“There is perhaps no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride,” Benjamin Franklin wrote in his “Autobiography.” “Disguise it, struggle with it, stifle it, mortify it as much as you please, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself.”

I thought of Franklin’s observation when choosing the two wines for this week’s column because I confess to an unseemly pride in finding wines to bring to your attention. Actually, it’s more than ordinary pride: It’s a competitive pride.

I’d like to enter a kind of “Iron Palate” competition, a gladiatorial engagement where the contestants — armed with just a $20 bill — would go forth into the city streets seeking the finest, most original-tasting, flat-out greatest wine you can buy (no end-of-bin specials or other discount gimmicks allowed.)

Inevitably, victory would be subjective, as much depends upon the quality and preferences of the judges’ palates. What my palate finds compellingly original is perhaps to another taster ho-hum. But I’m willing to take my chances. Indeed, you be the judge.

I submit to you the following two red wines. If my fantasized Iron Palate competition existed today, these are the two red wines I would bring back as my prideful submissions — along with the change, of course.

HERE’S THE (COMPETITIVE) DEAL

Albares “Bierzo” Mencia 2004, Dominio de Tares — Before I say anything more about this wonderful red wine, let me report that, upon tasting this wine, my wife simply said, “How many cases of this are we buying?” — and that was before she knew the price.

Frankly, that ought to do it for you right there. You have to remember that a lot of wine gets sluiced chez Kramer, and I can’t recall another wine that elicited such an instantly avaricious reaction that didn’t cost the equivalent of a fractional share in a private jet.

What’s this wine got? In a word, flavor — an intense yet perfectly balanced, succulent, wild cherryand-slate flavor. The grape variety for this Spanish red is the star-isborn mencia variety. Five years ago, hardly anyone had heard of it, and that goes for most wine writers, present company included. Yet today it’s attracting all sorts of attention and rightly so.

Mencia at its best is a sort of turbo-charged pinot noir. It has that variety’s slightly berry taste and capacity to convey minerality (the soil of its native district, Bierzo, is slateladen). But mencia is a bigger, rich, er sturdier wine than pinot noir.

Albares is the name given to a particular version of mencia by the producer Dominio de Tares, which makes several different mencia bottlings. Albares is their one mencia wine that sees no oak. According to Stephen Metzler, the co-owner of Classical Wines, which imports Dominio de Tares, the idea for an oak-free mencia came from his store. Partly it was Mr. Metzler’s sense that mencia without oak could be lovely, and partly it was economics, as oak aging is expensive.

“The winemaker at Dominio de Tares was reluctant because such a wine is really transparent,” Mr. Metzler said. “So he agreed to do it providing that he was allowed to use some of their best grapes, rather than the lesser ones you’d normally choose for this price point.” Who says pride is such a bad thing?

The price is the clincher: $9.99 at Astor Wines, among others. If there’s a more persuasive, supple, original-tasting red wine that limbos under the $10 bar, I haven’t tasted it.

Chianti Classico “Berardenga” 2004, Fattoria di Fèlsina — Tuscany’s Chianti Classico district remains a wellspring of remarkable red wines selling for prices well below their aesthetic worth, if you will.

Sure, too many Chianti Classicos are substandard, what with 600 or so wineries in the zone. Yes, too many Chianti Classicos see sometimes overly lavish lashings of cabernet sauvignon, merlot, or syrah to the district’s great indigenous red grape sangiovese.

But set these quibbles aside. When Chianti Classico is good, it is very, very good, and so’s the price. Just taste this superb 2004 Chianti Classico “Berardenga” from Fattoria di Fèlsina for proof of this assertion.

Made 100% from 50-year old sangiovese vines from the Berardenga in the southeastern corner of Chianti Classico, this is Chianti Classico as it could and should be: dense, beautifully structured, suffused with the dusty and fruity taste and vaguely wild scent of sangiovese conveyed — there’s no other word for it — elegantly. All that for $16.99 a bottle at Zachys, among others.