles of other producers soon. Price $25.99

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Also, Sauv Blanc is the favorite wine of 22-34 year olds in America ...

Here's more:

"Blazon presented the results of a survey of 32 top US restaurateurs on attitudes to New Zealand wines, which found that up to 60 per cent would pick New Zealand sauvignon blancs if they had to serve just one line of that varietal.

However, he said few would know the difference between a Martin-borough and a Marlborough sau-vignon blanc.

New Zealand wine exports to the US have grown rapidly in the past decade, from just $4 million in 1997 to $138 million last year. In the 10 months to April this year, the US accounted for $145 million out of total New Zealand wine exports of $600 million.

Statistics suggested the US would lead the world in wine consumption by next year, Blazon said.

"We're still a young wine-drinking nation that's taking wine consumption more seriously than ever before, fuelled by our younger folks."

Sauvignon blanc had become the varietal of choice for American 22- to-34-year-olds, and beer consumption was down, he said."