Reacting to Wineking | Bourbon Barrel-Aged Red Wine & FIRST GROWTH Bordeaux

I know. You should be ashamed of yourselves. Jesus Christ. Hello, hello, hello. Welcome back to Exotic Wine Travel. Since you guys like the reactions to wine scenes and films so much, I'm gonna do another video. This time reacting to the biggest wine YouTube channel, Wine King. When I started this YouTube journey, I really thought there was a space for somebody of wine to break through and become a huge creator on the platform. I was actually hoping that would be me. I actually have an article about my last six years on YouTube. I'll put that in the description box below. But this channel, Wine King, started to break through last year. It's run by a Korean guy named Jay Lee, Korean guy that lives in California. So I guess, hey, we have some similarities, right? And he started out with his two master of wine friends, Pat Farrell and Peter Kauf. I actually knew Pat personally, had dinner with him a few times, been on different wine trips with him. He's left and now it's just Jay and Peter. Yay! When they started to break out, I was a little bit jealous. I wanted that to be me, darn it! But at the end of the day, I'm actually really happy for him because the content is entertaining, it's raw, it's funny. Run like hell! And it's not overproduced. And when I've seen some of the viewers from that channel come over to my channel as well, I think there's space for other big wine creators on the platform. So let's take a look at some of their videos. Wine King uploads once or twice a week and there's two videos that I thought were really funny, two of their more recent videos. One was on the whole bourbon barrel aged wine, this whole kind of trend phenomenon that's taking over the US. And as you could guess, they didn't like the wines very much. What is it, Peter? Number three? That horrible ersatz oak flavor from cheap wine. Ersatz? Ersatz, not real. Not real? Yeah, you know, chips and staves and essences. Oh, it's horrible. I love when Jay gives Peter bad wine, he goes off on a tangent. That always makes the best shows. I'm always leaving comments saying, leave Peter bad wine, give Peter bad wine. I'm not a big fan of bourbon barrel aged wine that is, and Peter will explain that, you know, those woody flavors is not from the bourbon barrels because those bourbon barrels are old, they're not gonna give off any flavors anymore. It's a marketing ploy, guys. It's a marketing ploy. My favorite is when Peter gets upset, he wants to give winemakers the death penalty. My worst one, shameless pandering, I called it. Dead sentence for the winemaker. Only one time of death, that's the word, multiple times. And a terrible score. People will love it, is what upsets me about this wine. Peter is definitely right. People love this style of wine, especially in the US. The big fruity wines, high in alcohol, have a little bit of sweetness and vanilla tones. It's so funny because you have these type of wine drinkers, and then you have more geeky people, or I guess people that have more experience in wine. It's not better nor worse. We usually detest these types of flavors because to us, it doesn't resemble wine. It resembles a cookie cutter wine, a Coca-Cola wine, so to speak. And my favorite part, when Peter gets so upset. It's $15.50. Do you know what I can buy for $15? Do you know I can buy Great Muscadet for $15? Yeah, I know. I can buy spectacular wine from Rueda, Verdejo and Sauvignon Blanc for $15. I can buy South African Sauvignon Blanc that scores 90 points for $15. I know. You should be ashamed of yourselves! Jesus Christ! Peter, they are better wines! Those are the good ones. By the way, those are the good ones. Peter is definitely right. At $15, if you really know where to look, you can get some fantastic wines. Some things that Peter mentioned, Muscadet, you definitely can get some Great Muscadet at $15. I think under $15, you can find some really nice whites from Trentino Alto Adige in Italy. That's also something that we're seeking out. $15, you can also get some pretty nice drinkable Riojas from Spain, or Jumilla from the south of Spain, for that matter, if you want some bigger, fruitier wine. That's my favorite part of the show, seeing Peter get on his high horse. 15.9, yay! They won! Wine is supposed to be 13% of alcohol to keep it in balance, just so you know. Maple. Anytime they have the balls to describe a wine on the label as tasting of maple, run like hell! I totally agree. If I picked up a wine, and this is me being a wine geek, knowing a little bit more about wine, and it said the taste of maple, I would definitely, like Peter said, run like hell! This is something I think Peter says that's actually quite insightful. I think it's fair for us to say that those that showed the most wood were the least good. The most wood, the least good. Right? It's a good saying. Let's... All together now. The most wood, the least good. That's definitely my palate. Some people like the taste of wood flavors. For me, personally, I like the structure of oak. I like when it adds some seasoning. I like whites that are barrel-fermented or aged in oak. But when the oak flavor dominates the fruit or dominates the wine, it really turns me off. It really bothers me. So Peter, I'm with you on this. The less wood, the least good. I think we got another good Peter rant here coming up. So between those two, I mean, otherwise, Jay and I had everything the same. So there's your quality check. Tasted blind. You guys do not have to be subjected to my rants. But if it's been of any help to you, good. Because it was of no f***ing help to me. Peter's the kind of guy I want to sit down and taste with. I'm hoping that next time I get to America, I can get out there and actually taste with him. I love when he drops the f-bomb. Have you ever noticed when you drop it? You know, people that... and art to drop an f-bomb at an appropriate time as long as you're not overdoing it it's quite powerful it's quite funny. This other video that I liked that they recently released is about tasting the first growths of Bordeaux blind the most expensive wines in Bordeaux and I have to give Peter a lot of credit here Jay the wine king knew what the wines were Peter did not for a master of wine to be willing to taste blind on camera for everybody to see double blind at that not knowing what the wines even were I have