Wine-Pro Answers 20 Questions: When to decant? Is my wine "off"? And more...

Hey everybody, Vince from V is for Vino wine show here. It's time for another edition of 20 questions. All right, we did one of these a few months ago and everybody liked it, where essentially I just took your questions and answered them one by one. All the questions were submitted by our Vino VIP members. And so if you want a chance to ask questions the next time around, make sure to join Vino VIP. You get a whole bunch of benefits, including stuff like this. Without any further ado, let's get right into it. Peter asks, are red wines better served at room temperature or slightly chilled? Such a good question because I actually think it's really, really, really important, that's three reallys, for your wine drinking experience to have wine at the proper temperature. It's a lot of the reason when you go to a tasting room and then you come home, the wine is not as good as it was when you were there. It has to do oftentimes with the temperature. I actually did a nerd lab about this and I'll post a link to it if I can. But the answer is red wines should be slightly below what we consider American room temperature. Anywhere from about 55 to 65 degrees, whereas American room temperature is closer to like 70. And so you can do this a couple ways. You can have a wine fridge and you can set it to what you want it at. But an easier way, if you don't have that, is to just put your red wines in the fridge for about 30 minutes, your standard refrigerator, for 30 minutes before you wanna drink them and then take them out. So that would be my advice. And for white wines, the reverse. If they're at fridge temp and they're stored in the fridge, take them out 30 minutes before you wanna drink them. Red wines and white wines are actually served best when they're almost closer to the same temperature than you would think. But it just makes the wine, it tones back the alcohol. A lot of times it brings out some of the freshness to it. It's really important. And the rule is the lighter the wine, the more chilled it should be. And the heavier the wine, the less chilled it would be. Oh, one more note about that. The reason people think red wines should be served at room temperature is because it's referring to old European castles with no insulation. That room temperature was usually pretty cold. It was in like the 60s. So that makes more sense. But now with our modern insulated homes, room temperature is actually a bit too warm. Elias, Elias or Elias, I don't know how you pronounce it, I apologize. Asks, when introducing friends into wine, where should I start? It's a good question and it's a tough question because there's a couple ways I could go with this. My first instinct is always like, man, I like to really challenge people's notions, right? So what I like to do is get super opposite wines because a lot of the times when people say, aren't into wine, their thing is just like, oh, it's just wine, it all tastes the same. That's their thing, it all tastes the same. It all tastes like red wine to me. And I always tell people, red wines taste the same in isolation, but not side by side. So if you get a really polar opposite two set of wine, let's say like a big, rich Napa Cabernet and put it right next to a Burgundy Pinot Noir or a Sangiovese Chianti from Italy. So a really dirty, earthy, tart fruit, red fruit wine in the Chianti maybe. And then a really full, tannic, black fruit, fruit forward wine next to each other with like a Cabernet. What you're doing is you're showing them like a bit of the wide world of wine. And so I think that's pretty cool. So that's the one way I would do it. But if you don't have friends that you like are even that into wine, then I would say number two, get them a wine with some residual sugar, especially a lot of times American palates like wines with a bit of residual sugar. So some New World red wines, Northern California red wines will have that. And obviously Riesling has that, right? And so that's a way for them to get into a wine that they say, you know, will help tone American palates who are used to drinks with sugar in them, you know, juice and soda and things, because wine is dry. And so the first time you have it, it's kind of weird, right? It's like having coffee black. It's why people, a lot of people like sugar in their coffee. And then the third one, I would say, if you're not gonna do something with residual sugar, is get a light fruity red, like Beaujolais. Those are just amazing wines in general. They're dynamic. They still represent terroir really well, but they're such crowd pleasers, man. There's people, there's not a lot of people who don't like that. There's also some domestic producers that do like carbonic