Everyone in Johannesburg talks about the pot-holes - they are less scary than crime. With pot-holes to complain about, the real horror stories hover silently on the periphery, camouflaging the litany of ghastly experiences that have become an everyday refrain. The frivolity helps us let off steam while still expressing outrage at the culture of mismanagement which has usurped our way of life.

We had a 48 sq metre pot-hole outside our home for seven months. It was a  monument to Johannesburg Water, who dug up the area looking for a leak we had been telling them about for nine years (and about which they had been in denial despite a loss estimated at over 100000 litre per day). Water reticulation is their business - roads clearly are not.

We were going to enter our 48 sq metre special into "Johannesburg's most Beautiful Pot-hole Competition." By the time they finally came to 'fix' it (ie fill it in with a little bitumen) there were some quite pretty plants growing around the edge, partly protected by its proximity to the curb, partly by its depth.

We become accustomed to things deteriorating, rather than improving. So Cape Sauvignon Blanc - and what has happened to it in the past decade - runs counter to our experience and therefore to our expectations. It used to be a pretty horrible beverage, a wine for masochists with a marked preference for vinous simplicity bordering on vapidity. Most of the examples owed their 'freshness' to early harvesting and their appeal (such as it was) to the enjoyment of drinking water that is hard-wired into our DNA. I'm not sure how the true aficionados managed the rampant astringency but perhaps they needed virulent acidity as a dietary supplement.

Anyway, happily this is mostly ancient history, to be swept away together with out expectations of municipal management, transparency, accountability and people in authority who understand the concept of shame. Instead it is now not only possible to drink Sauvignon Blanc without performing a non-surgical gastrectomy on oneself, but actually to turn this into a pleasurable experience.

I lined up about a dozen fairly current releases recently and didn't find a single wine even vaguely reminiscent of what would have been the benchmark of the 1990s. Undoubtedly the very best was the 2008 Waterkloof, which showed almost tropical melon notes, a very slight herbal whiff, a fresh honeyed edge, softness, freshness, complexity and harmony. It had been partly oak barrel fermented, which added a slight vanilla fragrance to it, and in that sense wasn't typical of the more pungent herbaceous style - but it was delicious.

Two years old is hardly 'aged' in the ordinary sense, but for Sauvignon it is considered by some to be geriatric. It's worth changing that perception. Wedderwill, for example, from vineyards quite close by, recently released a pack which contained three vintages - 2005, 2006, 2007.

Age - as the poet said - had not wearied them nor the years condemned. Maturation - on Sauvignons which do profit from the extra time in bottle - presents a different character, and certainly one which I prefer. I tasted a Domaine des Dieux 2007 about a week ago and the message there is the same as the Waterkloof and the Wedderwill: much better for the extra age, more complex, more harmonious, more refined.

Of the other wines in the line-up, most were 2009s. I really liked Meinert's La Barry, zesty and dense on the palate (and perfectly capable of using an extra year or two in bottle). There was as much pleasure to be found in the Bouchard Finlayson 2009 Reserve as well as the regular cuvée (the Reserve is markedly better but the standard bottling, while it lacks the same palate weight, is neat enough). The Flagstone 2009 is good, but actually needs the extra time to mature and evolve. The Rickety Bridge, Zonnebloem Limited Edition and Groote Post (all 2009) were honest and honourable - which makes them a better bet than Johannesburg's municipal government.