to give him so much credit I taste with a lot of masters of wine when I was traveling a lot before the global crisis I don't know if I've met a lot of MWs that be willing to taste blind on camera for everybody to see so Peter hats off to you on this one so today we are gonna taste five red wines all right those five red wines are from one greater area one same greater area from a single greater area yeah and they may be may not be from the same sub zones okay got it and that's it that's it double blind tasting is incredibly difficult you have to have this library not only do you have to be a really good taster you have to have an incredible memory you have to have this Rolodex of all wines that you've tasted you know thousands and thousands of thousands of wine ready to pick from your brain so you can try to relate to that and you see it all the time people get tricked all the time when tasting blind this video to me was actually really impressive so I looked at the wines and smelled them before I even tasted them mm-hmm and it seemed to me that there were not any one or two had slightly deeper red colors mm-hmm but for the most part there were some earth tones and they were not really deep red wines mm-hmm okay so I looked at those and I said okay what kind of wines would give you those colors potentially I also thought that the ones had a little bit of age on them mm-hmm so I thought okay what could we possibly be looking at here the first thing that jumped out at me was a bunch of of Sangiovese based wines from Tuscany some Bordeaux something from Piedmont it seems a little obvious to a lot of us that drink wine because we knew what the wines were that he narrowed them down like that to Tuscany Bordeaux or Piemonte Italy but I'm telling you when you're tasting blind in the moment especially you're in front of a camera that's really really impressive I do agree Bordeaux tends to have a little bit of earthiness to it we're tasting blind I think the only Bordeaux that stand out to me are Merlot based vines in St. Amelia in the right bank maybe Palmyra a little bit for the plushness but but all the stuff the Cabernet based wines on the left bank that's really really tough so the question then is how do I come down on choosing it the color of the wine there are more than a few wines three or four of the five wines have got deeper ruby which is what worried me for a diagnosis of Sangiovese it's really for me not easy I would have thought how can one struggle between Chianti, Sangiovese, and Bordeaux also the fact I mean he's really professional you can tell even though he's dropping f-bombs and stuff like that color color something that I tend to not really look into that much usually I just look at it to see if the wine has some age on it certain grapes like Sangiovese like Peter said like Nebbiolo give off a certain color with this kind of orange rimming on the edges but then this is what really I thought was really impressive without a great deal of confidence I'm going to come down on the side of Bordeaux great for two reasons one because the colors are slightly more ruby and then because there is a certain amount of in the legs a certain amount of extract that is true and I'm used to Sangiovese having zero extract but none of these had very deep extract again impressive and you can even say he was very open saying you know without not 100% confident but he didn't think that it was Bordeaux all right yeah they're all from Bordeaux okay now we have to pick sub-zones yeah sub-zones that's tough you know I'm looking for the classic zones five zones five those five zones uh-huh but you know could it be a centimillion and a Pomerol I don't think like I pick up predominantly Merlot based wines yeah that's the only thing I feel like I could pick out blind I've done Bordeaux blind tasting before I don't think that I think that Pomerol and centimillion do stand out but this is to pick out all the different zones on the left bank okay so are we looking at the five classic areas mm-hmm of the left bank I think that's where I'm gonna go okay am I wrong you're right yeah they all seem to me to be largely Cabernet Sauvignon based left bank wines ah oh now it's scary that there's one from each of those zones because now I'm starting to look for for first growths this is impressive I don't have a Rolodex in my mind of all the Appalachians on the left bank of Bordeaux I was supposed to be there last year before Covid shut the world down which made me upset I was supposed to be in Bordeaux for a week I would expect the most pedestrian wine and the one to be the chunkiest and the most four-square to come from Sainte-Esteve mm-hmm however the one with the best perfume and all the rest of it I would expect to come from Margot the most complete wine the one that's got it all I would expect to come from Poyac the one that is the most elegant even sort of tending to the lightness and trying to coax the fruit out of it I would put in the grass I see you're enjoying this I love it I do like Poyac too I do like Poyac for me Poyac has more tobacco type flavors this to me was also impressive picking out what wines are actually from which Appalachians really impressive it's an interesting sort of thing it's like Goldilocks but it doesn't do any one thing the best but the package for Poyac is the best number four mm-hmm I think it's Poyac I mean is Margot number four yeah yeah I think it's Margot too and then number five back to Poyac these are serious wines Jay yeah yeah and what do you think about the number four aside from the fact that I think it's Margot mm-hmm really impressive I don't know a lot of people I don't know a lot of people that have that kind of tasting ability in memory really impressive so probably we should wait for another two or three hours no no I think what we should do is finish this so that we can finish this if I was tasting those kind of wines that's exactly why I'd be saying to you let's finish up the video so I can get out and drink these wines so let me know in the comments below have you watched wine King before do you like that type of video do you like to see tasting videos or do you like more vlog style or do you like something else I'd love to hear from you and if you're thinking about what video to watch next won't you check out my reactions to wine scenes in film I'll put that right up there have a nice one I'll see you soon