Blind Tasting the greatest wines in the world…

The title is not clickbait. Historically, and amongst wine professionals, sweet wines are often considered the greatest wines in the world. Yes, sweet wines. And I'm not talking about the stuff that you get at the supermarket, the real cheap stuff. I'm talking about these historical wines that have been around for hundreds of years. They were often dubbed the wine of kings, the king of wines, because if you think about it, hundreds and hundreds of years ago, when we didn't have access to refined sugar, we couldn't get Coke, we couldn't get candy all the time. If you could have a beverage that was sweet and it got you a little tipsy, no wonder it was the most magical beverage on the planet. Great sweet wines are not cheap. They're expensive. They've fallen out of fashion. A lot of people aren't drinking them, but often they get the biggest critic scores. One of the wines here got 98 points in Robert Parker's The Wine Advocate, and one got 97 points in James Suckling, because there's so much complexity going on with the sugar, the aging, the sweetness, and the acidity. To me, it's the most magical transformation of grape to wine in the world. Plus, there's all this history, there's people, there's culture. To me, it's really what wine is all about. And even when people say, no, I don't like sweet wines, when you give them one of these great dessert wines, these great sweet wines, a lot of time their eyes go bing, bing, bing, bing. Of the four different wines I have here, all of them need to be made in the vineyard. There are specific vineyard practices, and I'll explain why. Three of these wines involve botrytis, which is called noble rot. It's a little fungus that infects the grape. It shrivels the grape up, puts little holes in it, kind of dehydrates in a way. So therefore, it concentrates the sugar, the acidity, but also when you vinify you get this beautiful honeyed aroma. I have been in harvests before where you had to pick out these little small botrytis berries. You have to pick them out by hand. You usually have to wear gloves because there's so much sugar. You pick them out one by one by one. You stick them in the basket. There's bees everywhere. It's a lot of work. Not only that, producers have to wait and leave the grapes on the vine late into the normal harvest season. It leaves them susceptible to be eaten by birds, wild boar, a bunch of other critters. You could lose your crop completely, or if the rains come, all of a sudden gray rat can start to appear, and I'll tell you what, if you've ever had a grape infected with gray rat, it is super, super disgusting. So black rat's supposed to be terrible, huh? The fourth wine that's not infected by botrytis is ice wine. Ice wine needs to be made from grapes that are frozen, usually until January. Around the world, there's regulations. I think when temperature starts to hit negative eight degrees centigrade, so that's 17 degrees Fahrenheit, then you can actually pick them. I know when producers tell me stories of picking these grapes, they're a bunch of little marbles, a bunch of little like balls. When the grapes are pressed, sometimes the presses are broken because the dentist said never to chew on ice because it's hard. It's a mineral. These wines are incredibly sweet, often 100 grams per liter of residual sugar and more, some up to 300, 400 grams of residual sugar per liter. One liter of Coca-Cola is about 100 grams a liter of residual sugar, and to get one liter of Coca-Cola, you have to drink approximately a little bit under three cans. So these wines are sweet, but the sugar, I feel like, is a lot different. The acidity is so high, sometimes these wines can almost feel dry because the acidity cleans off your palate. One of the great sweet wines that I don't have here, just because I felt like it didn't fit the theme that I love, is Vincanto, both the ones from Tuscany and from Santorini in Greece. These are made from dried grapes. I feel like that didn't fit the theme as well, but here we go. I'm going to taste all these wines. These wines are not cheap. All these wines here have pedigree, and I think they're going to be delicious. Let's get tasting. Tasting super special wines, so I'm tasting out of a super special glass. This is the Glassvin, the dessert. A lot of times we don't have specialty glasses for wine, and I don't think you absolutely need a specialty glass for sweet wines, but it is cool to have one. You see it's a little bit smaller. Sweet wines usually served in smaller portions. If you go to a nice restaurant, you're probably going to have these too. I like Glassvin, American company, hand-blown glasses, affordable prices. I have a link in the description box if you want to check them out. It helps the channel if you purchase with that link, so thank you. Three of these wines here were samples. One I pulled from my own cellar to complete the tasting. Producers and importers have no influence whatsoever on what I'm going to create here. I did know what these wines were beforehand. I Coravin them as always and had somebody mix them up for me. Let's get tasting. I think I'm going to taste everything once and reveal at the end. Let's start out with wine number one. I have a feeling that I actually might not spit these wines. We'll see. It's the morning. Maybe I should here. Let's start