Italian Plastic Golden Pinot Gris

Italian Plastic sounds less like a wine and more like a lost Italo disco album from 1983, which honestly fits the vibe pretty well. It’s part of the wonderfully chaotic world of Alpha Box & Dice down in South Australia, a winery that seems permanently committed to making wine slightly more fun and significantly less formal.

The wines lean heavily into skin-contact and natural wine territory, but thankfully without disappearing into total farmhouse vinegar chaos. Loads of texture, tropical fruit, citrus peel and slightly savoury funky edges, all held together by proper freshness underneath. You get that chewy orange wine thing going on, but still in a way that makes you want another glass instead of quietly panicking about the bottle being faulty.

There’s a very deliberate “don’t overthink this” energy behind the whole project too. Bright labels, playful names and wines designed for food, music and mildly questionable life decisions rather than stiff tasting rooms and whispered discussions about minerality.

A lot of natural wine ends up feeling weird for the sake of being weird. Italian Plastic avoids that trap quite nicely. The wines are definitely expressive and a bit scruffy around the edges, but still massively drinkable.

Feels like the sort of bottle that appears halfway through dinner and suddenly everybody’s talking louder.