This wine is so clean that it’s practically devoid of any personality whatsoever. The nose is of… white wine, perhaps with a hint of lime rind. The palate is basically… white wine with good acidity, a tiny, tiny bit of residual sugar, a lovely finish of white peach, perhaps.

Sure, it’s generic – no year or geographic region indicated – but the bottle is lovely and it’s fairly priced. There are plenty of insipid wines out there for ten bucks, but this one does at least give you an unerringly positive experience.

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As an aside, I purchased this bottle at a fresh&easy shop here in San Diego. Judging by the condition of the store, it looks like Tesco’s failing with the fresh&easy experience: the ATM was out of order, the store had huge pallets of merchandise blocking an aisle, half of the endcaps seemed to be randomly stuffed with discontinued items marked down to pennies on the dollar, the liquor section had disappeared entirely (the staff said that “maybe teenagers are grabbing it and running out the door”), and an awful lot of things have either disappeared or were just missing from the shelves. It didn’t look at all good – and they’ve raised the price on their Champagne back up to $28 from last December’s $24, so the one undisputed wine bargain they had is also gone now. Oh well.

Pacific Rim
Price: $10
Closure: Stelvin