By Robyn James

Here, kitty kitty.  Yes, I am here to admit that I love cat pee in my wine.  Sounds disgusting, doesn’t it?  Yet, cat pee has hit the wine scene and consumers are all over it. 

It is the unique descriptor used for New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and there really is no other way to describe it, it is continually popping up in legitimate wine industry magazine reviews.

I have seen wine authorities try to delicately tiptoe around it, describing gooseberries, litchi nuts, and boxwood, a shrub that grows in California and emits a fume-y feline scent.  But, how many people regularly taste gooseberries and litchi nuts?  I went outside and smelled my boxwood and it definitely wasn’t the same.  Thanks to Boots and Turley, my live in kitties, I am more exposed to cat pee when they are miffed at me.

Cat Pee is the pungently perfumed mix of herbs, asparagus, green bean and bell pepper that can be so unique to New Zealand, particularly the Marlborough region so famous for its Sauvignon Blanc.  They have ripe fruit nose prickling aromas and flavors of grapefruit, gooseberry, passion fruit, kiwi and stone, with pleasant hints of fresh-cut grass, fresh pea and mineral.  Sometimes jalapeno creeps in.  The top wines have fresh fruit and brisk acidity; cat pee, uh, I mean boxwood and musk are well in the background, adding complexity and intrigue yet not overwhelming the wine. In winespeak, that’s what’s known as a balanced wine.

Remember, we explain tastes and smells by analogy.  Hopefully, when we say that a wine has a whiff of cat pee, we mean that it tastes the way cat pee smells, acidic and biting and maybe a little ammoniac, but not that we’ve sampled the litter box. Obviously, there is more than one way to skin a cat reference.  Meow.

 Even Consumer Reports gave a thumbs up to cat pee in its November issue, describing the aroma as “….a legitimate, and often desirable, description.  Compare it to an off-note that adds complexity to a piece of music.”

A Master of Wine is a title earned by a person who passes a rigorous battery of wine tests; there are only about 40 or so people in the entire world who hold this degree.  One is a British chap named Clive Coates.  Once Mr. Coates was asked by the Society of Masters of Wine to address his peers and other very serious wine snobs at one of their highfalutin seminars, on the subject of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc.  He walked up to the microphone with a glass of the wine, took a great whiff, and stated with a straight face and the utmost sincerity, “it smells…as it should… like…cat pee.”

In fact, the smell isn’t quite as awful as it sounds – it’s really more of a grassy, herbal aroma – but it does put off a number of people.  Regardless, Sauvignon Blanc is the second most popular white wine (after Chardonnay) and it is grown in regions all over the globe.  Unfortunately, the marketing success led to overproduction in California and their Sauvignon Blancs became bland and uninteresting.   So, many people prefer the “pure” examples from Kiwi country and California, recognizing that, is scrambling to put the “pee” back in profits. 

Here are some of my favorite, nose prickling, mouth puckering cat pee selections.

CRAGGY RANGE SAUVIGNON BLANC,

NEW ZEALAND, 2004

“Intense stuff; hits on the nose like a bomb packed with fresh

green veggies and vibrant passion fruit, mango and stone fruits.

 Slides across the palate with ease courtesy of prime acidity.

 Tastes much like it smells, with jolting flavors of

gooseberry, pineapple and orange.”

RATED 90 POINTS,

THE WINE ENTHUSIAST, $21 Bottle