A Master of Wine’s white wine recommendations at Costco!

😆😆😆 Hi, Ted! How are you? Good, thanks. How are you? I'm good You know what season it is now? It's Christmas season No It's crab season! Yeah, it's crab season! And I know you love crab I love crab It's also white wine season When we get the crab Yeah, exactly So I plan to go to Costco in a few hours So I wonder if you'd be interested in going there I am interested in going to Costco I shop at Costco Now, for the viewers, I am not employed by Costco I'm not getting any money from Costco You are too expensive to be employed by Costco I don't know about that But they do have a very nice selection of wines And they have wonderful king crabs Yum Yeah, so shall we go there together? We're gonna go there together And I also would like to show our viewers how a great master of wine Not a usual master of wine A great master of wine chooses good wines at Costco I'm more than happy to oblige But there is a small rule Yes, what is the rule? So there is no budget for king crab So you can buy as much as you want But there is a budget for wines Because usually for viewers, there is a certain budget And the budget will be $200 That's fine And actually, when I go to Costco And I buy wines I'm buying wines in the $8 to $30 range for the most part Occasionally something more expensive Okay, so that must be sufficient for two of us It should be sufficient Just barely Just barely, exactly Okay, then, shall we go? Let's go! Here we are at Costco Yeah, exactly And we're gonna do a little shopping Uh-huh, a little shopping A little shopping What I'd like to do first Before I put wines in my basket Is just do a quick surveillance To see what they have And then on the second round, we'll put wine in the basket That sounds very well organized I'm organized Shall we do it? Yeah So these are all reds Largely domestic That wine that we won't mention Generally, Costco's got a very good selection Of international and domestic wines It's just that you don't have as many choices as you would in a specialty wine shop That said, the prices are very good here And the people selecting the wines I know some of them personally Are very good wine people So you know some important people? Well, I know a lot of people in the wine industry I knew it That's a candidate Shremsbury Shremsbury sparkling wine is very good Sancerre is a candidate What I was looking for, they used to have an Alsatian Riesling here That I'm not seeing And this is only a quality vine Which is not as much quality as I would like Riesling tends to go very well with crab The Craigie range, Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand, is outstanding And that will probably be one of our choices And now we come up with a whole concept Which we'll see some of Chardonnay Chardonnay, if you're dipping your crab in butter Can be a reasonable choice As long as it's not too... Oaky I knew the answer This is a very old producer of a wine in California, Morton Ray And I had this and this was very well balanced And this might very well be one of our wines Okay Sonoma Coutriere is a richer style But that said, is balanced for a richer style That may be very well one of our wines Uh-huh It's quite rare to hear You're saying that you recommend some richer style white wine Well, if it's balanced The key is balance Oh, this is outstanding Though what's interesting, this is their top of the line, Sonoma Coutriere And it's more oaked This is outstanding if you hold the wine in your cellar for a couple of years Then it's world class For a couple of years? For a couple of years Our purpose is, though, for our crab tomorrow It may be a little too rich I see And the value is a good value Yeah, it's inexpensive Yeah, Chalk Hill is a classic Classic? What do you mean by being classic? You know, it's been around for a good amount of time High quality, tends to be on the expensive side In terms of sparkling wine from California Rotorer Estate is also very good Could go very well with crab And as you know, you and I both love Blanc de Blanc Blanc de Blanc So we had the Blanc de Noir back there I love this wine This will be one of our wines You said you love Schremsberg Blanc de Blanc I do, I love it All right, strong recommendation I love this wine, but at $124, it's out of our price range What? Oh, it's a Belle Epoque Yes This Rotorer, vintage Rotorer is a beautiful wine It may be a bit out of our price range It's Californian It's Californian, yes But it's the top of the line from Rotorer A champagne house in 2013, so it's vintage That's the reason why it is more expensive than champagne Right, but about the same price What