To be a wine journalist in New York is a blessing and a curse.The blessing is that winemakers from all over come here to show off their wares.The curse is that even worthy wines too easily get lost in the deluge of endless pourings. And yet, by force of distinctive personality, certain wines still manage to make their mark.What sets a wine apart from its peers? For me, it’s almost always something unexpected in its style or flavor profile – a French burgundy marked by California ripeness, for example, or a California chardonnay laced with French minerality. To paraphrase the late Justice Potter Stewart on pornography, you’ll know a memorable wine when you taste it. Below are 10 affordable wines that engraved themselves in my memory in 2005. All except for the last wine (an admitted blowout) are reasonably priced and still available for purchase in the city.

1. BOURGOGNE ROUGE 2003, JOSEPH FAIVELEY ($17) Basic red burgundy is a dicey category. Pay $15 and, as likely as not, prepare to pucker up.Here, thanks to an ultraripe vintage, is a strikingly yummy exception that brims with dark and dense pinot noir power. Not a complex or subtle wine, but with so much flavor, who cares?

2. YARDEN KATZRIN 2000, ISRAEL ($100 AT SKYVIEW WINES) From the wide open spaces of the Golan Heights, where epic tank battles once raged, comes this ringer for a classic Pauillac (think Lynch-Bages or even Mouton-Rothschild). It smells of cedar and spice, yet it tastes of currants and plums, with underlays of tobacco. It’s young, but this wine is ready to upgrade a lamb roast.

3. SIMONSIG CHENIN BLANC 2005, STELLENBOSCH, SOUTH AFRICA ($8.99 AT 67 WINES) The promise of South African chenin blanc is fulfilled in this wine, which is fresh as a meadow breeze in spring. Quite potent with floral, fruit salad, and honeyed flavors, yet light on its feet, chenin blanc doesn’t get much better than this – anywhere except in the Loire Valley, that is. A wine like this is proof that quality need not be costly.

4. CRAGGY RANGE SOPHIA 2002 ($37.95 AT SHERRY-LEHMANN) All the showy at tributes of a lovely, grooving New Zealand red are here: gleaming dark color, purity of aromas and fruit flavors, enlivening acidity, and supportive fine tannins. An intriguing note of root ginger pervades this wine and jumps it up from fruit bomb status. Steve Smith, virtuoso viticulturist and winemaker, has done it all with Sophia.

5. CHATEAU LA NERTHE 2003, CHATEAUNEUF-DU-PAPE ($39.86 AT POP’S WINE & SPIRITS) Southern Rhone Valley white wines, unlike their red counterparts, are too often heavy, unfresh, and charmless. It makes me wonder, what’s the point of white Chateauneuf-du-Pape? La Nerthe Blanc 2003 is the answer. It’s plump, but it steps lightly and carries an offbeat flavor profile haunted by notes of almond and sweet orange. You’ll never mistake it for chardonnay.

6. CLOS DE LOS SIETE 2003, MENDOZA, ARGENTINA ($19.99 AT UNION SQUARE WINE & SPIRITS) What made this wine memorable was how it strayed beyond the norms of muscular – and sometimes muscle-bound – Argentinian malbec. The bright but not deep color is a tip-off to a sorbet-like flavor profile of blueberry and cranberry edged with menthol. That may not sound attractive, but master oenologist Michel Rolland puts it all together suavely.

7. LEEUWIN ESTATE CHARDONNAY 2001, MARGARET RIVER, AUSTRALIA ($85 AT ZACHYS) Neither fat and oakey nor lean and mean, this wine breaks out from the usual chardonnay profiles. The lively, lemony, and agile nose beckons. Brilliant and balanced in the mouth, the wine is not weighty but comes at you swiftly.

8. DOMINUS ESTATE NAPA 2002 ($99.99 AT ASTOR WINES) For every hyped $100 wine, there are others in the shadows delivering close to the same quality at a fraction of the price. Or so I normally feel. But this Dominus, a classic bordeaux blend, is chewy, rich, and poised in a way that reminds me that sometimes you need to pay up to get thoroughbred quality.

9. PIO CESARE BAROLO ORNATO 2000 ($93 AT ITALIAN WINE MERCHANTS) No surprises delivered here, only a lesson in how singular a very great barolo can be. The nose is of porcini mushrooms and fresh fallen leaves. In the mouth, forget about fruitiness. This wine is all about how the nebliolo grape transmutes itself into the essence of autumn earth wood and smoke.There’s a velvet texture, an underpinning of fine tannins, and echoes in the mouth long after it’s gone. Pio Cesare seems not to be ranked with barolo’s top producers, but a wine like this need bow to no other.

10. CHATEAU PALMER 1961, MARGAUX ($2,000 AT PARK AVENUE LIQUOR) If a wine can be magic, here’s my candidate. From early on, it was clear that this thirdgrowth bordeaux, down the road from Chateau Margaux, had lept to the forefront of the great 1961 vintage. Its ripe and sweet aroma is legendary. When I drank this 45-year-old wine in Macau last May, it hadn’t even begun to slow down. It was a privilege to be at the table with such an elixir.