Hey, welcome back to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. My name's Pat. I'm the tenured staff anthropologist here at Binny's. Real Monday energy there, come on. Welcome to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. More importantly, we're sitting in the room with the best ponytail in the business. We're joined by Mr. Ray Denton. Welcome, Ray. Thanks for having me. I've been wanting to do this for some time now. Nice, Ray is the wine manager at our Elmwood Park store, which is temporarily closed for remodeling. Unintentional remodeling. He's here at the office for a couple of weeks with us. We're going to have him on to talk some wine. Who else is around today? Hey, I'm Chris. I do wine too. Roger from Beer. All right, cool. Ray, thank you for joining us. We've been trying to get Alicia to do some wine podcasts for a couple of months now and haven't really gotten anywhere with it. What's your idea here today? I have a glass of Prosecco. Why do I have this Prosecco? I mean, you do have better hair. So, these are basically kind of new releases by celebrities. You're making us taste celebrity wine? Yes, or lifestyle wines or famous people wines, whatever you want to call them. I am excited. These are the kind of things we get asked questions about. Yeah, that's true. You want to know. That's true. Brings me back to that celebrity agave spirit tasting, which was so stellar. You know about celebrities in tequila and then we have the Snoop and Dre gin and juice cans on the floor now. How much celebrity involvement is there in wine? I know the tool guys have got a wine, right? Well, he is by far the most hands on celebrity that I have ever seen because he not only makes the wine, he's the winemaker, but he also planted his own vineyards and he's actually got video of it, of him actually doing it. I mean, if anyone knows anything about Maynard is that he's hardcore in everything he does and wine is no exception to the point where that tool basically needs to tour so he can finance his winery operations. Are you implying that Penny Hardaway didn't plant his own vineyards? All right. So whose Prosecco is this then? So this is from Issa Rae. Who's that? So she was behind the show on HBO called Insecure and she was most recently in the Barbie movie. Oh, I've seen that. Who's she in the Barbie movie? Oh, that's President Barbie? Yes. Oh, that was the best Barbie. She was in American Fiction, which was a fantastic movie. I watched that the other day. That was actually really interesting. Very clever. So in her show, Insecure, she drinks a lot of Prosecco and usually tops it off with either whiskey or vodka. So whiskey. Oh, wait. Really? We've got whiskey in the room. Are we going to try that? I think we must. Yes. It's basically like a- Gross. It's like a floater. Anyway, that's- I've had worse floaters. That's in the show. So now she has her own brand called Via Ray. Via Ray. Via Ray. What do we sell Via Ray for? Via Ray is $19.99. Do you guys funnel all the celebrity wines to one wine buyer the way we funnel all the celebrity liquor to Jeff? No. Oh, really? No, it really depends who's portfolio. If it's Sparkling, it's going to be Mark. If it's Rosé, it's going to be Bill. My advice would just be to shove it all on to Jeff. Roger, what do you think of this? I was fascinated with the idea of putting whiskey into Prosecco, so I wanted to try to see if it lists what. It seems like probably- I got called out for my Monday Energy and Roger and Chris are on their phones right now. No, about the show, it sounds like Jameson, which that fits. Oh yeah, I can see JMo. Pretty mild to begin with, right? One of the few ways to make Jameson taste like something. Prosecco, Jameson, Floater, Pickleback. Pickleback, yeah. Yeah, there you go. Obviously, Prosecco is very mixable anyway with the popularity of the Aperol Spritz, which has been on fire for the last two summers. If you go to Europe, you can't go anywhere without seeing it, people drinking it. So it can also be a base for a French 75 instead of using champagne. If you don't want to spend the dollars for that, Prosecco is very mixable. Bellini, of course. Bellini, that would be the classic one. This is nice. It's a nice Prosecco. I like that it's pretty dry, right? I mean, I feel like most commodity Prosecco is sweeter. A lot of Prosecco's are, quote