maceration, like Stoltman does it. So, and that gives that Beaujolais character. So those would be the wines I would give for somebody new. Renee asks, what happened to create your least favorite experience while filming a show? Names and region can be changed to protect the innocent. There's been some things. I'm so, I have trouble getting too hung up on anything because I'm so grateful to be able to film and make the show. That being said, this isn't a specific incident, but I don't know why this is. Every restaurant we film at, you know, we work with our pre-production team. We talk to these entities before we ever go there and set foot in the country or the region for weeks. Restaurants, I always have the hardest time getting them to commit. And then when we show up, we will have given them a whole production schedule of like, here's, you know, when we'll film this. Here's what we'll do. Here's what we'll need from you. Every time we show up, it's like, they've never heard any of this ever in their life. I think it's just because I worked in restaurants. I know chefs are just busy and they can't focus on like something that's two weeks in advance when they're trying to plan like this week's menu, this evening's menu and work. So it just always happens that restaurant days are a bit more chaotic than some of the other days. Plus it's a live working restaurant. It's not a film studio. You know, the winery's easy. When I go to a winery, they have separate areas, private rooms. We can go kind of be out of the way, but the restaurant, oftentimes it's working. It's a regular restaurant. And so it can be a bit tough. And then on our end, it's tough because it's a challenge to film in a restaurant. Restaurant kitchens are not meant for filming and lighting. So it can be tough to find angles that make sense. It can be tough to light so that it looks good. So that's a challenge. A side note, this is a more funny story than a least favorite moment. We were in Italy one time and if you're in Europe, a lot of times you have to pay for public bathrooms. It's like a Euro or, you know, 50 cent Euro. I don't know what you call that, a Euro, 50 cent piece. You have to put it in there. It's like a vending machine almost. Well, we had, Lisa and I both had to go to the bathroom, but we only had one of the coins and I just didn't have any other coins. Otherwise I would have paid. So when Lisa, I let Lisa go first, a gentleman that I am, I let her go to the bathroom first. And then she comes out and we do this switch where we just like, okay, when the door's open, let's just switch real quick so I can get in there because we don't have another coin to pay. And these bathrooms automatically, I did not know this, they automatically clean between each person. So I get in there and the door closes and it locks and it starts spraying this water. It's like, all the way from the top to the bottom. It's some sort of disinfectant blue water. I got completely soaked. Obviously I had to change my outfit before we filmed. So that was pretty funny. All right, Chris asks, I often get confused between recommendations for decanting versus bottle breathing. How would you know which is the right choice and when would you cool the wine back to serving temp? Okay, so most bottle breathing doesn't really do much unless you've already emptied half of the bottle and there's lots of oxygen, you're not actually doing much decanting in the bottle. So if you wanna actually change the wine, you should decant. Sometimes you don't wanna change the wine. So here's what we do at a lot of restaurants sometimes. You decant the wine and you put it in the decanter for a couple hours, right? And then let's say you're doing a wine dinner, you know, and you know the wines in advance. Decant the wine in a decanter and then once it's kind of where you want it to be, put it back, funnel it back into the bottle and close it. Now it's ready to go. One, it's decanted the way you want. And two, you can put it in the fridge and get it back to serving temperature before you serve it. And then you can serve it right out of the bottle because decanters are kind of hard to pour. They're awkward. So that would be my recommendation of kind of how to do that. You can put the whole decanter in the fridge, but that's harder to time, harder to measure the temperature. So that's what we typically do in restaurants when you need to do something like that. Anthony asks, would it be possible to meet with you and your team? Anthony, I would love to meet you. I'd love to obviously meet everybody. We actually did a meet and greet in our Virginia episode. Well, while we were filming Virginia and in there, we did a meet and greet and it worked out really great. It was a lot of fun. I want to do more of