Some wines reward you with surprise of character

What do most of us want from wine these days? A deal, of course. But more than that, we want a sense of reward. It's not enough anymore that a wine is tasty or well made. That's to be expected.

Instead, we now seek an element of pleasant surprise. If the wine is, say, a chardonnay, we want to exclaim, "That's terrific-tasting chardonnay. It's the real thing, not just oakiness. And I sure like the price, too." Believe me, that sort of chardonnay is always a surprise, especially when the price is well south of $30 a bottle.

With red wines, the demand is a little more exacting. Red grapes are more intrinsically flavorful than whites, so we've come to expect more flavor scope and impact as a matter of course. A "surprising" red has to have more than just flavor. We now seek the surprise of character, even originality.

In their respective color fashions, this week's wines offer just such pleasurable surprises.

Macon-Villages blanc 2007, Louis Jadot: Back in the day when French was, well, pretty much the only wine, Macon-Villages was a workhorse white. A district name in southern Burgundy, Macon-Villages throws a generous arm around 43 villages among the rolling hills that collectively are referred to as the Maconnais.

Burgundy shippers once assumed that everybody somehow knew that a Macon-Villages blanc was 100 percent chardonnay. Only recently have these shippers come to their (business) senses and started noting, as Louis Jadot does, the valuable word "chardonnay" on the label.

In that context, let's not mince words. In today's overpriced, over-hyped chardonnay market, a chardonnay this good at this price is as rare as a unicorn. I assure you that nowhere in California, Oregon or Washington will you find a chardonnay this good selling for this low a price.

What's Macon-Villages blanc 2007 from Louis Jadot got? This is chardonnay as it really is, without makeup, as the French say. Here you get the true green-apple-inflected taste of chardonnay, along with a hint of lemon and pear. There's no oak in this wine and none needed. Not least, there's an underlay of minerals, surely thanks to the limestone soils of the zone. The acidity is briskly refreshing, which makes it ideal for the likes of Dungeness crab.

The price is unbeatable for the quality: $13.95 a bottle. This is chardonnay as it should be but so rarely is --namely, plumped with flavor but not pumped up in price. (Distributor is Young's Columbia)

Farnio Rosso Piceno 2007, Garofoli: You would think that American wine lovers have slurped down every last drop of good red wine from Italy. In truth, we've barely dipped into Italy's bottomless reservoir of good wines.

Take the Marche region for example. On Italy's eastern or Adriatic coast, it occupies what might be called the calf of the boot.

Farnio is the name that the producer Garofoli (pronounced gah-ROW-foe-lee) gives to its red wine from the district called Rosso Piceno. A blend of two red grapes, montepulciano (70 percent) and sangiovese (30 percent), Farnio shows just how good a drink-now red from the Marche can be.

This is more than merely a pleasant red. Instead, there's character to this wine, as the quality of the blend exceeds the usual standard for the area. You get the dried cherry dustiness of sangiovese with a base of almost succulent black cherry fruit and soft tannins from the montepulciano grape. There's no need to age this beauty; it's ready to go.

And did I mention the price? Try $10.95 a bottle. For that kind of money, this is an Italian red of uncommon value. (Distributor is Lemma Wine Co.)