Mud House is a fair sized operation on South Island producing commercially styled wines. The packaging’s designed to appeal and stand out on the shelf, which is clearly helping it do well in the ‘brands’ mad UK.

What’s it like?

It’s actually won medals at various awards, but I’m always sceptical of this! In exactly which category did it win? There are now so many awards with so many different categories, and in certain circumstances these awards are dished out for commercial reasons rather than for the wine’s individual merits. I was shocked last year when at the London International Wine Fair the results of the International Wine Challenge were announced and Kumala – the frankly awful brand from South Africa – won a medal! Look a bit deeper and you’ll see there were literally thousands of medals dished out and in categories such as ‘best South African branded wine under £5′ so by definition a gold medal is going to a poor quality wine!

Back to the wine, there’s a pronounced nose of typical Marlborough ‘green grass and gooseberry’. Then there’s intense artificially sweet fruit on the palate. Sadly it goes down hill from here. It’s flabby in the mouth with a lack of acidity, but strangely this is followed by a sharp acid burn as you drink it! It’s clearly been designed to appeal to the sweeter British market but it’s also clear that this is an artificial, manufactured wine which has very poor structure and balance. Compare it to a standard mass produced brand and it’s fairly good so we can see why it’s having some success, but compare it to a quality hand-crafted product like Morton Estates White Label Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc and you’ll see a huge difference in quality – and in the relative sulphite levels of the wines, as Mud House have clearly added a fair dollop of artificial preservative! Ironically, thanks to a healthy marketing budget – and some wine awards - Mud House is able to command a relatively high price, and there are much better wines out there at cheaper prices.

How much? Where can I buy it?

Well it’s widely available and varies form £8.75 per bottle to some cheeky merchants charging a whopping £11.15!