Value-driven Rhône-Style Red Wines from Santa Barbara

Hello, hello, hello! Welcome back to Exotic Wine Travel. I am your host, Matthew Horky. Hi, I'm Shireen Tan. Nice to meet you. Welcome back to the show today. Today we have a cool show today. We have Santa Barbara Red Wines, value wines. Wines, I'm going to talk about value, under 25 US dollar retail, although I've seen all these wines, I think on WineSearcher for under $20. Yeah, $19.90, $18.90. So you ready to get into this? Some wines that you actually really like. So before we get started, I want to let you know that this video has not been paid for in any way, shape, or form. But if you like these videos, if they add value to your life, check out our guide to the wines of Santa Barbara. Sipping Santa Barbara. Recommended wines and producers. It's available on Amazon, Kindle, PDF, Moby E-Pub. I'll put that in the description box. We have these three wines here. All, from the look of it, yeah, all Rhone grapes. So I'm excited about that. We poured them, we Coravin them, using our Coravin Model 2 Elite. Thank you to Coravin for sending us a sample unit to test. We poured them into these beautiful Gabriel Gold Edition glasses. You want to show? I love how this, I mean, I really love swirling wine. This is very delicate. These are actually loiter than Zolto Universals. We have a discount code for these glasses for Gabriel Glass Stemware at the end of the video. I'll put it in the screen. You ready to get started? All right. First wine up. So we have all, these are all, these wines all have Syrah in them, which is pretty cool. A grape that's doing extremely well in Santa Barbara County. The first we have, one of the maestros with Syrah. We have Beckman Vineyards, Cuvée Le Bec, 2015. This is Grenache, Syrah, Mouvedre, and Cunois. So GSM with Cunois. I've, on this website, I think it's 22, 25 US dollars, although I have seen this retail for below 20. Let's take a look at this. This was aged in neutral oak. This vintage has a little bit more Grenache in it. This is the wine he produces the most of. People that like big, rich, fruity wines are really going to like Beckman Vineyards, like my dad. He loves, he loved that Beckman Grenache. So let's give this a go. GSM's, if you're not familiar, some famous GSM's around the world. The Rhone's, from Southern Rhone, Chateauneuf-du-Pape, come to mind, Priorat. Some beautiful wines. Let's give this a smell. What do you think so far, Farah? Very brightly correct. I mean, I think I might be, you know, I'm pretty sure I will be able to guess it's like Grenache or GSM if I smell this. Exactly what you would expect. I'm impressed. Beckman, you know, I have been tough on some of their wines in the past. I'm not gonna lie. And the wines that we've tasted on the show so far have not been too sweet. They've been really, really nice. Ripe. Red Cherry. Berry Tart. Earth, White Pepper, Berry Tart. A little bit of chocolate. That's a little bit of toastiness to it, like um, like a charred, a charred meat smell to it too. It doesn't smell like an inexpensive wine though, to me. No. It smells really high quality. Let's give it a go. I'm impressed. I haven't had this vintage before. What do you think? Like roast meat and berry pie in a bottle. Yeah, it's very Cote du Rhone village-esque to me. Uh, spicy. The wood comes in, like I said, I'm very sensitive to wood. The wood comes out strong. Not overly bearing by any stretch of the word, but nice. Meaty, fruity, white pepper. Anything else you want? I love the aroma in this. So you like this one? Yeah, I like the aroma a lot. I'm pretty high on this too. Uh, for me, easily 4.0. Actually, I'm gonna go 4.1 out of 5 on Vovino. That's what I would probably put the score as on my Vovino account. I think it's delicious. Pretty good, right? It's really good. I'm gonna even take a little bit. There's a bit of a cherry cola finish to it too. A lot of flavors. Yeah. Nice start. That's nice. That would go good with the meatloaf we had for lunch. Quite a bit of tendons. Let's go. Next up, we have the Stoltman. Para Maria, uh, de los de colotes. But Para Maria. That's what it's known as. 22 U.S. dollars. 