Master Of Wine Blind Tastes Wines $3 To $300

Hi everyone, welcome to my home in Northern California. Today is blind tasting day. I had a friend of mine put together a tasting for me. The wines are all bagged as you can see. What I've been told is this. There are four wines, all reds. They can be single grape variety, they can be blends, they can be from anywhere in the world, and they can be any vintage. Aside from that, I've been told that one of the wines has a $3 US retail, one has a $20, one has a $60, and one has a $300 US retail. So what I'm tasked to do is to identify the wines as closely as possible. And the next is to assign the appropriate price point per each. Afterwards, we'll pull the bottles out one by one. We'll see how close I hit the wines or not. And we'll also discuss the price points of the individual wines. Now periodically, I really enjoy going through this process. Yeah, it can be humbling. But what it does is it removes all bias. I'm not looking at the label. I don't know where the wine is from or what it's made from. I know nothing about the wine other than what is in the glass itself. Okay, at this point, we're ready for wine number one. And the color immediately strikes me as being quite deep. It has good density. It's not quite opaque at the core, but it's got a lot of color. That color extends to the rim of the glass. There's no browning or amber tone at the rim of the glass. So that would indicate this is a wine that does not have a lot of mileage to it. So I don't think it's very old. And because the color density is quite full, you can throw out some of the very thin skin, lighter grape varieties. Things like Pinot Noir, Tempranillo can probably get tossed out of the equation. Aromatics, a lot of cassis, red fruit, a bit of spice. It's got a good hint of oak. Really clean, modern style of winemaking. It doesn't show any Britannomyces. There's nothing funky about it. It's a very clean, well-made style of wine. It does have a bit of the pyrazine note. So it's taking me to something like Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc. Because of the density, the structure of it, I would lean more towards Cabernet Sauvignon than anything else. As for region, there is nothing about this that strikes me from any area in Europe. If I'm Cabernet Sauvignon and I were to take this to Europe, the most likely place would be a place like Bordeaux. There is nothing Bordeaux about this wine. This reminds me of none of the Cabernet-based wines you may find in a place like in Italy or a few regions in Spain that produce Cabernet Sauvignon like Navarra. It has no connection to that area at all. It seems like a very new world style to me and it really takes me to one of two places. One, I would think potentially the U.S. Namely, I'm thinking maybe Washington state. I spent a fair amount of time up in Washington state and I've had a lot of wines from that area and it has some of that character, but the finish on it doesn't seem quite typical of what you would find there. Oftentimes from wines from Washington, I get a bit of minerality, which this does not have. And I think some of the other new world wine regions like Chile, for instance, produces a lot of Cabernet. That tends to be a little bit greener, a little leaner in style in most cases, so I don't think this would be from Chile. Argentina, perhaps. South Africa, it has none of the character of South African. Australia is really kind of front and center for me. I lived in Australia a few years ago, visited most of the wine regions there and really had a deep dive into what's going on in the wine scene there and it reminds me a lot of Australian Cabernet. So, if I had to actually tick all the boxes on this, I would say this is Cabernet Sauvignon, fairly recent vintage, 2018. If I had to put it into a specific region in Australia, I would say Clare Valley. I visited the Clare and tasted through a lot of their wines. They're best known maybe for their Riesling, but they make some very good Cabernet. The wines tend to be very refined, not overly alcoholic, not overly extracted. This has a lot of the signs that I would expect from that area. In terms of price, this certainly is not a $3 bottle. I don't think there's any way this is a $60 or a $300. So, I would say $20 bottle, 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon from Clare Valley, $20. Let's see. Okay, the big reveal on, well, not too far off. Okay, this is a producer I actually know quite well called Bleasdale. Bleasdale is an Australian producer. It's a 2019 vintage. They're based in Langhorne Creek, which is not all that far outside of Adelaide. It's a very old wine producing area. It does have some ocean influence, which tends to