by Joel B. Payne
Johann Seitinger, chief agricultural of the Austrian province of Styria, and Siegfried Nagl, the mayor Graz, opened the World Sauvignon Congress last night in the city’s old fortifications on the hilltop above the river Mar. This well-preserved Austrian burg of 300,000, which was named a World Cultural Heritage Site by the United Nations in 1999, hosts the first Sauvignon symposium beginning this morning. 250 participants from all over the world have registered to attend.
Moderated by Josef Schuller MW, who has been chosen as the next chairman of the Institute of Masters of Wine, 25 well-known experts from around the world will share their expertise and discuss their latest findings on various facets of the Sauvignon Blanc grape: the influence of soil and climate (Mike Trought from the Marlborough Wine Research Centre, New Zealand); viniculture methods for improving quality (Richard Smart, Australia); clone research (Laurent Audeguin, France); aroma development (Denis Dubourdieu, Bordeaux University); volatile thiols (Chris Winefield, Lincoln University, New Zealand). Consumer trends in different parts of the world will be highlighted by leading wine critics from the US, the UK Germany and Russia, including Tim Atkin, Bartholomew Broadbent, Eleonora Scholes and Gerhard Retter.
"Sauvignon Blanc is one of the most fascinating grape varieties in the world and reflects the climatic and geographical conditions and the personal decisions of the winemaker to a great extent”, explains Johann Seitinger, the initiator of the congress. "However, this grape variety is often underestimated in the international context and seldom given the accolades accorded to Chardonnays and red wines. It is the aim of our initiative to develop strategies to improve the knowledge and raise the profile of Sauvignon Blanc”.
In total, there are some 80,000 hectares of Sauvignon Blanc in the world, making it the second most widely planted noble cultivar after Chardonnay. France, with vineyards on the Loire, in Bordeaux and the Languedoc, leads the charts with 24,200 hectares, but the New World has made impressive strides over the past ten years. New Zealand now has 8,900, Chile 8,700, South Africa 8,400 and California 5,800 hectares of vineyard.
Graz, which is known to many only as the birthplace of the Californian governor Arnold Schwarzenegger or the home of the ‘Styriarte’ under the direction of Nikolaus Harnoncourt who was raised here, is the capital of Styria, where the majority of the 687 hectares of Sauvignon Blanc in Austria are planted. "That may not seem like much,” said Michael Thurner, who organized the Congress, "but they are some of Austria’s finest wines and can compete on the world stage.”
At an international level, this is the first event ever devoted exclusively to Sauvignon Blanc, but its organizers have indicated that it will be followed by similar symposiums over the coming years on the Loire in France, Marlborough in New Zealand and Stellenbosch in South Africa.
