Fruit-forward nose, juicy citrus on the palate, it's easy to understand the popularity of this wine. Fruitier than other Marlboroughs such as the decidedly greener Oyster Bay.

Nettles and passion fruit on the nose. It has crisp acidity with lots and lots of fruit on the palate.

Like the other basic Kim Crawford wines, this one delivers quite well, year after year, generally hitting the right notes as a competent, if largely uninteresting and uninspired, expression of the varietal. It's juicy, approachable, and easily appealing, a nice summer sipper with standard notes of guava and passion fruit, along with a tart lemon-lime streak that quickly cleanses the palate, but little beyond this tropical and citrus fruit mélange save for some bitterness lurking in the background. The main problem is the price, though, because there are many better and more distinctive NZ SBs you can get in the $20 range.