Whitey picks three extreme blondes in the wild south-west – These blondes will leave you breathless

13.5% alcohol; screw cap; 94+++ points
Who needs Sauvignon blanc when you can get Semillons like this? More Martina Navratilova on the beach than Breathless Mahoney in the copshop (just check those forearms), this marvellous thing has more of your actual sport than bordello. Its breath is slightly salty, like dimethyl sulphide, the smell of healthy ocean, with sandy dunal grasses and greens rather than lovers’ leap cliffs. It’s still very husky in the voice department, and if you must have fruits it has similar whiffs of Sapodilla and Cherimoya. The flavour’s much more stringently muscle and sinew – with none of the chub of the Ribbon Vale blend – and its hemp and sand tannins take me straight to Maggie R’s Boranup break. It does have some clean, lithe, slightly buttery flesh under all that angular muscle, but compared to the blend, it’s a very different set of seductions. It’s an extremely fit wine. I could think of nothing more appropriate than applying it to crays and some oily scallops on that Boranup beach. Stunning. Forget the bloody Hunter and all those simple Semis the wine show mob lazily bedeck with bling. This is the best Semillon in years.