There will always be Grange; DRC; the hard-hitters down Napa-way. These wines, and countless others in the super-premium market, will always have a name, a face, as well as good years with the bad – an element apparent when price tags are slapped on bottles.

And there will always be Vin de Table, that daily drinkable that ends up every night on dinner tables across the world. It is those wines, those average-Joe offerings wine producers present to us that this column is devoted to. Think typically £5 to £10 per bottle.

Critics fill novels with information on how to best spend your tenner (books that spend more time gracing the grimy surfaces of coffee tables and the rarely dusted Ikea ‘Bonde’ book cases than in the hands of serious daily wine drinkers).

These are wines, granted, that are rarely noteworthy. In fact, all the wines sampled this week had not a single word written, until this moment.

Summed up here:

The Marks and Sparks white Burgundy 2004 and San Tommasi ‘Giani’ Sicilian white; both served at a friend’s finally-off-of-probation celebration. Both were good bargains, excellent and crisp. Both were served cold and felt proper, and tasted too similar, coming not only from different countries, different climates and different soils.

Also, three nights were devoted to three bottles of Bonterra Organic 2004 Shiraz Carignan Sangiovese.

All three bottles were great, with or without food, fresh and clean. But, a greater point was that two bottles tasted exactly the same, but the third, same year and perhaps shipped on the same crate, tasted distinctly different. For whatever reason, this one tasted a bit rusty, with a slight hint of earth. This later lulled and flavours further diminished. I love it. Micheal Laroche once complained that he opened a case of one of his wines and found twelve different tastes.

Laroche may feel frustrated by inconsistent flavours, but I call it character.

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