those. I also have considered doing like a Views for Vino tour where we do like wine dinners in every city. That would be a little more involved. You know, people would have to buy tickets and then we'd host a wine dinner and we'd do major markets across the country. So I'd love to do that one day. In full transparency, it's just that my priority is always making episodes because that can reach the most amount of people. As much as I want to meet everybody, obviously that's hard to do that many interactions, but if I keep filming things, I can get it to everybody. But that being said, hopefully we do more of those soon. All right, Louise asks, you said in the Virginia video that you found Petit Verdot varietal wine was not common. Did you know in the Niagara region, it has many of those? No, you know, I don't know that region terribly well, but I believe you. And now that I kind of know that Petit Verdot has a lot of potential in some of those East Coast regions, it would be interesting to try them. And especially because we found out they're really age-worthy if they're done well. So I'll have to get back and try some more of those because as he mentioned, usually Petit Verdot, I talk about in a Virginia episode, it is usually done as a blend in Bordeaux blends in Bordeaux or other places across the world, but you rarely see it on its own. Virginia, I saw it and apparently they do it there too. So I will have to get there. Peter asks, I hear conflicting reasons for decanting wine. Do you decant old wines or younger wines or both and why? So the short answer is that no wine is actually gonna be, very few wines are gonna be harmed by decanting. There's one wine that would be harmed by decanting and that's a super, super old wine because those wines fall apart very quickly. They're so delicate, right? They're so fragile. But for the most part, any wine, even white wines benefit from decanting. Wines that benefit the most from decanting though are both young wines and semi-old wines. Young wines because the tannin is still very strong and oxygen, you're kind of like, what happens when the wine ages is the oxygenation from the little bit of breathing that the cork does slowly softens out the wine. But if you have a young wine that hasn't had time to do that, right? So we're kind of like speeding up that process by using a decanter and adding a lot to oxygen really quickly. It's not as good, but that's what it does. It helps it breathe, helps it become more expressive. You'll get much more out of it. And if you don't believe me, I very much encourage you to take a young tannic wine and try it and then try it in an hour. And then the other thing that you can do for old wines is you decant because they oftentimes have, one, they need to open up too, but they also have sediment in the bottom and it's not harmful, but it's something you don't want to drink. Obviously you don't want to taste all that grit. So you put it in the decanter and when you pour it out, you make sure not to pour out all the sediment. So, but I mean, white wines, particularly Chenin Blanc and Riesling often benefit very, very much from decanting. But like I said, there's not many wines that won't benefit from it. So I would say try it on all the wines if you're cool with cleaning your decanter all the time, which is kind of a pain, but it's worth it. John asks, to aerate red wines, I've been removing the cork, pouring out an ounce, replacing the cork and shaking and vigorously shaking the bottle. How crazy is this? A little crazy. It's not crazy. It probably does a little bit of something, but as I mentioned a bit earlier, you're not getting that much oxygen in there, right? I've heard of, I don't know, I actually don't know enough about this to give you an educated answer because some people I've heard of hyper decanting where they put it in like a device and they spin it, or I've seen people do it in a blender. I don't know, to me, wine is like a living, breathing product, so I'm kind of careful with it, but I could be wrong. Maybe wine is, yes, those are young wines, they're tough and durable and will benefit from that. I should do an experiment in a nerd lab. I haven't done the decanting nerd lab, actually, so maybe I'll do a hyper decanting experiment during that session and we'll see how it goes. Pierre asks, what is your opinion of the Norton grape grown in Virginia? Isn't it a varietal specific to the region? Did you have any that piqued your interest? Yeah, that was one thing. It's so tough to hit all the things in every episode and we didn't hit Norton, and I will, you know, kick myself in the butt a little bit for that. Norton was the grape that kind of Virginia was doing for a long time before it started doing Vitis vinifera grapes, like the