out with wine. You're going to see these wines are more golden in color. All of these wines here, these four, all of them have been aged in oak. They have some age on them. They're not the same vintages because producers usually age these sweet wines and keep them back before they release them at variable release schedules. Then a lot of times, these sweet wines don't sell super fast, so you just sell them. You sit on stock, and then when your stock runs out, you sell the next vintage that you have. These wines are almost, except maybe the exception one, are almost never made in every single vintage. You need a special conditions to make them. Let's go with wine number one here. Wine number one, you get tons of honey right out of the gate, a little bit of lemon, a little bit of natural gas, a little bit of white pepper, a little bit of dandelion, caramel. These are incredibly complex wines. God, these are so good. Just lusciously sweet. This has great acidity. It is big. It's rich. It has the feeling of cough syrup in the mouth. That's the mouth feel, how viscous it is, but it has the acidity to break down the sugar, stretch out the palate. These are just incredible, incredible, incredible experiences to have this kind of wine. Long, intense, super sweet, but again, the acidity just washes the palate clean. I wonder if I'm going to be able to identify where all these wines are from, because there are distinct styles. Let's go on to number two. Wine number two, again, nice golden rich color. This smells like meat, like raw honey. If you're a honey geek, or you go to a specialty place, like my friend produces honey, bottles it, that's what you're going to get here. It is so intense. Tons of honey, almost like concentrated white grape juice. When I was little, my grandma used to make those juices out of a can, where you get a solid block, and then you put some water in it. This tastes kind of like the Welsh's white grape juice concentrate. There's a savory component to it, but like the raw honey, and that slight bacteria and earthy note really comes out, along with that white grape juice. There's some white pepper, maybe even like some Wrigley's gum type of flavor, which is unique. But these are just, this is so complex. Let's give this a taste here. This thing is viscous. It is really rich, super, super rich. Maybe it doesn't have the acidity of the first one, but I'm telling you, these wines have literally the longest finish of any type of beverage or food. I think that, okay, maybe oddly enough, I think that really crappy food, like fried foods, stuff like, I don't eat fast food, but years ago, I did a pairing of fast food with wine, which is a terrible video, because I hate McDonald's, all that stuff. That taste lingers with you. That's the taste I don't want in my mouth. But in terms of wines and fine foods, these sweet wines offer, I think, the longest length in terms of aftertaste. So honey, almost like a candied lemon, like those lemon candy, maybe like a lemon Jolly Rancher type of flavor. There's pepper in there. There's texture. Now, here's the thing. I like high acidity, especially when it comes to dessert wines, so I would probably prefer one, but two is maybe a better wine, because of its concentration. Wow, that is intense. Let's move to wine number three. Wine number three here. Wine three looks a little bit less viscous, so maybe a little bit less residual sugar. Let's take a look here. Okay, honeyed flavors. This is a little bit more floral, like white flower, more dandelion. This has kind of got like a dried apricot. Yeah, dried apricot, I used to kill those, like whole packages of those when I was a kid, which oddly enough, if you kill a whole package of dried fruit, you're going to get way more sulfites than in a bottle wine. Although, technically, sweet wines have higher levels of sulfite than other wines. Dry white wines generally have more sulfites than red wines as well, because red wines have all the compounds from the skins that help as a preservative. Okay, back to the wine. I like that honey, that dandelion, that lemon flavor, dried apricots, almost like a dried mango, dried pineapple. The fruit really comes through. Well, wine two is honey, honey, honey. The honey is secondary here to the dried fruit flavors. There's this weird savoriness. I got this taste, and taste a lot of time is tied to memory. This is kind of weird. I got like this Mexican burrito kind of taste in it. I think that was just like my memory a little bit, but there are, even though these wines are super sweet, there is a savory quality to them. This doesn't have super sharp acidity. The wine kind of sits on your palate. It does feel pretty viscous actually, but these flavors just kind of linger, and it's so funny. Usually, I associate higher acidity in these wines to correlate to a better wine, but I have to admit this wine is phenomenal. Let's go on to number four. The problem is once you have these great sweet wines, these complex flavors, I can't drink anything else throughout the day. I'm joking. Look at this nice powerful golden color again. This is more crystalline flavors, a little bit of honey, but not as much. This is more like dried apricot, dried lemon, dried tangerine peel, maybe just a slight touch of honey. I haven't had the cereal. I don't eat cereal, but when I was a kid, like that Captain