Wanna Go For a Ride? Hop in the White Truck 2007

Admittedly, I'm a wine thrill seeker. When it comes to wine shopping, I'm like one of those people that needs to skydive or bungee off a cliff to feel alive (I'm so wannabe Bella from Twilight!). I love to try something I've never tried before and I usually shun the super popular wines. But after our awesome Halloween party (partly awesome because I got to listen to the Monster Mash 7 times) we had a bottle of White Truck 2007 left over so I decided to give it a whirl.

You know, it wasn't half bad.

Although California is not known for its blends, leaving that to the Europeans and Aussies, Cline, the producer, does a nice job on this. For a cheap wine, I'd give this a whirl. Why? Let's break it down...

The Wine: White Truck
Where It's From: California (the wine notes say it's from Lake County and the Central Coast)
The Grapes: Sauvignon Blanc (56%), Chardonnay (22%), Pinot Grigio (11%), Viognier (11%)
Vintage: 2007
Price: $8.99


Color: Rub a dandelion on the inside of your arm. Look at the color. There you go.

Smell: There is a whole lotta scent on this truck (sadly, there's no gasoline smell in it...guess that would be too ironic for them!). Initially, the wine smelled really grassy, figgy, and grapefruity. It was also kind of like green vegetables. I waited a few minutes and put my mitt around the glass to warm it up a tad (cold wine is less aromatic) and shaazam! new scents appeared before my very eyes (lesson: don't over-refrigerate your wines please). Now it was more like white flowers, vanilla, and thick apple butter (so southern of me, I know). Ah, the scents of a child borne of Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay. I was able to impress M.C. Ice greatly with this blind guess -- we had not looked at the wine notes yet.

Taste: This was a really easy wine to drink. The overwhelming sensation was apple paste (I think wine snobs call this flavor quince, which is a Mediterranean/Persian tree fruit like an apple or pear but that needs to be cooked. It's heavier, less mealy, and awesome as a jelly). It was also a little like cilantro and green bean -- but when you get them from a farmer's stand and they're fresh. The wine tasted more like flowers than it smelled -- honeysuckle and other white little blossoms. That was the normal stuff.

There were some weird things with this wine too. Like the distinct sour note that M.C. Ice and I described to each other as sour cream or Parmesan cheese rind. Strange, but happily it was funk-a-licious, not funk-ass. The other weird thing about this wine was that it was creamy and thick and round. This usually means the wine went through a second fermentation, called malo-lactic fermentation, but the wine notes say it didn't get that treatment so I assume that it's either the aromatic, low-acid Viognier giving some bounce or the fact that this wine is pretty good on the alcohol (13.5%) which our mouths/brains translate as creaminess. Given the burn as it blazed its way down into my belly, and the small ring of fire it created once there, I'd say it's probably the latter.

Food: Be careful what you pair with this wine. I think for its sour cream-like notes, I would recommend it best with Mexican food or something like Indian or Thai where there is spice and cream mixed together. I think grilled chicken or fish could do better and be enhanced by something with less going on. I would not pair this with Chinese or sushi or anything soy-based, because even though I haven't tried it personally, I think the savory/salty thing in soy would be nasty with the sour cream/green bean funk of this wine. Maybe I'm wrong -- happy to amend this post if so.

Drink or Down the Sink?: Drink. This is a good wine for 9 bucks. For those tiptoeing into the world of Sauvignon Blanc, this is a good place to start because it's a mild version of what the grape should could be. It is a pleasant wine, it's kind of interesting and it's a good buy for the money. Would I drink it at someone's house? Yes. Will it be a regular in my rotation? Probably not -- I like something a little more pure. Should it be in yours? Try it and see...and remember that while I'm saying it's not on my shortlist, I've got a proverbial plane to jump out of for my next wine thrill...