Which French Wine Region Gives You the Most for €50?

Hi everybody, this is Agnes from No Sediment and today we are giving five French winemaking regions around 50 euros each and finding out where that money buys the best fine red wine. Now, I have been making these videos for a while now. My cameraman is tasked with buying wines made from the same grape variety or in the same style within a certain price range but representing different wine regions and countries. So for those of you who enjoy Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir or Syrah, we have already made those videos so feel free to check them out. But a new idea came to us while we were discussing topics of upcoming videos. What if we tasted equally priced wines from different regions of France and tried to see which region, regardless of the grape variety or style, offers the best value for fine wine? There might be some shortcomings of this little experiment of ours but I like the idea anyway. And despite the fact that I have always thought of myself as an idealist, reading through the comments left on my YouTube channel, I realized that I'm actually quite a realistically minded person. Who would have thought? Why am I saying this? Because I understand that the same price means completely different things in different winemaking regions. Not only are the grape varieties different but certain grapes are more finicky in the vineyard and winery while others are more forgiving and easier to work with. So if the amount of work invested in these wines is completely different, naturally the price can also be completely different. Furthermore, the one grape cultivar might deliver higher yields while another consistently produces lower yields. And these can be very real differences per hectare and therefore they can have a very real impact on the price of the final wine. But wait, Bordeaux is relatively flat when you compare it with Northern Rhone or Mosel, where the hours spent on the vineyard management are significantly higher regardless of the grape variety. In addition to that, it makes sense that smaller more prestigious regions and appellations will simply have a higher entry price than regions that can bottle much greater volumes under their name. So it only makes sense that 50 euros spent in one region will not deliver the same quality as 50 euros in another. We can of course discuss pure quality but if I don't like the dress, I don't like the dress no matter how good it is. The same goes for wine, no? If I don't like the style, I don't like the style no matter how beautiful the wine really is. So in a way, my previous videos made more sense because the grape variety was the same, which ensured certain stylistic consistency or at least some expectation of it. But let us be a little silly today. Put the question of style aside and keep our minds as open as possible. Like I said, all these wines were purchased by my cameraman and I only know that they come from five different winemaking regions of France and all are within the same price category around 50 euros. I would expect this to be a good enough price point to find at least some fine wines no matter how small or prestigious the region might be. So let's see which region delivers the most exciting and best value for 50 euros. Let's start with wine number one. Oh, this one. It smells ripe and glossy and rich. There's a lot of cassis on the nose and black currant characters, blueberries and blackberries as well. So inviting. Color-wise, it is purplish a bit. Your deep purple color and that really ripe blueberry crumble, I guess, on the nose. It's just so inviting. Let's taste it. Oh, this is youngster. This one is filled with a lot of energy and that ripe, you know, blue black forest berry fruit driven palate. It just shines here in this wine quite a lot. The fruit is a bit glossy in its style, slightly polished in a way, but I like the elevated acidity that just adds freshness to this wine. On the nose, this wine almost seems like it's going to give you all that, you know, ripeness, a bit of, you know, richness and that really opulent style. While on the palate, it is actually towards slimmer style and you have all that, no burst of fruit, but in no way is it fatty, in no way is it overpowering or, you know, over extracted or rich. There is quite a lot of freshness in this wine hidden. The tannin is slightly, just slightly playing on the palate and adding, you know, grip here and there, but it is not a dominant feature here. It almost seems like a quiet beauty, so I will give this wine 92 points. Let's move to wine number two. All right, so wine number two is a bit paler in color and it is more restrained on the nose. So wine one, it was just bursting, it was screaming, it was really loud in the glass. Wine two, you feel slightly oxidized, maybe cooked in its own juices without any sugars added, just cooked strawberries and raspberries, wild berries as well. There is some smokiness to it, there's some autumn leaves and maybe turned earth a little bit, but overall it feels like this wine is someone who has been offended by somebody, you know, in the party and sitting back and not allowing you to talk with them and you really have to, you know, squeeze out of it its story. But the truth is it seems interesting, it seems exciting and there is something to talk about. You just want to pass that, you know, barrier of someone being slightly forgotten. Let's taste it. I think on the palate this wine is telling much more than it was telling on the nose. So first of all, the palate is full and it's filled. It is not full body but it's just filled with all those flavors. We have the fruit, we have, you know, fresher and zestier, maybe, you know, juicier character of fruit and we also have riper style of fruit, maybe even, you know, blackish somewhere. But majority of that is, of course, driven by red, you know, those strawberries, raspberries, those spring berries that we get or berries that we get in the early summer. But there's also some smokiness