A sea bass supper for a late August evening

It's a Thursday in late August, the sort of evening where the kitchen door is still open at eight and nobody wants to turn the oven on. You've got two sea bass fillets, a bag of new potatoes, a lemon and whatever herbs survived the summer on the windowsill. That's dinner. It takes about twenty minutes and it tastes like you tried much harder than you did.

The potatoes go on first, in salted water, and while they soften you can get the wine into the fridge door if it isn't already there. Because the second half of this evening, the part where you actually sit down, depends on having something cold and bright in the glass. A Robertson Valley Chenin Blanc is exactly the shape of wine this meal wants.

What goes in the pan

Crush the potatoes rather than mash them. A fork, a good glug of olive oil, salt, and a bit of the chopped dill or parsley you've got left. You want texture, not a smooth purée, so some of the skins stay in ribbons and catch the oil.

The sea bass needs a hot pan and a dry skin. Press it down for the first thirty seconds so it doesn't curl, then leave it alone. Three or four minutes skin-side and barely a minute on the flesh, then a squeeze of lemon straight into the pan so the juice hisses and thickens with the butter.

That lemon is the pivot of the whole plate. It's also the reason the wine works: you need something with its own acidity to meet the citrus head-on, rather than a soft white that just lies down underneath it.

Why this bottle and not another white

The William Robertson Chenin Blanc is made unwooded, and on a night like this that matters more than it sounds. No oak means nothing sits between you and the fruit: no vanilla, no toast, no creamy weight to smother a delicate fillet of fish.

Gentle pressing keeps the juice clean and free of the harsh phenolics that can make a white feel grippy on the back of the tongue. Cool fermentation holds onto the pineapple and green apple aromatics. What arrives in the glass is a wine that feels light on its feet, which is the only way to describe it after the second sip.

On the palate that fruit has real weight, but the acidity is crunchy enough to cut clean through the buttery pan juices. You take a mouthful of fish, then a mouthful of wine, and the slate is wiped. Then you go again. That's the whole trick of a good midweek pairing and it's harder to find than it should be.

Credit where it's due: the limestone running through the Robertson Valley soils is the quiet hero. It's uncommon in South Africa and it's the reason this Chenin carries such freshness. Mountain-slope vineyards bring structure and lift, river-valley sites bring ripe generosity, and the two together give you tropical fruit weight with a clean, mineral-edged finish.

Get the temperature right and you've done the hard part

Serve it at 9 degrees. Not fridge-cold, which numbs the fruit and turns the wine into a generic cold drink, and not the temperature your kitchen has drifted to by half past eight.

In practice that means taking it out of the fridge about ten minutes before you sit down, or pulling it from an ice bucket and letting it sit in the glass for a moment. You'll notice the difference between the first sip and the third as the florals open up.

A 750ml bottle covers two people over a long, unhurried supper with enough left for the washing up. If there's a glass in the bottle the next day, it will still be perfectly good with lunch. This is Chenin made for drinking now, while the fruit is at its most vibrant, so there's no virtue in saving it for a special occasion that keeps not arriving.

The same bottle, four other nights

Once you've had it with the sea bass you'll start reaching for it elsewhere. Roast chicken, a halved lemon and a few thyme sprigs shoved inside it and garlic cloves tumbled round the tin, is the obvious Sunday version of the same idea: the wine's acidity handles the fat under the skin and the tropical fruit picks up the sweetness of the roasting garlic.

Smoked salmon on rye with capers and dill is the Saturday-morning-into-lunch answer, where the wine's freshness resets your palate after each salty, oily bite. And as autumn comes in, slow-roasted pork loin with apple sauce is where that green apple note stops being a tasting note and starts being part of the meal.

The outlier, and the one that surprises people, is Thai green chicken curry. The fruit weight has enough presence to stand up to coconut milk and green chilli, and the acidity stops the whole thing feeling heavy. If you've only ever drunk beer with that curry, this is worth a try.

What's left in the glass

By the time the plates are stacked, the last inch of wine in the glass has warmed slightly and the pineapple has turned rounder and softer. Drink it standing at the counter. It's arguably the best mouthful of the bottle.

That's the argument for keeping a couple of these in the fridge rather than treating them as an event. A wine you can open on a Thursday without a reason is worth more, in the run of a year, than one you're too precious to pull the cork on. If you want to see what else sits in that bracket, the South African whites are where I'd start, and the Robertson Cabernet Merlot Pinotage is the red to have alongside it when the evenings finally turn.

If that sounds like your kind of Thursday, the William Robertson Chenin Blanc is the bottle to keep cold at the back of the fridge for fish suppers, roast chicken and the odd green curry. It suits anyone who wants a white with real fruit and real freshness, and no fuss attached to either.