If you’re going to drink cheap Sauvignon Blanc, it had better, at the very least, be a fresh release. It had also better be characterful, a bit of a coquette perhaps, not sweet so much as fruitful, bursting with the sort of guileless enthusiasm that’s embarrassing in company but awesome when it’s just you.

Except that, when you realise that you’re kind of digging it, you begin to want to share it with friends, because something this fun seems a shame to keep to yourself. And while you’re contemplating that contradiction, the smell of it yanks you back into the land of simple enjoyment, and makes you forget thoughts of wine as a mark of sophistication, or even as something that should attract your attention for more than a brief moment. And you just sniff it for fun.

But then you notice some subtle cut grass on the nose, and a refreshingly bitter phenolic twist through the after palate. And you start to think this wine’s kind of punching above its weight, that there might be something more to it than you first thought. Come on, though, it’s a $17 Sauvignon Blanc, and it’s not even from New Zealand! Surely it can’t hope to present a coherent alternative to the instantly recognisable Marlborough style without resorting to residual sugar, hideously vulgar fruit character, or both.

You keep sniffing, and tasting, and it all goes down terribly well, especially with some mid-week fish and chips. You begin to realise this is, in some ways, the perfect quaffing wine, the success of which isn’t about avoiding angularity so much as having just enough sharpness to challenge your palate and prime your senses for enjoyment of the fruit-driven flavour profile. If you’re a complete wine tragic, you might even blog about the experience of drinking it. Then, fish and chips eaten, wine consumed, the memory of it disappears in a puff of smoke, and your overriding impression is simply of an evening enjoyed, relaxation, pleasure.

Angullong
Price: $A17
Closure: Stelvin
Source: Sample