I tasted these wines blind in the cellars of Buckingham Palace recently. They had been submitted as possible purchases for Her Majesty's dining table by wine merchants with a royal warrant and a handful of others. I must say that I found the Pouilly-Fumés rather more convincing than the Sancerres, which, with some exceptions, seemed a bit dilute to me. But I did appreciate the fact that they offer a genuinely different style from most New World Sauvignons, much drier, more substantial and less flashy. (The royal cellars are also home to some non-European Sauvignons, I should point out; indeed there is a positive drive to...