Frontline wine: What is a characterful wine?

Specific regional wine tastings are a wine professional's 'American Idol early rounds'. The bulk of the evaluation is unmemorable. Some wines sing. Other wines are the equivalent of a shuffling, toothless tone-death witch desperately seeking attention (or perhaps a few extra much-needed chromosomes).

It's another...chardonnay. Great. Yours is the best...actually...yours is the best. No...yours is the best. Yours is the best because it displays character. I envisage these poor bastards slogging it out against the elements day and night, hands matted in blood and muck only to have a warmth-loving arse like me disregard their year's work as characterless. Characterless. A liquid. How in God's earth can you press a fruit, ferment it and hope to God character somehow sprinkles itself into the end result?

I hear the word character used to describe wines a lot.….“That wee savvy has a back palate of carbolic acidic, but the character's there for the price”. Whaaa??...Come on. Good character is also a much widely used term for the corrupt wine writer. Three stars. Good character...next please.

You also see it a lot on back labels, that last bastion of unashamed, unadulterated floral-worded muck that most read but never believe. Trained liars are wheeled in to wax lyrical about a wine's connection with the soil and how its 'superb' character will live long in the mind. All good, until you add into the equation the back label you're reading about is for a five-buck-shuck red whose only memorable attribute is the proceeding hangover. Imagine what sort of person it takes to write positively about wines so bad they’d put you off having kids knowing that their university accommodation floor might be littered with empty bottles of this muck in a generation's time…

What is a wine's character? Character in wine is a defining, memorable twinkle on the palate expressing the terroir in one fleeting spark. The winemaker has cracked the code and the land has given up its greatest secret as a satisfying constant buried somewhere in the texture of the palate. Thankfully, it's buried somewhere no supermarket-wine-loving bin-lid will ever find it. When one's only aspiration is that a wine is drinkable at all and the only adjective in your narrow vocabulary is 'nice', discovering the true character of a wine that a producer has toiled to achieve for your pleasure will always be beyond you.

Tried:

Steve Bird pinot gris 2008 Marlborough .

A pink Pinot Gris? It must be off…I can see the know-it-alls now. Steve Bird's 2008 range of wines have been a superb source of quality, value-for money. Dry, with real skinsy flavour and tannin, the weighty almost oily texture is a rolling crescendo of subtle flavours.

$27

Beaucastel Chateau Neuf du Pape 1989

Wonderfully rich and savoury, the old Rhone warhorse of Beaucastel rarely disappoints; even, in this particular instance, with a lower than usual shoulder. With a nose akin to lying passed out face down in a forest (i'd imagine...), the savoury, soily earthiness is intoxicating. The palate is firm. The tannins, depth and structure across the palate are tethered into a deep inky, yet fragrant, medium bodied punch. Truffle and tobacco notes litter the palate of a seemless old wine with much life in it yet.

$$$

Kagor Garling (Moldovia)

Moldovia is one of the oldest wine-producing countries in the world...and judging by the state of some of the labels on their wines, things haven't changed there for a very long time. Kagor is one of the most popular drinks there. Like the best altar wine you've ever tasted, it is a sweet 16% Vol. unfortified red wine not a hundred miles off a Greek Mavrodaphne. It's pretty rare in this country, but is really worth trying at least once as, because it is laden with even more red berried fruit than, say, a Ruby Port, you can lay out a matching food spread of soft cheeses that'll melt in your mouth when matched to this wine.

$30

Paul Brannigan, http://www.rumbles.co.nz/

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