2022 ITER Cellars Sauvignon Blanc – A Journey to New Beginnings
Photo from ITER Cellars
Background
While traveling during the holiday season visiting family, our daughter and son-in-law have a family tradition of Chinese food on Christmas Eve. While I brought some wines for Christmas dinner to be served with prime rib, I did not bring a good wine to pair with Chinese food. So off we drove to a local wine store chain and picked up this bottle for dinner. This wine was recommended by of the managers who assisted me. I had never heard of ITER Cellars but decided to go with his recommendation.
The Winery
The name Iter from the Latin primarily means “journey, road, path or passage”. This description is on the back of the bottle.
Photo ©Michael Kelly
As previously mentioned, this wine was recommended to me without knowing any background on the winery. As it turns out, it is a family run business with the owners being Stefano Migotto and Valentina Guolo. Fior di Sole (flower of the sun) is an operated wine company located in the heart of Napa Valley, producing an array of wines from Napa and throughout California.
The company is committed to minimizing their impact on the environment and promoting sustainable practices. Their bottling line facility is CCOF (California Certified Organic Farmers). I will be exploring what other aspects of their operations are CCOF as this is a noteworthy achievement.
This is a very large-scale operation with forty-one brands under the Fior di Sole ownership. Wine labels for example include Four Stars, Anthony Rami Family Winery, Ancient Gate Cellars, Harris Parker, Long Barn, etc. Their warehouse for finish goods has a capacity of 1.1 million cases! Their operation includes in-house filtration, quality control and laboratory services. Picking up a quick bottle of wine has lead to uncovering a vast enterprise. Look forward to understanding and perhaps tasting some of their other wines. Iter does appear to be a long path to be discovered.
The Wine – “Wine is bottled poetry” – Robert Louis Stevenson
Photo from ITER Cellars
A clean and glistening light golden color in the glass. On the nose, lemon grass and grapefruit aromas are dominant. On the palate a combination of citrus primarily of lemon and bountiful herbaceous flavors. It is crisp and clean providing a lovely finish with a hint of minerality. Their winemaker states that their Sauvignon Blanc “tastes like it feels to walk through a meadow on a dewy spring morning”.
The wine goes for a modest $13/bottle on retail shelves and is a remarkable bargain!
The Food and Wine Pairing – “Food without wine is a corpse; wine without food is a ghost. United and well matched, they are as body and soul: living partners” – Andre Simon
Photo ©Michael Kelly
One of the more difficult meals to pair a wine with is Chinese as generally so many different assortments of dishes are ordered to please a group. Tonight was no exception with pork fried rice, chicken fried rice, pot stickers, lemon chicken, honey walnut prawns, orange chicken, beef broccoli, Mongolian beef, and chow Mein. I am sure a few others escaped my memory!
Photo ©Michael Kelly
I have generally gone with Sauvignon Blanc as it tends to go with many Chinese dishes. As you can see a lot of delicious dishes were ordered for the 17 people attending Christmas Eve dinner (not all foods are shown)!
Sláinte,
Michael
January 6, 2026 at 7:57 pm
Sounds great for the appellation and the price.