The news that mummy porn authoress EL James (below) drinks Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough in New Zealand comes as a welcome boost for SA Sauvignon producers.   Perhaps it is something to do with the screw cap or that (some) oysters, said to resemble the front bottoms of (some) ladies, are long standing aphrodisiacs.  But readers of the S&M pot boiler Fifty Shades of Grey, the fastest selling steamer in history, can be expected to flock to the grassy green style in droves.

Which is news to the ears of SA Sauvignon producers as harvest 2012 in Marlborough was a bust: down from 244,893 tons in 2011 to 188,649 this year and most of that 23% decline in Sauvignon Blanc.  So which SA Sauvignons should Miss Whiplash and her sisters serve in their “red rooms of pain”?

I’d have thought Bamboes Bay from Fryer’s Cove, as it continues the naughty nautical theme and bamboo makes a most effective cane.  But one can’t overlook Thelema.  Before pioneering Next Level Sauvignon Blanc in SA (upcountry masochists would queue for stock) Thelema was the spiritual philosophy of magician Aleister Crowley, which rhymes with holy and he was anything but.

Rabelais is the exceptional Bordeaux blend made by Thelema (irritatingly described sighted as “pricey” in Platter by the sadsack taster who obviously didn’t get it) and Thélème is the abbey in the books of the 16th century French friar of that name, which squares the circle.  Rabelais was an inspiration to Sir Francis Dashwood whose Hellfire Club was the best S&M brothel in Melbourne for a while back in the nineties.  Thomas Webb should propose Rabelais as house red and his Sauvignon Blanc for girls’ night out.

On the subject of girls, as the only representative of the fair sex on the annual FNB Sauvignon Blanc Challenge judging panel – funny that, to have 80% men judge a cultivar probably mostly drunk by ladies and certainly mostly bought by them – the onus falls on Erika Obermeyer, chairperson of the Sauvignon Blanc Interest Group, to whip the male panel members into line. Naughty boys, whack!  Something she should have no problem in doing, sharing as she does the first name of the real-life EL James: Erika Mitchell.