Pointless Fruit

Or should the title read "Faulty Advertising". I hate that we have to buy wine blind - it's rare that you get a tasting in the wine shop, and let's face it, even reading write-ups in the wine magazines and newspapers can be misleading - who is to say what agenda the critic has and what his/her personal taste is? And the lingo they use...... I can forgive critics for hiding "okay" wines (they have to make a living) with descriptions such as "elegant" (translation: weak) or "fruit driven" (translation: no body), but in reality they should just say: "this is an OK wine, if it costs less than 10 bucks, drink it with pizza on a tuesday night" and we would have no pretensions and would enjoy it for what it is.
Which brings me to tonight's wine. The Ferngrove, Shiraz, Frankland River, W.Australia, 2003 promises to be a good wine - it has the usual marketing stuff - a nice label and the almost obligatory "Gold Medal" sticker on the front of the bottle (this one was for the world famous (ha ha) "Qantas wine show of western Australia", in a town called Mt. Barker). It won "class 18" - maybe it was the only wine entered in class 18.
Anyway, it pisses me off that they get away with what they say on their back label: "Black plums, licorice and spice on the nose" and "concentrated palate with dark fruit flavours and a fine, long finish". Excuse me. It smells like your average red wine and tastes lightly fruity, and that's it. No "spice", or "licorice", or "concentrated" or "dark fruit", and certainly NO long finish (what is a "fine" finish anyway??).
The verdict: Okay.
Value: crap for the money at $18. And what really pisses me off was that I believed their marketing and thought it would be a nice concentrated thick shiraz - instead I get pointless fruit (by this I mean I can get fruity flavours from fruit juice a lot cheaper and minus the alchohol...so why spend $18?). And, because I believed their hype, I bought 3 bottles and have to get rid of the other two without thinking about how much they cost....

cheers!!