As luck would have it, I had the good fortune of winning a gift card from Pizza Express the other week (thank you!)

This provided the perfect opportunity to go and check out their wine menu (as well as their food menu too, of course).

Pizza Express is obviously a large chain, which buys its wine in as a company, rather than for individual restaurants. This means a fairly standard selection, but a decent one.

There isn’t much choice, making it much easier than some wine lists which can feel like you are studying a novel.

It’s not always a bad idea to go for the cheapest wine. Especially in certain restaurants, actually the house wine or cheaper bottles can be really good value. But here, none of the four cheapest (all Italian) whites really floated my boat. Cheap Chardonnay can be a really nasty choice (I can’t comment on this one, maybe another time) and the same goes for Pinot Grigio.

Fancying a crisp, tasty white to cut through all that awesome tomato and cheese on our food, the New Zealand Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc was an obvious choice. As I wrote before, this is usually a safe bet in a restaurant.

This one, Storm Crossing, was fairly decent. I still balk at paying nearly £21 for a bottle which, in a shop, I would say is probably worth more like £7, but hey, that’s part of what you sign up for when you are eating out. And it did go really nicely with our food.

Incidentally, if I’d been going for red I probably would have plumped for the Italian Ripasso as a full-bodied red that would compliment some of the spicier options on the menu.
Next time I’ll have to try one of the cheaper bottles. Have you had a good wine in a restaurant recently? Do let me know on Twitter: @WineBlag, or comment below.