is interesting to me is probably the person working here doesn't know about wine Perrier-Jouet, Louis Roderer I know Perrier-Jouet, Louis Roderer Somebody has made a mistake in stocking And then there's a whole sea now of less expensive everyday wines And some of which are very good value But I want something special and delicious with our crab, don't you? I agree, I totally agree And I think these are all reds So we're not going to have red wine with our crab No The Clicquot we've tasted before, which we've really liked Yeah, I like it Some of the Kirkland wines are very good value But again, for the purpose of this tasting, we'll come back and taste these again We're going to get higher up the food chain Yeah, not today Not today See you next time, Kirkland Sauvignon Blanc Let me get a basket and let's spend some money Okay So today's budget is $200 for wine and no limit for king crab Okay, so we have the wine king and we'll soon be getting king crab Wine king crab, wine king crab Probably we need a box, an empty box, no? Your wish, sir, is my command And we came here at a time we're close to closing so it's relatively quiet Okay, so where were we? I would like to get one Sauvignon Blanc One Sauvignon Blanc This Craigie Range Sauvignon Blanc is my choice Okay Okay, so we've now spent $16 I would like a better Riesling than that But I'm not finding it No, I believe this is the only Riesling for today, right? Only Riesling for today I've not had this Pinot Gris Etude It should not be oaked But that is not always the case in California So let's hold this as a possibility I mean, you would think by the shape of the bottle that this would not be an oaked wine But we're not sure You can get that kind of information from the shape of the bottle Well, generally, this is a Alsace or German style bottle And generally, those wines are not oaked So if this is a Pinot Gris in this kind of bottle I'm assuming it's meant to be in a style similar to Alsace Oh, right This can be the winemaker's intention That's the winemaker's intention So we may come back and get that Okay We are going to get this Martin Rae Chardonnay Which is only $12.49 And again, as we did with tasting a while back Sometimes less expensive wines are going to be less oaked And sometimes that can work better with food Clean and crystal clear But that all said, we are also going to get the Sonoma Coutrere The regular bottle, not their top Coutrere Because that isn't meant to be aged And we're going to drink it tomorrow Yeah, exactly. I can't wait Okay, so now we're up to about $45 The Schramsberg Blanc de Blanc is one of my favorite California sparkling wines So now that's going to bring us up a little over $100 So $30? Yeah, so we're about $105 Should we try the vintage Rotarer Estate? Why not? This now brings us to $150 And I think... Is that enough wine? Enough wine? Five bottles? Yeah, or should we get one more? Let's get one more Okay, so let's go back Because we already have two bottles of sparkling wine I love the Tartanger It's a very good price Very good price for Tartanger Not even $40, it's under $40 I don't know, should we call that our last one? Yeah, let's do it So that took us what? 10 minutes? 10 minutes, exactly If you have a choice to get just one more still white wine, what would you choose? What I would really... Oh, it would be... Did we pick up the Etude? Yeah, I'd like to try it Let's get the Etude and try it Alright, so it took less than 10 minutes Less than 10 minutes So at that rate, I could spend about $1,200 an hour here But we'll need to come back another day and do the inexpensive wines And also to do the reds Okay, so now we're off to find crab Yeah, wine king crab So we have crab here We have plenty of crab Plenty of crab So how much crab do we need? I need quite a lot Well, Bernadette was saying that we need crab for 10 people Because you are about 6 people I'm 2 or 3, maybe 12 people, I don't know So which one should we get, Jay? Yeah, good ones I'd love to have this kind of thing The claw Claw, oh, wow, that's a big claw Yeah, as opposed to a Santa Claus Is it a rhyme? It's a little rhyme Take it Okay We're looking for some big claws for Jay Yeah, exactly This one, yeah Yeah, wow, Santa Claus Is this enough or should we get one more? Let's get one more One more I don't want to come back tomorrow If we are having lunch Let's do it All right Okay So in a brief period of time, we got ourselves wine and crab That's true Let's go Please subscribe and leave a like This is what hell would be like The setup with no glasses, the bottles closed, no plates, the food covered No, you're very good at it, baby That is true