The challenge of making wine today can be summed up in a single word: originality. In the same way the digital age has made duplication easy, modern wine technology allows a similar capacity. A winemaker can now easily copy at least the style, if not the substance, of the world’s greatest wines.

Although this looks dark on the face of it, the reality is not all bad. The overall quality of ordinary, everyday wines is the better for this “duplication.” Everyday wines are now fresher-tasting, better defined, and better made than before. In looking to and copying their betters, as it were, they have acquired the wine version of social graces.

More expensive wines have suffered, however. Too many ambitiously priced wines now confuse style with substance, reminding one of the 1946 movie “Great Expectations,” where Pip says, “I realized that in becoming a gentleman, I had only succeeded in becoming a snob.” (As best as I know, Charles Dickens never wrote that.)

The wines recommended this week suffer from no such delusion. They are the real things. They have character, integrity, and above all, profound originality. They are copies of nothing except their very sites.

HERE’S THE (REAL) DEAL

SAVENNIERES “CLOS DU PAPILLON” 2002, DOMAINE DES BAUMARD Last month in France, at the annual Salon des Vins de Loire in Angers, the producer Domaine des Baumard startled some traditionalists. Florent Baumard announced that all of his wines, including his most prestigious and expensive, such as Savennieres Clos du Papillon and the great sweet wine Quarts de Chaume, would henceforth be bottled with screwcaps rather than corks.

Mr. Baumard’s reason is as simple as it is courageous: Screwcaps are better than corks. They preserve a wine’s flavors more successfully, with less flavor coloration, than corks. (Even the best corks impart a subtle flavor to wine, like background noise.)

For a white wine as subtle as Savennieres, made 100% from chenin blanc, ensuring a pristine flavor transmission is worth incurring whatever wrath traditionalists might care to hurl. The Baumard family knows about integrity and its costs.

Baumard’s 2002 Savennieres from the Clos du Papillon vineyard is an exemplar of originality, purity, and integrity. The 2002 vintage was one of the best in recent years, creating what might be called classic wines, where nothing is distorted or overemphasized. (In comparison, 2003 was searingly hot, resulting in more idiosyncratic wines.)

This is a flat-out great dry white wine, suffused with strong scents of minerals, honeysuckle, lemon zest, and a whiff of lime and herbs. Although tasty today, like all great Savennieres it will do nothing but improve for upward of 10 years. Partner this wine with grilled fish or Gruyere cheese and you’ll know in one sip about the compelling quality of wine originality. $26.95.

MOUNT EDEN VINEYARDS “ESTATE” CHARDONNAY 2002 Although it may seem like snobbery, a good number of wine drinkers seem inclined to believe that California does not (or cannot) create great white wine.

The reason such an opinion really isn’t snobbery is simply that so many California white wines are dull. After enough such disappointments, who can be blamed for concluding that white wine greatness is out of California’s reach?

Whenever I hear such an opinion I make sympathetic noises and offer one remedial prescription: Try Mount Eden Vineyards “Estate” Chardonnay. No secret to California wine cognoscenti, Mount Eden’s “Estate” chardonnay (there’s also another bottling from purchased grapes) is arguably California’s single greatest chardonnay.

Grown at the 2,000-foot elevation in the Santa Cruz Mountains south of San Francisco, this is chardonnay as Burgundians understand it: dense, rich, laced with a stony minerality, and capable of aging beautifully. The 2002 vintage is the latest in a string of successes from this privileged property. It tastes like no other California chardonnay. Indeed, in a blind tasting many tasters (present company included) usually murmur something like “Puligny-Montrachet” or another hallowed Burgundy locale. It’s a steal for its quality at $34.95.

GIGONDAS 2001, DOMAINE DU PESQUIER Gigondas is a village in the southern Rhone that only became a separate appellation in 1971. Before that it was entitled to simple Cotes du Rhone status.

But Rhone insiders knew that the grenache grown in around the village of Gigondas was much superior to mere Cotes du Rhone. Indeed, producers in neighboring Chateauneuf du Pape also would regularly (and quite illegally) add Gigondas wine to their own wines.

This stunningly good red from Domaine du Pesquier shows you why. Composed of 75% grenache noir, 20% syrah, and 5% mourvedre, Domaine du Pesquier’s 2001 Gigondas is an exceptionally refined wine. It sees virtually no oak and needs not a stick of it. This is a pure play of a red wine, filled with grenache’s signature berry scents and tastes with added backbone from syrah and mourvedre. It’s a remarkable red for the money: $23.95.