European-style grapes, and I've heard that there, I mean, I know that there are places that still do it, and some of them they say are pretty well. I've also had somebody reach out to me a couple weeks ago and was like, you should talk about hybrid grapes. So eventually I might end up doing some, a segment or parts of an episode that don't deal with classic vinifera, European Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot, all that, because I think it is a topic worth exploring and a lot of places still grow it, and you know, there's no hard, fast rule that European grapes are the end all, be all, so yeah, might have to talk about that at some point. Darlene asks, have you thought about an episode on Michigan wines? I have, Darlene. I think our next two domestic episodes, a lot of people are hitting me up for a bunch of places. If I can pick them, and a lot of things have to happen for an episode to come together, will be Texas and Michigan. My gut says Texas will be first and Michigan second, but I don't know yet. It depends what comes together. So yeah, I hope to get there soon, and it's really beautiful up there. I saw a Gordon Ramsay episode where he did something in like Northern Michigan, and I couldn't believe, I turned it on not knowing what it is, and I was like, oh, where is this? This looks like somewhere great in Europe, and it's Michigan. I couldn't believe it, and I'm pretty close here, because I'm in Illinois, so. Kathy, how can you tell if a wine is off, quote unquote? That's a great question, actually. There's a lot of ways wines can be off, but there's some that are more common. The most common by far is something called corked, or corktaint, or TCA, it's all the same thing. And what that is is a little bacteria that gets in the cork, and then it makes its way into the wine. It's estimated that about 3% of all wines have this. You've probably definitely had a corked bottle, and maybe not even known it. It's tough to tell if a wine is corked unless it's really corked. If a wine is lightly corked, what happens is the wine will just not be very expressive. It'll just be dead, and you'll be like, oh, this wine isn't very good, which is a bummer, because now you think the winemaker isn't good, and it wasn't his fault at all, or her fault at all, it's the cork's fault. The other way, if it's really corked, it smells like wet cardboard and damp basement, and you can smell it right away. There's no saving it. Once a wine is corked, you gotta get rid of it. So that's the main way. It's the most common, by far the most common. The second way is oxygenated, and that is if the cork didn't seal properly, and too much oxygen got in there, or it wasn't, maybe it was cooked, too. That'll sometimes affect the wine, and both of those kind of smell like cooked fruit, like stewed fruit, or it starts to turn into vinegar. You also might get this if a wine has been sitting at a restaurant, and they opened it three, four days ago, and it didn't pour a lot, and buy the glass of it, and then you get one of those. That'll also have that same kind of vinegary slash oxygenated smell. So those are the main ones. There's a bunch of other ones. Reductive is one that happens often, where it smells like sulfur, or kind of rotten eggs, but a lot of times that'll blow off if you just swirl and wait for a bit. If a super reductive wine can actually just kind of resolve itself on its own with some time, not really. Old wines, by the way, going back to oxidative, old wines can sometimes be like past their prime, and they're not bad, but they're just, they've had too much oxygen exposure. Not all wines, most wines are not meant to age, right? So that can also happen. Neil asks, what is orange wine? Can it be age-worthy? Yeah, orange wine is white wine that's made like a red wine. Is that a confusing sentence? Orange wine is white grapes, but they macerate on their skins, which is typically how we make red wine. So red wine actually, if you just press red grapes, and you made a wine, it's white juice. So for instance, champagne uses red grapes often, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier. But you don't know that because they don't let it sit on the skins. So think about that process, but for white wines, if you let the white wines, the white grapes, sit on their skins, it takes an orange color, and that's why it's called orange wine, not because it has anything to do with oranges. Though it does, coincidentally enough, oftentimes have orangey flavors, like tangerine and orange flavors in there. A lot of new, trendy winemakers are making orange wine, but it's actually very, very old. I think it goes back to some of the earliest winemaking practices in Georgia and Slovenia. But they're really good wines, they're