Let’s not romanticize this. This is wine from a place that’s spent the last thirty years cranking out liquid postcards of itself. Marlborough: a windswept corner at the other edge of the earth where the Awatere Valley’s sun-scorched gravel meets Antarctic winds. Grapes struggle, grapes thrive, grapes scream their citrus gospel bemoaning the fact that they are in NZ, not Tasmania. Tough luck, that.

And here it is in the glass. No oak, no fat, no nonsense. Stainless steel all the way— You want opulence? Look elsewhere. This is all line and angle, tension and snap.

Nose like what it’s supposed to be: lime pith, cracked gooseberry skins, jalapeño stems, and ghosts of crushed river rocks. A whisper of passionfruit, but not that cloying tropical smear of overripe Marlborough wannabes—this one’s leaner, sharper. It smells like it comes from somewhere. Oh right. Those gooseberries put you in Marlborough.

Sip it. The acidity is a live wire. Tart citrus slashes through your palate—lemon-lime, green apple, a flicker of fresh-cut grass, then an icy mineral scrape that runs down the spine of the wine like a threat. Mid-palate? There is no mid-palate. You won’t miss it.

It costs eighteen bucks, give or take. Which is a crime, frankly, because this much clarity, this much truth in a bottle should come with a bigger bill—or at least in a magnum.