Wednesday night’s Thirsty Girl Twitter Tasting, as usual, was a blast. We honestly enjoyed both Villa Maria Sauvigon Blancs very much, our food pairs were divine, the company was vivacious, and keeping up with all the action on twitter as well as with my fellow Wine Predators (including new Predator Que Syrah Sue!) was an adrenaline rush!

2011 Villa Maria New Zealand Private Bin Sauvignon Blanc Marlborough– SRP $14.99
http://thirstygirl.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/CS-Sauv-Blanc-2011.pdf

Everything about this wine is crisp and clean and inviting and a truly delightful wine and a wonderful value. In this clear, lightly colored wine, we thought it had a beautiful aromatic nose of peach, apricot, floral, and nutmeg.  It’s lively acids are nicely balanced, smooth, subtle, slightly sweet grapefruit– a wonderful picnic wine that would pair with a wide variety of choices from cheese to salami.  Citrus finish of grapefruit and tangerine but with plenty of white stone fruit. Nice for the ladies who lunch–especially with a ceasar salad!

2011 Villa Maria Estate Cellar Selection Sauvignon Blanc Marlborough– SRP $21.99
http://www.villamaria.co.nz/our-wines/white-wines/sauvignon-blanc/private-bin–marlborough-

This has a lovely classic citrus sauvignon blanc character–we all agreed it reminded us of key lime pie! More complex citrus flavors that the Private Bin–more rind, more bite, less white stone fruit, bold, strong, dynamic. Some light effervescence. Really amazing with the goat cheese and other foods we tasted it with–another great choice for a summer time picnic! We’d love to try it with some smoked salmon; in fact this would make a nice brunch wine.

Here are some selected tweets from May 16 from  Gwendolyn Alley, MA ‏@ArtPredator

ready for tonight’s #TGTaste of #nz #sb with @beathirstygirl @AlastairMaling & raw oysters from @JollyOyster & you? http://pic.twitter.com/XLJTwMEf

like the pebbles of the stream rubbing against each other you should try #SB & goat cheese & pesto #TGTaste