fun. Can they age? Yes, in theory, because they have tannin, because they sit on the skins, and the tannin comes from skins. Tannin and acid together make age-worthy wines. In practice, a lot of winemakers are making orange wines in a natural style. Those wines, unless they're done really well, don't age as well. They'll kind of fall apart and meant to be consumed young. So like any wine, the answer is it depends. But yes, in theory, they can age. Denise, you've been to a lot of amazing places. If you could go anywhere in the world and do anything you wanted for your next vacation, what would be your dream vacation and why? Yeah, I really wanna go to Japan. I don't care if I do an episode, like I wanna do a sake episode, so I can go there and do an episode, or I'm just gonna go for vacation, Lisa and I. I just wanna see it. I tend to wanna go on vacation, not the places we go for the show. Like, I wanna go somewhere either tropical, because I can't make wine there, it's too hot, too humid, or I wanna go somewhere in a different culture, Asia or, I don't know, Africa or somewhere like that, like kinda more adventure vacations. I'm not a sit-at-the-beach guy. I'll go to tropical places, but I wanna do the adventure things. I wanna hike and see monkeys and stuff. I'm not a sit-at-the-beach or sit-at-the-pool at a luxury place kinda guy. I can do that for like one day and then I get bored. Teresa asks, how do you choose your locations? Yeah, it's kind of a magic combination of a lot of things. It is, I start with where do I wanna go and what tells a good narrative, and also what's a good balance for the season. I didn't used to have this luxury, by the way. I used to have to take whatever we could get. Now, we can kinda start to pick. So I wanna make a good balance of seasons, different places, different grapes, different concepts so that you're not getting the same episode three, four times in a row. And then the second thing is I need to start reaching out to, we operate usually working with wine boards or wineries or tourism boards. I need to see if I can put that together from that aspect and get it all together. So those are like the two factors of how I pick. I don't have preference of like where we go, like, oh, I wanna do this wine. I mean, obviously there's wines and places I wanna do, but it's more about the viewer. Like, I haven't been to Tuscany yet, right? We have to do a Tuscany episode because it's so important in the wine world. So that's gonna happen. But then if I'm doing a Tuscany episode and I'm pushing that, I'm like, all right, well, I also wanna do a domestic episode, my domestic anyway, US, because a lot of people are here and they like to see places that are in the US. Then I wanna add in, okay, let's do somewhere off the wall. Let's do somewhere that people don't think of right away because Tuscany is so iconic. So what's the opposite of that? So now that's my thinking is like, how do I balance the season between grapes and concepts and stories? So yeah, that's how we pick. Connie asks, why is caramel and cheese popcorn taste so good and did it originate in Chicago? Any white or red with it? Yeah, it's very good. I love the Chicago mix as they call it. It's caramel corn and cheese corn. It is delicious. I like it. My wife loves it. Lisa has three favorite foods and two of them are Chicago staples. Hot dogs, Chicago hot dogs, Chicago popcorn, and then she likes shrimp. So those are her favorite foods of all time. Would I pair a wine with Chicago popcorn? Probably not. But if I was gonna do one, I think you gotta go like a semi-sweet wine, like a Sauternes or something like that. Cause, well, yeah, cause you'd get, or like a tawny port because it's caramel, right? Salted caramel basically is what you'd kind of put into it. Or like a semi-sweet sherry could be good. But I don't think I'd typically, I don't think I'd go out of my way to do a popcorn wine pairing, but I could do it if I had to. Quincy asks, seeing a lot more tannat from domestic producers these days and I struggle with it a great bit as a single expression. Thoughts of aging time, breathing, and pairing would be great. Yeah, so, okay, so I haven't seen it domestically a lot. I did see it once in Virginia. So tannat, for those who don't know, is a grape that originated in France. It's made in one part in Southwest France, but it's basically from Uruguay. That's who kind of took it over and made it their thing. Though I bet there's some domestic, you know, Quincy's right, I'm sure, there's some domestic producers in America here making some tannats. It's a tough grape. So if you look on the chart of like tannin in grapes, it's like, you know, Pinot Noir down here, you know, up a bit for like Cabernet Sauvignon. And then tannat is like up