unquote, extra dry. So they have a little more sugar than a brew. This one doesn't make a statement as far as I could tell. I was just looking for that because it's a little on the drier side. So she is very online, and I did go on YouTube to see how much chatter there was about this. Extra dry. Oh, it is. Yeah. It's buried on the back. Yeah. There's tons of people tasting this out. The one part that I saw her talking about it was she wanted it to be a little bit drier than most of the stuff that's on the market. Like Lamarca to me is fairly sweet, but that is the market leader. So this fall, it's definitely not as dry as a brew, and that's not what she was trying to do, but she didn't want it quite so sweet. So just so people understand, all of the styles have a range of sugar, not just like a precise goal. So you can have a drier or sweeter wine. And part of the reason for that is also the variability of acidity. So like in champagne, your house style, your non-vintage wine, you always want to taste the same, but you might need a slightly higher dosage in a cooler year or something to get it right. So there's some flexibility there. All right, pass me a whiskey. I'm going to try this whiskey floater. And speaking of residual sugar, this is 13 grams per liter. So right on the cusp of... Yeah. Oh yeah, that's extra dry. That's extra dry. Oh, for sure it's extra dry. It could be sweeter though. For sure. I'm going to say that with some of the pear and apple notes in this that a whiskey would work. Yeah. It's a fancy fence post. I just put a wee splash of Clark and Sheffield small batch bourbon in it. It just kind of tastes a little bit like a highball now. This will be all the rage in Japan before you know. Yeah. You use water in your highball. That is interesting. I think I needed to put more bourbon in it. That's what you always say. It's a common problem. I mean, certainly the wood character here is more assertive than Jameson would be by a long shot. Yeah, I don't hate it. I mean, it's probably I mean, I don't like apparel that much because it's so sweet. You know, I much prefer Campari, but yeah, it's better than I thought it was going to be. Do you know? Yeah, that's palatable and I expected it to be gross. You know, our cohort on the podcast, Greg, thinks Campari is just straight up sweet, not very bitter at all. Well, it certainly is sweet, but it's balanced. It's balanced out by the bitterness, although I will say that since they've changed the coloring from Coconil, yes, that it does seem sweeter now than it used to be. My point being is I don't think Greg tastes bitter. He's broken his taste buds on hot sauce. I mean, he drinks the amount of hot sauce he puts on some food is terrifying. This does kind of remind me of if you make a stone fence with like carbonated hard cider as opposed to making them with like actual non-alcoholic fresh pressed cider. But yeah, it reminds me of that. So if you like mixing with hard cider, it totally reminds me of that. Yeah, I mean, glera, the grape here often resonates in that apple, pear, peach. Glera, huh? Yeah, glera. Sweet. Interesting. Well, that's a nice Prosecco. What does it cost? 20 bucks. It's not exorbitant. I mean, you always got to pay a little bit of a celebrity fee on a bunch of these, you know, regardless of the genre. Thumbs up, Issa Ray. That's solid. Yeah, she did a nice job, I think. Right, and that movie, that was good. And I guess that's one of the reasons for doing this tasting is to try to find things that aren't just a pure money grab. How are you going to talk about the Klundog that way? Ha ha ha! Next up, we have probably the first Instagram line. This is from Sarah Jessica Parker, and she signs off her Instagrams as X apostrophe SJP, and that is literally the name of this Sauvignon Blanc from Marlboro. This is from a winery called In Vivo. There's a bunch of gold medals, as you guys can see. Nothing impresses like a gold medal. It is made in one of the oldest wineries in New Zealand. For some reason, the government owned it prior, and then the two guys that do In Vivo, they started in the celebrity business with Graham Norton, and were able to build a whole new winery based on the success of that. And this is, I think, the fifth vintage they have done with Sarah Jessica Parker for this Marlboro Sauvignon Blanc. And you can go on