Tonight, I'm enjoying a magnum bottle of Frontera's (Concha Y Toro) 2010 Sauvignon Blanc. I've always loved CyT's "bargain" line, Frontera, and it's been my mainstay for the better part of 10 years, particularly during a time of economic drought. Their Cab, Cab/Merlot, and Carmenere are all the absolute best one can do for a $4 bottle of wine, which, when you pick up a magnum, this is. Frontera wines average out at $5, or $8 for a 1.5L, and one would be a fool to round up a cache of Two Buck Chuck for a party, or dinner, or private drinking and dining session (that's my style, you see) when the Frontera can be had for just a dollar more per 750 ml.

Tonight's Sauvignon Blanc is a Frontera first for me: being a red obsessive, I am wretchedly ignorant when it comes to the crisp, citrus-y charms of white varietals. I drink white with seafood and pork and sometimes chicken because I have manners (all rumors of whorefucking and drug-taking notwithstanding) and I have gotten drunk on many whites and pondered them, but never with genuine dedication. But in the eve of my 34th year, I have become seduced, at long last, by white wine, and I look for residual sugar, and pale fruit, and mineral notes, and I consider the "fluttering" notes as well, when before I was only interested in that bottle, which when uncorked - as with so many of my beloved Monastrell wines-, break down the goddamn door and kick your dog in the guts while berating your choice of furniture.

Frontera's Sauv Blanc is a very lemony beast, buttery lemon on the nose and sour vanilla-lemonade-green pepper-candy apple on the palate as well, with a very okay (but somewhat short) finish. It's a god damn delight, friends, and my aim was to begin my red wine blog with a white just to challenge myself and the notion of red as the more dramatic and "spiritual" and seductive of the two broadest categories...but I do believe that I'll be buying more white than red over the coming weeks, and no, I'm not changing the name of the blog...and as I said, my aim was to christen this forum with a white wine, and so I have done...although there's barely anything really in-depth stated about Frontera's 2010 Sauv Blanc....but I've just had two magnums of the stuff (that's four bottles worth, Captain Kirk) and I'm pie-faced. My first wine review is complete, and I am an alcoholic wretch who doesn't know wine as well as he claims to but will write about it anyway. I am returning tomorrow with Anakena's 2010 Carmenere.