here. Tannat and Sagretino, which is like an Italian grape. It is so, so drying and tannic on its own. Now, winemakers can tone that back a couple ways. A lot of them are doing like really technical, not technical, but like technological processes. Like they're adding, they're doing some sort of reverse osmosis thing in the cellar to tone back the tannin. Time is the only real thing that cures, you know, really high tannin. That's why tannic wines can age. But the problem is like with a tannin that high, how long are you gonna wait for your wines? And tannic wine can be toned back with food. So fatty food goes well with tannic wine, right? So that's another way you can use that wine. So I would say if you're struggling with it, try it with some fatty food because tannin and fat go together really well. It tones back the tannin. So like, let's say a fatty steak or something like that, or fatty cut of meat or cheese. You have a protein in the cheese, bonds kind of with the tannin, tones back both. Laura asks, what was the one bottle or experience that made you decide on a career in wine? So I think I was already into wine at this point, but it was an experience that made me be like, oh, this is a topic I need to understand way more. I don't even think I had taken my certified sommelier exam at this point, but I was into wine, I was studying it a bit, and I went to a restaurant in LA, a fine dining restaurant where my buddy worked. He's one of my mentors in the industry, actually. And he was a SOM there, the restaurant was called Malisse, it's in Santa Monica. And he paired, it was a fine dining, so mini courses, 12 of them, 14 of them, whatever it is, and he paired every course, which blew my mind. And he paired four of the courses with four different styles of Chenin Blanc. Sparkling, a bone-dry, kind of lean style, all from Marois Valley, by the way, all from the same place. A richer style, a little residual sugar and some age, and then a sweet, botrytis style. And it showed me, one, the versatility that one grape can be, even though it's from the same place. And two, if you ever had old age Chenin Blanc, it's like this amazing experience. It's rubber and lanolin and fermented fruits, and it's just a completely different wine than any white wine you've ever had. You know, so many white wines, you just taste them, and it's like, oh, it's great, but it's citrus and acid and apples. I would say acid and apples. You know, a lot of times I'll describe a lot of Pinot Grigio that way. But Chenin Blanc just will change your life if you've never had a good age Chenin Blanc. And so it showed me white wines can age, showed me versatility. It just made me really, really respect what a grape can do. So that was the experience. Luis asks, any bottle of Pinot Noir is 100% Pinot Noir, question mark? Used not by law often, but usually. So here's the deal. If you get a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, and it says Cabernet Sauvignon on the label, usually that means it has to be 75 to 85% Cabernet Sauvignon, depending on what country it's coming from and how specific the appellation is and what the rules are in the appellation. And most Cabernet Sauvignon is blended. The way a winemaker sees it, one, is they're emulating Bordeaux blends. So they're rounding out the Cabernet with Merlot or with Petit Verdot or other things. And then two, Cabernet Sauvignon is the most expensive per ton of fruit. They get more money for their Cabernet Sauvignon. So if you're a winemaker, I'm going, all right, if I only have to put 75% Cabernet Sauvignon in this bottle, for every four bottles I have, I've got another bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon for free. So what you end up doing is seeing winemakers blending a lot of their cabs, both for style and for cost. Other wines too, like Zinfandels and things like that will be blended. Pinot Noir is kind of the exception. If you see a bottle that says Pinot Noir, I think because winemakers, one, respect Pinot Noir as a grape so much to really bring out the terroir. And two, because Pinot Noir is more delicate and if you put something else in there, you're gonna notice it more. So Pinot Noir is almost, even though it's not by law, it's almost always 100% Pinot Noir if it says that. Very rare that you'll see people blending Pinot Noir into a wine. In fact, I can't think of many instances other than Champagne because Champagne uses three grapes, Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier, and Chardonnay. But as far as like, can I think of a blended Pinot Noir forward line that would put other stuff? Not off the top of my head, pretty rare. So I'd say it's safe to say your Pinot Noir is 100% Pinot Noir. Luis asks, what are the differences between American