YouTube and watch the blending sessions they do. They're not very long, so they're not showing you the whole thing, but probably 90 seconds is about all people really want to watch of people sitting around. Well, it's pretty classic New Zealand. It's very pungent, grassy, nettle-y. Guava, man. Freezy how much this smells like fresh guava. Pure guava, baby. I feel like it's a little fuller-bodied than a lot of other Sauvignon Blancs. Am I just being a dummy? Mm-hmm. Okay. Pretty standard then. I think so. No, I think there's some lees contact here. Maybe. I wouldn't call it full-bodied though. Maybe a little creaminess from that, but- Yeah, creamy. It's kind of middle weight. Not as linear, I feel, as a lot of other cheap Sauvignon Blanc I taste. Not that this is cheap, cheap. This is what Ray, like 16 bucks or something? No, it is. I'm looking at it. Yeah, 16 bucks. I mean, I just finally put it in my mouth and it is guava. Yeah, to a T. Which, talk about no brainer food pairing potential with this. Anything you enjoy with guava. Hat on a hat. A fish taco would be delicious. Nice. Antipasto would be great with other seafoods, maybe some grilled octopus. Earlier today, I was just reading that Washington State has outlawed octopus farming because of their intelligent nature. Yeah, they're too smart to be farmed. In Europe, they're starting to serve plant-based tentacles. Really? I would love to try plant-based tentacles. Just this morning, I read that. I'm a big fan of trying all the various plant-based, quote unquote, meats. Impossible tentacle. Yeah, why not? Plant-based tentacle. All right, what's next? Chris and I had somewhat of a debate whether this is a true celebrity wine, but this is Plump Jack Chardonnay, which is owned by Gavin Newsom. Oh. Celebrity politician, governor of California. Yeah. He owns Plump Jack, huh? He's one of the owners, yeah. Okay. So the original Plump Jack was, while it's still there, started as a wine store in the Marina District in San Francisco. And it evolved. It's actually a really cool little wine shop. And then across the street, there's the Balboa Cafe, which is the Plump Jack Cafe, which is a great place to do brunch, lunch in San Francisco. And then they started acquiring vineyards, Plump Jack being the first and foremost. And then there came, there's Cade, Odette. I'd say this counts as a celebrity then. So this is a 2020 Plump Jack Chardonnay. So it's got some bottle age on it. So it is pretty rounded, I think. I would say so. And this is Napa Valley. They didn't just start buying vineyards. They bought the most expensive vineyards they find. Their main vineyard is in the heart of Napa Valley in Rutherford, if I am not mistaken. And yeah, it's a really prime piece of property. Plum Jack, of course, refers to Fall Staff and Fall Staffian Delights. So. The beer. Yeah, exactly. And this is a $60 Chardonnay, huh? Yeah, their stuff is not cheap. They're probably most famous for the cab and the estate reserve cab, and that's hundreds of dollars. This is a nice, well-balanced Chardonnay, though. I appreciate that it's not just some oak butter. No, it is definitely not that. There's some acidity in here, too. I really enjoy this, actually. Yeah, I think this is definitely a bottle that pays off with some bottleage on it. It can be a little woody upon release, which, you know, the current release is in 22. I think what a lot of people forget about the 20 vintage is it's kind of considered off vintage because of the fires. But all the white grapes were picked. And it's actually an excellent vintage for white wines. So anything that was late picked in 20 can be kind of problematic, depending upon where the winery is. And I will not mention the name of the winery, but one of California's greatest historical winery has released their top wine, and it is clearly smoke tainted. And they still released it. Yeah. It's mild enough that you could believe it as a nuance, but there's no doubt. No doubt at all. And yeah, exactly. In Napa, there was the so-called glass fire. And, you know, a lot of a lot of grapes were already in the fermenters at that point. But anything on the vine, you were screwed. Yeah. And what's the malolactic treatment here? It doesn't seem like even remotely full malo. That I do not I did not pull that. So but yeah, I would agree with you. I don't think it's not a