Crunch, that caramelized sugar type of flavor, that's what it kind of smells like. A little bit floral complex. This is more linear. This is more based on fruit flavors. This has so much acidity. It's not going to be sour because there's so much sugar. The acidity kind of breaks down the sugar in your palate, and you've got this just wonderful sensation, this tension between sourness and sweetness. As a kid, even today, unfortunately, I'm addicted to stuff like Sour Patch Kids, sweet and sour candies. That's the sensations you're going to get here. The tension on the palate here is insane. Let's get to the reveal. Man, I love the dancing of Cindy here. Let's get to the reveal. If you like content like this, I'd love for you to check out channel memberships. I have several tiers, but in the Grand Reserve tier, I have a monthly live hangout tasting where we talk, shop, share wines. It's really difficult to find family and friends that are into wine like you and I are, and that's what this community is. There are perks for other members too, and it supports the work I do here, so thank you. They are different. I'm going to reveal each wine. I'll talk about the history behind each wine overall. I think I'm going to try to guess just off blind tasting. We're going to go in order, which I tasted. Let's start out with number one, which I think was Tokai because of that slight natural gas flavor. I love the acidity here. Overall, this is the stereotypical style of sweet wine I like to drink. I love the acidity. 94 points. 94 points. It is not Tokai. It is ice wine. This is the Iniskillin Ice Wine Vidal Gold from 2021 from Niagara in Ontario. This comes in at $100. I am really shocked. This had insane complexity. Vidal is a French hybrid. It's a cross between Uniblanc and Randor, I think. Uniblanc is the grape that they use for cognac. It's actually also one of the Trebbianos in Italy. First mentions of grapes being frozen on the vine on purpose goes back to the first century. Pliny the Elder observed that. When it comes to commercial ice wine production that dates back to the 15th century, the first mentions, I believe, in Germany. This has 255 grams per liter of residual sugar. Remember I said Coke is 100 grams a liter of residual sugar. Canada is the only wine producing country that I think is consistently making ice wines every single vintage. Germany, where it started, they don't make ice wine so often just because of the weather. Iniskillin is one of the OGs in Canada, and this is exceptional. $99. These wines, 9.5% alcohol, 250. Oh, right here on the back. 260 grams a liter residual sugar. $100 for a half of a full bottle, like 375 milliliters. If you get a whole regular bottle, it's $200. These wines are not cheap, but the great thing about these wines is you can keep them in the fridge forever, and then just sip on a little bit, which I'm going to do with all of these. Excellent, and I thought that was Tokaj. Bravo. I thought I was going to get all these right. Okay, let's move on to number two here. You can tell I'm just still tasting these wines. Number two, I remember I said it had that Welsh's white grapefruit concentrate along with the intense honey flavors. I want more acidity in wines, like in ice wines, the sugars and the acidity get super concentrated, but I have to say, with the richness of this wine, this was exceptional. I think that this was the truck in Bareno Schlesie I had from Germany, but let's see. I'm getting everything right here today. I thought this would be easy. This is the Tokaj. This is the Harsany Tokajasu 6 Petunios 2019. I scored this 96 points. This comes in around $75. Tokaj is historically one of the greatest wines in the world. It was dubbed the wine of king, the king of wines. Russian tsars went crazy for it. In fact, in the 17th century, when it came to fine wine, there was really only France, Germany for its Rieslings, and then Tokaj and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. What an amazing experience. Six Petunios. They usually are more concentrated, a little bit less acidic than five Petunios. What happens in Tokaj is you basically ferment the dry wines, then you put in buckets or you put in amounts of these butchertized, these shriveled up grapes. You put them into a finished dry wine. There's a secondary fermentation. Then you age it in wood. This wine comes in at 11.5% alcohol, $75 for 0.5 liters. If you were to buy a full bottle, it's like $100. For a full bottle of Tokaj, I think it's massively underpriced. These are excellent wines. This is a small family producer. The Aniskalon was also aged in wood. Everything here was aged in wood. Incredible. Six Petunios, Puton was the bucket. That's what they measured. You put all these dried grapes, these butchertized grapes in a bucket, what they call Putons. Six Petunios means they put six buckets of these into a certain amount of dry wine that it would ferment. That kind of measured the sugar levels. Nowadays, they label five or six Petunios by the amount of sugar in the wine. If I remember off the top of my head, I think a six Petunios has to have at least 150 grams a liter of residual sugar, but in practice, they're a lot more. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if this was up near the 200, 250, the same as the Aniskalon. Every time I've given somebody a Tokaj, their eyes just light up. