175 Bottles Post 02: Guest Check Sauvy B
Wine: Guest Check’s We’re Gonna Start with a Bottle of Sauvy B
Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. I love the fact that November is cold and dark, but not as cold and dark as December. I love the fact that we eat things during Thanksgiving that we hardly ever eat the rest of the year! I love that we get together for family gatherings without the pressure of holiday decorations or gift giving. And I love, love, love leftovers! When we host Thanksgiving dinner, we roast the biggest turkey we can find, so there’s plenty for sandwiches after. When someone else hosts, we make a whole other Thanksgiving dinner, so there are plenty of “leftovers.”
Thanksgiving 2025 was different, though. My brother hosted, so we brought a couple side dishes and enjoyed the meal with the rest of the family. The next day, we were going to roast the 20 lb. turkey we bought for the four of us, as well as make additional sides, and the plan was for my own little nuclear family (husband, children, me) to have our own Thanksgiving. The food was made, but I was tired, and so were others, so we postponed this second Thanksgiving until the next day. But in the meantime, there was turkey with sides, so my husband, the one child still living at home, and I went ahead and ate some of those for dinner. The next day, my other child came over, bringing additional sides, and we had Thanksgiving dinner #3!
And that’s when we uncorked the first of the 175 Bottles. The wine was from Guest Check, and it was a Sauvignon Blanc called, rather appropriately, We’re Gonna Start with a Bottle of Sauvy B. No, I’m not kidding. Here’s the bottle.
The wine is described online as “super chill, easy-drinking, … smells amazing… like a wave of citrus, green apple, and white peach… and there’s a little gooseberry….” Of course, you’re supposed to drink it chilled, and we hadn’t chilled a bottle in advance, so we did the whole wrap-the-bottle-in-a-damp-paper-towel-and-put-it-in-the-freezer trick, that’s supposed to chill the bottle in about 10 minutes. By the time we warmed up all the food, it was more like a half hour, and the wine came out perfectly chilled, the paper towel wrap having frozen and solidified around the bottle like a papier mache cast.
I can’t uncork a bottle of wine to save my life. Every time I try, we end up with half of the cork floating in the wine with the bottle still somehow totally sealed. We’re Gonna Start… is a twist top, so I was able to open it, though. Was there a wave of citrus, etc.? Not that I noticed. It smelled good, like a nice, clean, neutral white wine, but I wasn’t able to detect any white peach and certainly no gooseberries. And before you ask, yes, I do know what gooseberries are and what they smell and taste like. I used to eat them straight from wild-growing bushes when I was a kid in the Soviet Union. For more about that, you might want to read my other blog, Songs and Remembrances.
For the record, my husband disagrees with my assessment of the wine’s aroma. He says he did detect citrus and green apple as he took his first sip, though the scent mellowed out to neutral with subsequent sips.
So, what about the taste? This is a dry wine. And when I say dry, I mean dry! The recommended food pairings for it are things like Caesar salad and fries, which I didn’t take into account but probably should have. We drank it with turkey, dressing, sweet potatoes, etc., and the contrast of the richness and sweetness of those things with the dryness of the wine was definitely a bit stark. I didn’t love the combination, though it probably wasn’t the wine’s fault. Aside from the unsuccessful food pairing, I enjoyed drinking it. Being dry didn’t make it astringent, which was great! Instead, it tasted like a basic white wine, but in a good way, light, clean, and easy to drink. Also, it was an excellent palate cleanser between the meal and the pumpkin pie we had for dessert!
Here’s the thing. We have two or three more bottles of We’re Gonna Start…, which will afford us the opportunity to try it paired with the recommended Caesar salad and other foods. Maybe out on the deck. In July. Wonder if I could find some gooseberries to go with it.
