I bought a bottle of Fouassier Grand Groux Sancerre from Somerfield that was unusually golden in colour and although it had plenty of Sancerre flavour it also had a gewuztraminer like soapy aftertaste which totally ruined the wine.

I also recently bought some Fournier Pere et Fils Sancerre from Thresher and two bottles were perfect pale, crisp Sancerre with the usual gorgeous gooseberry and mineral flavours, but two were like the Grand Groux, deeper yellow, rich, full bodied with this slightly unpleasant soapy finish.

Both the good and the bad came from the same 2004 vintage.

Les Ruettes Sancerre from M&S which is usually very good can also throw up the odd full bodied soapy one

It's natural for an Alsace gewuztraminer to have a very slight soapy finish and is not unpleasant, unless you buy a cheap Chilean gewurz where the soap dominates the lychee.

But i've never come across it with any other wine except Sancerre.

Has anyone else experianced this problem and does anyone know why it only affects some bottles and not others.

Now, what exactly do you mean by "soapy". You sound like you know quite a bit about wine and so I don't want to imply that the wine might be oxidised, which is a simple fault and the most likely for dark coloured wine. It generally makes wine taste dead with little life and tang. Sancerre should never be dark coloured unless it's oaked (rare) or 5+ years old. Does it smell or taste like apple juice. I mean Value brown clear apple juice, not fresh, pale green cloudy juice. If it does, then it's oxidised. It doesn't matter anyway, if it's dark in colour it should go back. I expect you've drunk it by now!

_________________
mel

Hi,

Thanks for the reply !

Sorry about soapy, I realised afterwards that it probably wasn't the most helpful of descriptions.

I don't think that the wines in question were oxidised.

The problem has been the opposite of ' dead with little life or tang ' more a case of the wines having an aggressiveness and intensity of flavour that doesn't suit Sancerre and the finish always has a more than subtle hint of detergent or what I call ' soapyness '.

What was odd was that these aggressively flavoured wines apart from the Les Grand Groux were from the same producer and vintage as some perfectly good Sancerre.

I even took the four bottles of Fournier Sancerre off the same shelf on the same day and two were fantastic !

The smell in the bottle ( of the bad ones ) was close to how Sancerre should be..green and nutty with no real hint of how intense the wine was going to taste but in the glass you could just detect a slight difference.

But it was only an exaggerated Sancerre smell, nothing off putting

We should have taken them back after tasting them , but sadly, we drank them.

Each time it was only one bottle between 4 so by the time we'd all agreed that the wine was ' soapy ' the wine was gone.



G