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. One of the world's great wines. I used to go there often, a couple of times a year. I think the only one that you'll find out there is Royal Tokaj. If you're in US, if you're in Europe, you'll find other ones, or Oremos, which is owned by Vega Cecilia. Harshani, this is a blend that says ferment and Harslevelu. You can also have Yellow Muscat and Tokaj. Then there's other grapes, Kabar, Kverselu, and Zeta. Ferment is a super high acid variety, has a thin skin, so it's susceptible to botrytis, so it's perfect for sweet wines. Harslevelu adds a little more flavor, a little spice, as well as Yellow Muscat. A great wine. Phenomenal. 96 points. What a wine. Let's get on to number three. I got everything wrong. Three, it felt like, remember, in the Glashill, lighter color was a little bit lighter. The dried fruit flavors were excellent. That's what dried fruit led with. Honey, the dried fruit flavors, since it was less viscous, I thought it was the Sauternes, because Sauternes, generally, they have less residual sugar. And usually, I prefer Tokaj, ice wine, or anything else with Sauternes, because Sauternes is located in Bordeaux, in France. It's historically a great... Well, let's see if it's Sauternes for the first place. I gave it 94 plus points. When I actually got right, this is the Chateau Soutereau Sauternes 2013. Got 97, James Suckling. This comes in at 70 bucks for the full bottle. 13.5% alcohol. Part of this is barrel fermented. You can actually get this 2013. It's on the market still. This is what I pulled from my cellar, personally. This is a full bottle, so 70 bucks. A lot of value here. This has 150 grams a liter of residual sugar, so not as sweet. Made primarily of Semillon, the grape, but you also have some Sauvignon Blanc. You can also... In Sauternes, you could have Sauvignon Gris. You could have Muscadel in there, but usually Semillon, Sauvignon Blanc is the backbone of this wine. The most famous of the Sauternes is Ikiam, which it's expensive. It's good. I've had a lot of it, but I think you get a lot better value. Like Soutereau is an excellent wine. Giraud is also an excellent one. You can even go to Barzak, Montblasiac. These are appellations that are nearby that offer tremendous value for money. With these wines, they pick the bunches that have healthy grapes, and they also have some butchertized grapes, or they mix them all together. I mean, this comes in at 13.5% alcohol, so it's a little bit more, 150 grams a liter. It's a little more elegant on the pelt, not as fat. Sometimes I find Sauternes to be lacking acidity, but this was brilliant. 94 plus points. Liquid Gold. The first mention of Sauternes goes back to the 17th century. A few years ago, one of the best stories for me, I was at the Chateau d'Ikiam cocktail party on Premiere in Bordeaux. This was back in 2021. It was an amazing experience. Some of the people in my group wanted to leave, and I told them, I'm not leaving. I'm staying here. You guys can leave. All these great wines out, and towards the end, they started pulling out Chateau d'Ikiam from the 1980s and put out all the cheeses. Since there were a lot less people, because a lot of people did leave, just overall, the overall crowd, I think I must have drank like half a bottle while sipping on French cheese. Cheese and sweet wine is a magical pairing. That's a hell of a wine. The last wine, I only got one of these right in the blind tasting. I got these confused. The last wine, the fruit flavors were very clear and precise. That's why I thought it was the ice wine. But then again, now, well, I know what's left. It's German. German wines are known for their clarity, their precision. 95 plus points. Overall, I prefer the Toca a little bit, but 95 plus points. That's insane. It is the German. This is one of the historic estates, Moulin Cotoy. This is the Schlosser Rieslinger Truck in Baren, Auschwitz, 2009. Just under 400 grams a liter of residual sugar. I could definitely feel that it was really viscous. 7.5% alcohol. This is, again, a 375 milliliter bottle, so half of the full bottle. 98 points, and Robert Parker's the wine advocate. This comes in around 70 to 100 bucks. Moulin Cotoy, I can't remember what generation they're on. They're the 16th generation in the Falz, one of the warmer areas in Germany, right on the border of Alsace. Truck in Baren, Auschwitz. Truck in Baren means dried berries. Auschwitz is late harvest. So late harvest, dried berries. Again, these butchertized berries, they have to pick out one by one. The first mention of Truck in Baren, Auschwitz goes back to the 16th century. Lots of history here. Rieslinger is a cross between Riesling and Silvaner. Silvaner has some thicker skins, so it kind of combines the best. The Riesling aromatics with thicker skins of Silvaner. Magical wines. Legendary wines. German Truck in Baren, Auschwitz and Tokaj are the sweet wines I love the most. The thing is, German Truck in Baren, Auschwitz tend to be a little pricier usually, which this one, since it's Rieslinger, it's not Riesling. It's a little bit more affordable. But Tokaj, I mean, you get a lot of value. 95 plus. Sauterre said 94 plus. 96, 94. Mind-blowing wines. So tell me, do you like sweet wines? Have you tasted any of these styles of wines before? I'd love to hear. Drop it in the comments below.