make wines a little more elegant, and the alcohol levels are down a bit. Let's see. This shows 14%. Okay, it supports 14% just fine, and suggested retail of $20. So, not all that bad on this. Hit it reasonably close. For people living in Australia, Langhorne Creek is one of the best go-to value areas. You don't see a lot of these wines exported, but if you happen to see this out in the market anywhere, Bleasdale or really anything from Langhorne Creek, they're really worth picking up. Just a quick break in the video. Please do take a moment to subscribe right now. There's a red button somewhere down in one of the corners. Hit that. It really will help this channel immensely. It's greatly appreciated. So, at this point, we're off to wine number two. Can't imagine going anywhere but down versus what happened in the first wine, but let's see where we go here. Completely different appearance on this wine. Much less depth of color. If you look down at the core, there's not a lot of depth there. You get out to the rim of the glass, it looks kind of dilute. There's no browning, so I would say the wine is fairly youthful. Yeah, aromatics. You get some primary fruit. Really simple. A little bit of alcoholic heat. It does not have a characteristic that makes me think of any specific grape variety or any specific place in the world. Pretty nondescript, but not offensive. Yeah, this is tough. This is simple, clean, bright, pretty short on the finish. This seems like wine that's really made in a mass production sort of way, but I need to be really honest with this. I poured this wine myself, and I can tell by the weight of the bottle, it's lightweight glass, so immediately it takes me to the $3 bottle of wine. That's got to be fixed going forward. Somebody should be pouring the wines for me. But this has all the characteristics of a wine that's really built to a price point. So I would say this is recent vintage, maybe 2019. Based on a price of $3, it can't come from a lot of different places around the world. Probably the Central Valley in California. Grape variety, I'd say this is probably a red blend, and that's really about as far as I can go. So let's see what this is. Okay, this is the 2018 Charles Shaw Cabernet Sauvignon. This is their private label from Trader Joe's. They sell millions of cases of this stuff. And this wine is from the Central Valley. It says Cabernet Sauvignon. My feeling is it's probably only 75% Cabernet Sauvignon, which is the legal minimum to be labeled as such. 25% could be anything else, probably lesser expensive grape varieties. The wine's not bad. For what it is, it's actually quite well made, but it's simple, direct. Everything about this wine is going to be spec'd out to the penny. It's a lightweight glass. It's a simple, inexpensive label. It's a plastic capsule. I'm sure the cork on it is very inexpensive. So everything is spec'd out to the penny. And look, one of the things that I always look for in wine and really sets top wines away apart from mediocre wines is that sense of place. This wine does not have a sense of place. So it could really be from anywhere. It's simple. It's clean. It's well made. But, hey, it's $3. I think in some markets, maybe it's more like $4. But it is really inexpensive wine. And a blind taste, if I was truly tasting this blind, I would have no clue what this wine is. Okay, at this point, we're moving on to wine number three. And again, a very different look versus what we had in the previous wine. This has a lot more color to it, much more density. Color extends much more to the rim of the glass. So immediately, this strikes me as a wine that's got a lot of extraction to it. And again, that's going to start to eliminate some grape varieties that it just, it couldn't be just based on appearance. Aromatics, boy, this is really trekked out with all the bells and whistles. A lot of oak, good quality oak, concentrated black fruit, some of the, like, black olive. It smells a bit like Kalamata olives. Smoky, spicy, savory. Oh, this has just a massive amount of concentration to it. All of that's making me think this is coming from some premier area. This is high quality. Oh, yeah, this is a big boy. It's very concentrated. It's got a lot of weight. Structure is very, very broad. I'd say this comes from a relatively warm area because the alcohol level does seem a bit elevated. I wouldn't be surprised if this was over 14%. But the structure of the wine can support this very, very well. It has this cassis character and that black olive character. It leads me to think that we're probably going back towards Cabernet Sauvignon again. And it has a New World style. This does not seem like anything that you would find in Bordeaux or any