to it, there is really beautiful acidity. It is not nervy, it is just there like this string, like that guitar string that just adds sound to the wine and I think there is there is certain elegance to this wine. I will give this wine, I want to give this wine 93 points and let's move to wine number three. Wine number three is completely different beast. It is smoky, it is rich, it is, you know, black current driven. It is slightly jammy as well but there is quite a lot of that toastiness and that vanilla and, you know, like nuts and sweet toast characters. Again, it also seems quite youngish and intense and really, you know, kind of let me out of this glass and I will tell you everything I know. By the way, the color, it is also quite deep in color so the energy could be coming from its age as well. Let's taste it. Like, I don't usually like my wines aerated but with this wine it almost seems like I want, you know, to swirl it in the glass to, you know, let some of that energy out and allow the wine to calm down and speed. All right, let's taste. So the first thing that I feel on the palate here is that really tightly knit that, you know, covering your whole palate tannin. It is chalky in a way, it's slightly drying but it is definitely that defining feature of this wine. Then we have some of those berries. There is, you know, black or dark chokeberry character and then there's this one berry that I cannot remember its name. Rowanberry. But both of these berries like chokeberry and rowanberry, they are tannic. They are autumn berries so they add that, you know, richness but they have a lot of tannin on their palate as well. So you kind of have those flavors but you also have a lot of that earthiness in this wine as well. You'll remember in one of my videos I was talking about wine that I was rating and I was breaking that wine apart, you know, between its structural elements, how the acidity felt on my palate and the, you know, the tannin or alcohol or body. So I have this urge to break this wine apart but I don't want to do it because I think together this wine makes a whole beautiful picture. Like on its own I would maybe discuss the tannin is too high for an elegant wine. The acidity is quite beautiful but then the fruit ripeness, you know, maybe overpowers it slightly. But all together on the palate it kind of makes sense and those irregularities, those, you know, maybe not perfectly shaped lines of this wine makes it what it is. Almost like this beautiful, beautiful, elegant style. It's very difficult because so the first idea for me was to give this wine lower score than the wine one or two, like 90 or 91. But then when I tasted it again, like those maybe not necessarily perfect beautiful things just looked perfect, you know, all together put like all in that puzzle. So I will give this wine, I will give this wine 95 points. I quite liked it. So let's move to wine number four. All right, so wine number four. It seems warm and ripe and it shows all of those ripe berry flavors. Slightly forest-like, slightly garden-like, but they are just polished, maybe wilted or dried in a way. So there's a lot of sweetness on the nose, like I feel a lot of ripe and sweet flavors. Somewhere in the background we have a hint of smokiness and, you know, it adds a bit of complexity to this wine and maybe some interest to otherwise jolly fruit. Let's taste it. So wine four. The first sip, it just mirrors the palate with the same level of sweetness, of ripeness, of fruit. And I was just thinking in my mind, oh this is going to be crowd-pleaser because in a way it is really easy to enjoy. But then the tannin came and there's this beautiful chalky textured tannin, maybe slightly grippy in a way, and it just allows you, no, it just takes you, you know, by the collar here and tells you no, no, no, pay more attention to me. I am not just this jolly, you know, ripe fruit driven wine. I have opinions and just converse a little bit. So that tannin, it was a moment of interest in this wine and I think it is masterfully done in this specific style. I have in my idea what this could be and not always this wine category that I think, maybe it's not, but not always this wine category provides with such a masterfully tannin texture. You know, sometimes a tannin can also be part, you know, of that ripe fruit profile. But here it just added frame and I did enjoy that element of interest in this specific wine and I will give this wine 91 points. Let's move to wine number five, which is our last wine. This wine smells like really cooked black cherries, plums, strawberries. It has similar intensity, like flavor intensity that we had in wine number one, but in a completely different profile. Oh my god, like that intensity, that cherry purity that I feel on the nose, it's so unique and it's so intense. It just takes over all of the other flavors. Let's taste it. Actually, I think I have been mistaken here because I somehow thought in my mind that wine number four was Chateauneuf-du-Pape, but now when I smelled and tasted wine five, that ripeness, that, you know, jolliness of fruit, that maybe slightly dried fruit character, that smokiness, and first of all, no, not first of all, and last of all, that, you know, richness and opulence on the palate, that sweet ripeness on the palate, that for me is more Chateauneuf. If there is Chateauneuf in this flight at all, I don't know why I had in my mind that wine four kind of represented that Chateauneuf-du-Pape style. It was warm, there was elevated alcohol, but wine five definitely showed, I think, more generous flavor altogether, and it also felt warmer on the palate. It also felt much, much warmer on the palate in terms of alcohol. I would want to say that five is a benchmark, but no, I don't know, because at first I thought that maybe four was, I was quite sure, and now that I tasted, there shouldn't be two wines from the same region, so I'm completely lost, but okay, regroup. It is not the aim to guess the wines, although I always try to do that in my mind, and