Wine: Top shelf and sensible

Barossa Valley.

For many years, Australia's McGuigan Wines have been on New Zealand shelves as entry-level and popular premium wines. Well priced, well made and well respected. Now, as chief winemaker Neil McGuigan says, it's time to step up while retaining the core business of easily affordable wines.

2010 McGuigan Shortlist Shiraz - $35

A Barossa Valley beauty. Not a heavy, in-your-face steamroller, this is made in a more approachable, lighter style. It is gentle and sweet with finely grained tannins and would be perfect with lamb. In keeping with McGuigan Wines' philosophy to deliver innovative quality wine to as wide an audience as possible, this wine demonstrates perfectly that it's working.

2010 Tempus Two Copper Tempranillo - $25

Tempranillo is the classic Spanish grape that delivers vibrant youthful mulberry fruits and exotic spices with a sweet moreish finish. Ageing in French and American oak adds complexity and creates a rich, medium-bodied wine that shows some restraint thanks to the cooler grape growing climate of the Adelaide Hills. This wine is where modern style and classic finesse merge.

2009 Tempus Two Pewter Botrytis Semillon - $27

Worth buying if only for the shape of the unusual 250ml bottle, perfect for refilling with wine vinegar or olive oil when the wine is finished. Full of sharp, citrus flavours with splashes of dried apricot, marmalade and wild honey, this dessert wine has elegance, poise and style, with 10.5 per cent alcohol. Drinking now but it will develop over the next decade.