2016, 85% Syrah, 15% Petit Verre d'Eau. Very cool story. Stoltman, a producer we like and respect very much. Maria is their crew leader, uh, that helps, you know, leads the crew that harvests the grapes. And they have a partnership with her, so her family gets 50%. It's a 50-50 partnership. It's cool. They also do a wine where they give 50% of proceeds to their vineyard workers. Responsible. Good for them. 22 U.S. dollars, although I've seen it, uh, I've seen it for under 20 at WineSearcher. And also, 2017 Wine Enthusiast Editor's Choice wine. Nine months in French oak. Let's give it a smell. I smell a lot of Petit Verre d'Eau. Whoa, that's very, it's violet for me. You pick up violets? Yeah, yeah. I'm impressed. The color is dark. Dark, bloody dark color. Okay, um, raspberry, blackberry, Syrah-ness to it. Bloody. Anything else? I don't get a pepper as much. Syrupy. I like this a lot. I like the note. First of all, the note is very pretty on this wine. This reminds me of the... Peppery. Ah, I can't remember what it's called. The Bissono wine. The basic Bissono wine. The Bissono, uh, Poggio something. Basic, yeah. I can't remember. But anyways, this is very good wine, right? For this price point, this is a wine that's easily gonna score 90 plus points. I think it did a couple 90 point scores. Wine Enthusiast, blah blah blah. Um, this is really good stuff for a cheap, young wine, don't you think? Mm-hmm. Ready to drink now, but a lot of potential to age. It's got the Syrah-ness in it. If you like a little bit of vanilla from the wood, yeah, a little bit. Not too much. A little bit of meatiness, blackberry, violets, medium finish. Same thing. Which one do I prefer? Actually, 4.0, 4.1, I think I would go on Vovino. I like this just a tad more. Okay. What do you like? What do you prefer so far? Personal preference? Blackberry. You prefer, okay. Okay, let's move on here. One legendary producer, the oldest Syrah producer in America, the third winery established in Santa Barbara after Prohibition, I believe. Zacamesa Syrah, a state-grown and bottled 2014, 25 US dollars. This wine is consistently vintage after vintage, one of our favorite values. You can never go wrong with this wine. For a moment, hold on. I am excited about this. Oh, our first wine ever from Santa Barbara County was a Zacamesa Syrah, actually. So let's give this a go. I am very excited about this Zacamesa producer where a lot of legendary winemakers have come from. Adam Tolmach from the Ojai Vineyard, Jim Clendenin from Au Bon Climat. I think Andrew Murray worked there. So many legendary producers worked at Zacamesa at some point in time. Very nice. Those are dry herbs, dry thyme. These are more fruity. This one is more herbal to me. Green herbs. For me, dry herbs. Thyme is more peppery. Thyme, you hit it on the head. Darker fruit. Blackberry. Black cherry. Not so peppery on the nose, but we'll see what's on the mouth. Zacamesa, to me, the wines are always clean, very polished efforts. Let's give it a go. Mmm. Yeah, it's not very spicy, but you still get a bit of black pepper notes. Stangy. Funny, huh? This is 2014, but I'm getting a little bit of leathery notes to it already. That is four years old wine. Almost four years. So what are you thinking about this so far? You love this wine. Vintage after vintage. Yeah. This vintage, what? You still love it. I like all the flavor profile coming together. You get herbaceous notes, you get savory, you get fruit. It's really tangy. Some Syrah, almost to me, get like this orange citrus peel. Okay. So how would I organize this? Well, these two are fruitier. Would be very easy to go. I mean, I think a lot of people would like both of these wines. I could see these wines going really well with meats too as well, right? Because they have a certain meanness, savoriness to them. This is a little bit more herbal. Dried oats. Yeah. Anything else that you want? I'm very, very fond of this because like I said earlier, all the flavor profiles are coming together. On top of that, I don't really get an orange or rind flavors, but I think it's that lift. Like you get your black fruit and your red fruit. So it's a very good balance of both. All good wines. I must say for me, if I had to score Vervino 4.2, they're on the same range. 4.0 to 4.2 range. All wines that are... I would be guessing looking at if critics were scoring them somewhere 89, 91 points, some of the range. Good job for value in Santa Barbara County. Exactly. Good job. Santa Barbara, for me, I love it. That's why I love it so much. It kind of has it all. You've got the value-driven wines. You've got brilliant white wines from different types of grapes. Brilliant Pinot Noir, Syrah, even Bordeaux blends, huh? Yeah, for each wine, like 2014, you're paying $25 for it. It's a beautiful wine. So guys, check out these wineries. I will put their links in the description box. These three producers have a little bit more volume, so their prices are low and you can find them with national distribution, I think. Excuse me. I'm going to put the discount code for the Gabriel Glass Stand Art Edition and Alpha Decanter up on the screen. You get 15% off. We are not affiliates. It's just an offer that we extend you do something nice, right? I guess. Check out our guide to the wines of Santa Barbara, Sipping Santa Barbara. Recommended wines and producers. And guys, if you like this video, please subscribe to our YouTube channel, Exotic Wine Travel. I will see you at the next episode.