other areas in Europe that predominantly produce Cabernet Sauvignon. Perhaps could be a blend with maybe a little Cabernet Franc or Merlot, but a Cabernet Sauvignon dominated wine from a premier area. This reminds me of a lot of wines that I have up in Napa, which is just a short distance down the road from me. It's got that weight concentration. It's very well structured. It's maybe a tad overripe, which again is something that you find with a lot of those Napa Cabernets. So I'm going to say this is Cabernet Sauvignon or predominantly Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa. This is one of the better regions. It reminds me a bit of some of the Stag's Leap Cabernet Sauvignons that I've had. So I'm going to say Cabernet Sauvignon, Stag's Leap has maybe a bit of age to it. There is some developing tertiary notes, which come with some bottle age. I will say maybe a 2016 vintage. I'm going to hold off on the price because I want to taste the last wine before I discuss that. But that's where I'm at on this particular wine. Then I'm going to go into wine four. We'll discuss wine three and four at the same time. At this point, we're off to fourth and final wine. Oh, wow. Completely different than what we've been seeing in the others. This wine has a lot of browning to it. So just the look of this leads me to believe this is a wine that's got a lot of age. I would imagine this is going to show lots of tertiary notes. Oh yeah. On the aroma, you're not getting any fruit character. It has that savory spice character, a bit of a mushroomy character, quite dense. There's some oak to this. This wine has some serious miles to it. And I think someone's trying to throw me a curveball because the first three wines were Cabernet based. I don't think that's what this is. Now, this one has a very old world style. There's some minerality to it. Yeah, very drying on the finish. There definitely does have a good hit of oak to it. It's a bigger style wine, fairly full body. I think this wine could easily be 20 years old. What it's made from and where it's from. Really going back and forth between France and Italy on this. I'm thinking in France, where would it be? It's not the character that I would attribute to Bordeaux, certainly not Burgundy. Maybe somewhere in the south of France, maybe in the southern Rome, perhaps. That doesn't seem quite right. In Italy, because of the drying finish on it, it potentially could have Italian origins, back and forth really between two areas. Maybe northern Italy, the northwest part of Italy, Piemonte, maybe. Maybe, but I'm thinking more like this is somewhere in Tuscany, maybe San Giovese based. Might have a little Cabernet Sauvignon blended into it. It's old, early 2000s, but yeah, I'm going to say Tuscany, San Giovese based, early 2000s. Okay, we're ready for the big reveal for the last two wines, wines three and four. You recall with wine three, I call this the 2016 Stag's Leap Cabernet instead of the big dollar 300. Let's see what we have here. Okay, this is J. Daniel Cuvée from Lael Vineyard, 2016. Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa. I don't think this comes from Stag's Leap, but this is a super tricked out wine. It has all the bells and whistles. Big alcohol, 15.1%, so definitely a big boy in that regard. Back label shows a lot of new oak, 20 months in oak, 75% of that new French oak. That really does shine through. If you're in the scores, I'm quite sure this is the wine that did get a couple of hundred point reviews. I don't think the 2016's around anymore, but really a spectacular bottle of wine. If you like this style of wine, you're going to absolutely love it if you can find it. I'm going to be drinking a bit of this later tonight. The last wine is what I call the San Giovese early 2000s from Tuscany, $60. Okay, I missed the boat on this seriously. This is Giacomo Ascheri Barolo Serrano, 1996. This is Nebbiolo. I missed the grape variety. I certainly missed the region of origin as well. Hit Italy at least. I got the price point right, but not too great on this one. And a recap on the other two. The second wine, as you recall, was the Charles Shaw, the two buck Chuck. This is the one where the tasting needs to be tightened up a little bit because just by pouring this, I could tell it was lightweight bottle, which gave me a clue as to what the wine was. That'll be fixed going forward. And the last wine, or the first wine actually, the Bleasdale Cab. This is a super bottle for the money. If you see this around, definitely pick it up. Wine tasting is a humbling experience. I hit some, missed some today, but it's a good way to focus in on what is just in the glass itself. Thanks for sticking around. Until next time, cheers.