that finish that is slightly drying, that finish that shows a lot of fruit sweetness, that crunchy but very sweet black cherry, that is so beautiful here in this wine. I will give this wine also 91 points. Shall we reveal the wines? Okay, so we will start with the lowest scored wines, which are the last two, so wine number five and wine number four, and we will start with five. I'm really puzzled, I want to know what it is. Le Vieux Donjon, Chateauneuf-du-Pape 2020. All right, good. Yeah, that means that the wine number four was indeed not Chateauneuf, although in my mind I had this thought, and I don't know this producer, so there's nothing much I can tell or talk about it, but I think it represented this really beautiful, almost benchmark style of what Chateauneuf is, and of course we do have that 15% alcohol, but despite the fact that you feel it on the palate, it depends on how sensitive we each are, I think it was still quite well integrated, it was still with a lot of fruit covered, so I would definitely enjoy several glasses of this wine. So let's move to wine number four, which I gave as well 91 points, and if you remember, I talked about that Tannin, and I thought that it was Chateauneuf, and this is why I specifically paid attention to that chalky, that, you know, tightly grained, beautiful, beautiful Tannin, and I'm really excited to see what this is. Mastodon Mazgasac 2022, we are in Languedoc, so that tightly knit Tannin is actually Cabernet Sauvignon, and here the back label says it's 76%, but boy, this is iconic producer. If we know anything about Languedoc, this usually comes out as one of the top producers to try. They are very interesting, they work, you know, with a lot of grape varieties, local grape varieties, and, you know, from abroad, different ones, and this one as well, it has Cabernet Sauvignon, it has Tannin, so again Tannin, Melot, it has Pinot Okay, wow, interesting, interesting, because this is like cult wine producer. Let's move to wine number one, which I gave 92 points, I think. Cornasse 2023, and I think we were talking about it being quite young and energy-filled, so the 2023 vintage explains it, and Cornasse is 100% Syrah, and when I was looking at that violet color that it had, I thought, oh no, like that intensity of blue and black fruit flavors on the nose, and that violet color, like it should have been Syrah, but I'm just thinking, so we are with two wines with Rhone, so what was the idea with, was it Northern Rhone and Southern Rhone? Okay, so the idea was to split the Rhone in two parts. All right, fine, trickster, my cameraman is a trickster as well. All right, so let's move to wine number two, which I gave 93 points. I have an idea what this wine is, I mean, it was the only one that was falling slightly out of the styles. Yes, it is Burgundy, so of course, I don't think this tasting would have been possible without including Burgundy, because it is one of the iconic French winemaking regions for red wines and white wines, of course, so we are actually with Antoine Jobard, who I know quite well, and they are better known for their whites, but this is so good to know that, you know, you can trust them with their reds as well, so once a good winemaker, always a good winemaker, I guess, and 93 points for Premier Cru, so I think it is a relatively warm Premier Cru site, because of its south exposure, and I really enjoyed this wine. I thought it was quite interesting and exciting, so let's move to wine number three, which I gave the highest score, which I gave 95 points. It is quite close to, you know, the premium, premium, premium wines. Let's see what it is. Bordeaux, to the rescue, us all. Who of you have written me so many times that Bordeaux does not offer value anymore? It's not true. These are the numbers that we see, you know, when we talk about those Grands Valens, those famous names. Yes, but this is just the picture, so separate the noise from the real picture, and I think Bordeaux offers amazing value, so it was just not by one point, it was by quite a lot, so this wine is 95 points. It is, of course, coming from Exceptional Vintage 2016. I did not feel the vintage here. I felt, I felt like this wine was quite a lot, like quite intense, and maybe if you remember, when I was smelling this wine, I told you, like, I want this wine to, you know, feel a bit of air, spend a bit of time in the glass, because there was so much of it, you know, and this is what Bordeaux offers. There's so much of it. We just have to dig a dip, a big, we just have to dig a bit deeper, but the good thing about Bordeaux is that you don't have to dig too much, because it's such a large winemaking region, and, you know, on every corner you find these gems and, and these beautiful examples, and you don't necessarily have to stick with Rue Bourgeois. This is third growth, this is third growth, and it still costs, like, around 50 euros from Exceptional Vintage. This wine could age probably for next 20 years easily. I liked it so much. Yeah, well, the one thing that really struck me, by the way, is that the two highest scored wines are the most famed appellations, or no, regions of France. Who knew? How come? And, you know, we can bash these regions, I guess, at least in this tasting, we can bash these regions and tell, you know, they're this, and they're that, you know, they're overpriced, they're whatever, like, every other region you can find in the world, in Europe, outside of Europe, can offer better value in a way, but in reality, when you taste these wines, they also know what they are doing, absolutely. Yeah, so, magnificent, beautiful wines, and I'm not saying that the rest of the wines are bad, like, all of them were quite beautiful. So, let me know in the comment section below which regions I should explore, which countries I should explore next in a similar fashion. We have Italy, we have Spain, we have United States, Chile, Argentina, we have so much to explore. Wine world is so beautiful, and meanwhile make sure to watch this video next!