Wampi aromas from Italian Sauvignon

This is a picture of wampee fruits from a tree at the home of Janine, who took this picture and kindly allowed me to use it. The fruits are indigenous to south China and north Indochine. Clausium lansium belongs to Rutacea (and hence is a distant relative of citrus fruits) and the fruits are of lesser commercial importance than say Lychee or mandarins. It is more a fruit grown for domestic and local use, though one finds it often during its season at markets and stalls here in Hong Kong. The fruit has a yellow ochre hairy skin (wampee literally means yellow skin) and the flesh divides into 5 segments, some or all of which contain a green seed with a brown point.

I remember once tasting an Italian Sauvignon - Sauvignon La Conca 1999, which perplexed me because of its nose. My notes read: "golden yellow, green gooseberry / petrol nose, dry with gooseberry fruit on palate, acid from mid palate persisting to finish." I knew that gooseberry was a good descriptor for Sauvignon Blanc, but although some gooseberry notes were detected, it didn't quite fit the picture. I wracked my brains for the memory of that smell, and finally at the end of that wine dinner so many moons ago, I recognized it - it was wampee.