oak barrel and French one? Wine profile. Yeah, so obviously, different oaks. French oak coming from France. American oak oftentimes is used for bourbon here in the States. That's like, it's claimed fame. And there's a few places in the wine world that use it for wine aging, most notably Rioja, Spain, and Australia, the Barossa Valley in Australia. It's funny, we don't even really use much American oak in America, it's kind of weird, at least for wines. American oak's awesome. I love the flavor of American oak. French oak is your classic baking spice, vanilla, chocolate, clove, allspice, those kind of things. Whereas American oak is one, people say a little more abrasive, so that's why people, a lot of regions use French oak because they say it's less intrusive on the wine. But American oak is known for three main flavors, and I love them all. Coconut, dill, like the herb, and sour cherry. Those are the three things that American oak is known for. Particularly the coconut, because what you get with, get like a grand reserve of Rioja that you know is aged in American oak, because some Riojas now are even using French oak. You'll get this creamy coconut that is just so pronounced and really, really fun and unique. It's one of the reasons I love old school Rioja. So that's a good example if you want to see the big difference between American and French oak. And the last question, we made it. Rick and Ann ask, what's one of your go-to red wines for just hanging out on a Friday night? I actually got this question like three times throughout this, so you guys want to know what I'm drinking. And I'll give you the disappointing answer, and then I'll give you some of my favorite regions. The disappointing answer is that I just love to drink everything. I like to try it all, so I will pick a bottle, I'll pick a new place or a place I know well. I'll match it to the food I'm gonna make. I have no hard preferences. I tend to avoid really big, rich red wines because, one, the alcohol's higher, but they're just hard to pair. Once in a while, I'll do it, but for the most part, I tend to avoid really hot climate red wines. That being said, I do have some favorite regions. So one of my go-tos, I will give you one go-to. I still think Santa Barbara Syrahs are some of my favorite, both stylistically, they're on the lighter ends with good acidity, but they do have some, probably like medium body-ish, so they're kind of right down the middle. I love gamey wines and spicy wines, like peppery, meaty wines, Syrah, you get that. And I just think Santa Barbara threads that needle between Old World Cote Roti that, by the way, is super expensive anyway, $100 plus a bottle, and New World, big, too-powerful Northern California Washington Syrahs that I think are 14 1⁄2, 15% alcohol. I think they're too big. I think Syrah thrives as a cool climate grape at like that 13% alcohol range. So there's a couple really good producers. Presqueal makes one of my favorites. Pence makes a good one. Stoltman makes Crunchy Roasty, which is really, really nice. And you can find them for $20 to $30, which is still a good value. I used to say you could get good wines in like the 15 to 20 range, but with inflation lately, it feels like 20 to 30 is more appropriate. And other than that, some of my favorite regions are Rioja. I always love Rioja. Again, medium-bodied wines, good structure, a tannin structure. If I want something a bit bigger, though Rioja can be a bunch of different things. Anything from the Loire Valley. I love Loire Valley, Chenin Blanc, as I mentioned, but anything from the Loire Valley, Muscadet, Sauvignon Blanc from there, great. Go-to whites, I'll still oftentimes go to Burgundy, but not, I can't afford expensive Burgundy, but like entry-level, not even village-level, just like a good producer's Appalachian-level Burgundy is oftentimes a go-to for me. Another one I'll go to is just most European white wines, just cool climate, nothing special, but I know I'm getting good minerality, good acid, good food-pairing wine, European white wines in general. Italy makes a bunch of great ones. Spain makes a bunch of great ones. So yeah, those are kind of some of my go-tos. I hope that helps you. All right, and there it is, 20 questions. I hope you enjoyed this. I had a good time. You guys came up with good ones this time around, and if next time around you wanna be asking the questions, please consider joining Vino VIP. I'll put the link up top and below in the description. It's a great club of members and a great community, and we get all sorts of benefits to you, including early access to all the videos, members-only content, and you just get to support the show, which should make you feel good inside. So thank you guys so much, and we'll see you next time.