Long gone are the days when New Zealand sauvignon blanc commanded a premium. Has it lost its mojo?

In the price war zone that is 2011 wine retailing, the favoured weapon of choice is New Zealand sauvignon blanc. Regularly discounted to around £5 the bottle, it's all a far cry from the heady days when a wine bearing that name automatically commanded a premium. How, you wonder, can a bottle that travels that far and sells for that little be any good, given that tax and duty on a £4.99 wine now amounts to £2.52 (according to a nifty little app called UK Wine Tax Calculator)?

Natural wine is big in 2011

The best way to approach the new trend in wine is to think about cheese. Which kind do you prefer? A slab of plasticky, pasteurised, supermarket cheddar, a cheese that you know will taste the same every time you buy it? Or something produced by a farmer on first-name terms with his cows, someone who uses unpasteurised milk and traditional methods to make characterful cheese that tastes slightly different from batch to batch? Or, to put it another way, do you prefer your cheese processed or au naturel?