big butter bomb at all. And the acidity is definitely still there. I bet it's some malo, but yeah, it's for sure. Not not not full blown malolactic by any stretch of the imagination. I think it's in a good place right now. I think you're right. A little a couple extra years did it favors. This is zesty and acidic. I like it. Yeah, very nice. Something I don't say a lot about, you know, California cabs or Chardonnays, usually. Right. This just gets Napa Appalachian. Yeah, it's only just Napa Valley. That's it. Are they in Oakville? Not Rutherford. Yeah, Oakville. I'm sorry. I think I misspoke. Yes, the Plump Jack Winery is Oakville, yeah. But these grapes might be Carneros or something. A little cooler area. All right, cool. All right. Good job, Governor Newsom. Perfect for your next Shakespearean costume party, cosplay. So here we definitely have a celebrity. This is Sun Goddess, Pino Grigio from- This label looks so cheap. Mary J. Blige. Oh, she's not cheap. No, she's great. But what a voice. So Sun Goddess is originally a Ramsey Lewis song, and this is- Chicagoan. Yes, and Earth, Wind and Fire covered it. So I'm guessing the Ramsey Lewis estate is getting some residuals from this because the logo is pulled from his album cover. Apparently, Mary J loves Italian wine. This is from Friuli, and it's made in the traditional style of Pinot Grigio. Before there was Santa Margarita, this was how most Pinot Grigio was made in Italy. So let's see some skin contact, which you can tell from the color. I was going to say, the color is beautiful. It's different. They call this Romato. Romato, yes. Or copper. Yes, copper. I was talking to a wine manager at a suburban location just last week, actually. And he was telling me that we used to carry this outstanding red Pinot Grigio, but he can't get it anymore. That's not Romato. No, no. But as we know, as you probably know, Pinot Grigio can ripen to have a lot of skin color because it's a mutation of Pinot Noir. He's probably speaking of, I can't remember the producer, but I remember it was an Oregon wine. Do you remember this? Came in with rosés, but it was very, very dark. Very dark. And we just tasted one in the office the other day, strangely, that was almost that dark. Did you taste that, Rick? I did not have that one. I must have missed it. Stay tuned for a future episode, maybe. I would almost describe the color, if you know the historic wine terms, as almost claret-like, or if you've ever seen like Cune, makes a couple different rosés from Spain, and one is really, really dark, and it's kind of in this claret. Somewhere between a very light red or very dark rosé. You'll see that in Abruzzi in Italy, too. Yeah, exactly. Bring me another bottle of claret. I've been drinking until we're chundering. Are you chunderstruck? All right, what do we think of sun goddess Romato here? Pinot Grigio Romato. I like this. Yeah, it's Pinot Grigio with character. And surprise, surprise. This is more almost like Alsatian Pinot Gris, but much drier than what most Alsatian Pinot Gris are, because they usually have a little bit of residual sugar. Although not always, they do seem to be getting drier because with global warming, the grapes are getting riper and riper, so the fruit flavors are there. So a lot of people have actually been dialing back on the RS just because the fruit's already so ripe. Yeah, traditionally, basically the biggest white wine of Alsace that you could pair with richer dishes that you might in most areas pair with red. But since there's a paucity of red in Alsace, except for Pinot Noir, which was always super light and more white wine-like than red wine-like, Pinot Gris was often the choice for game meats and stuff, and often tipping the scales at over 14% alcohol and some residual sugar. So big, characterful, totally the opposite of what most people think of from Italian Pinot Gris. Yeah, no, I've never had a Pinot Gris like this. And it's fantastic. And most, of course, I've had Santa Margarita and all that kind of stuff. And that kind of is where I draw my experience with Pinot Gris as a varietal from. And it's generally something that I don't really care for. But this is quite good. The story of Santa Margarita was that Tony Tarlato was over in Italy and he sat down at a cantina and him and the owner went through every Pinot Gris show that was on the list. And they culled it down to Santa Margarita because it was so different than all the rest. All the rest were more full bodied, but the Santa Margarita was very light and crisp, easy drinking and perfectly suited for what it has become today. What, four million case brand, something like that. Gazebo Guzzler. Yes. Indeed. So this is from Friuli. A lot of wines on our shelves are from Aldo Adige, which are, it's right next door, but Friuli is a really high quality area. So we're talking Northern Italy. Yeah, North Eastern Italy. The gummy worm people. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, budding up against Austria and Croatia. Anyway, I do think Mary J has done a great job. Yeah, great job, Mary J. And she has a Prosecco and there's a Red Blend. I have no Mary J quotes at the ready, but good job. I'm going to say that this is a multi-octave run. What does this set you back for a bottle? Sun Goddess, let's look at that one. Leave it at $17.99. Sun Goddess, $17.99. Nope, Pinot Grigio, yeah, $17.99. That's definitely worth picking up. Yeah. We have the 2021 Vintage in right now. And then this coming around, brand new release just hit our shelves last week from Cameron Diaz, the Aveline Rosé. I was gonna say, this looks like, what were those wines? The pink ones. The pink ones, White Zinfandel? Yeah, this looks like Sutter Home White Zinfandel. It's not quite as electric pink, it's more onion skin. Wow, very Spartan label. Well, it's all about clean living and transparency, apparently. It's vegan friendly. If they're actually transparent, I'm for it. They wanna convince me that alcohol, that literal poison is good for me. I'm not here for it. If it can kill a songbird, it's not going in my body. It is nice that they put as much information on here as possible. I don't know that clore content is that important because obviously all the calories are coming from alcohol, but you wanna cut down your calories, cut down the alcohol, but it is a growing trend, so this is where people wanna be. They want organic and they want lower alcohol. So what's the ABV on this? 12. That's still pretty high. Yeah, I mean. I mean, by modern standards in wine, that's pretty moderate, very typical in the old days, but you can find dry wines on our shelves that are closer to 10, 10 and a half. I just meant like with some of the low cal things, the big trick is that then they just cut the alcohol, right, to like a pittance and. Oh, lo and behold, it's less calories. A lot of those are like 9%. Talking about Michelob Ultra, the old Mick Ultra trick. Don't worry about that, it's only 2.6% alcohol or whatever. Like, so few calories. The easiest way, of course, is just to pick the grapes earlier because they're less ripe. That's what a lot of European producers are doing because they can't use all the modern wizardry in the wine world that we can in the US. The magical spinning cone. Yes, there's a lot of stuff on YouTube for this. If you want to go check out Cameron Diaz now, since she's no longer an actor, she's really more of a business woman at this point. Anyway, so this definitely appeals to a certain segment of the populace. I think it's, I mean, it's, is this 1999? You know that she actually came to the office a few years ago and there are still some people swooning. Aveline Rosé, 1799. 1799. Not bad. It's pretty good. Oh yeah, I forgot. She's married to that Bozo from Good Charlotte. Benji something. Whatever happened to them? Was that his name? Thankfully, not relevant anymore. Thank you, Good Charlotte. Due to complete lack of interest, they are now no longer relevant. Do we know what makes up the blend of this said Rosé? I do not know and unfortunately for... Oh, the wine of transparency doesn't say? Maybe if you scan their QR code. Oh, that's a thought. There's something on the back end of this where I was like, oh man, is this like a natural wine? Like, do you get kind of like some sort of funk? Like, there's something odd about the finish to me in this that I'm... It's like, it's interesting. It's French. Yeah. But it's weird. Yeah, it's Southern French, but yeah, it doesn't say much more than that. What strikes me about it, and maybe this is what you're talking about, it is there is a great restraint to the fruit. There's more mineral aspects to it, I think. Does it seem fruity at all to you? In a strange way. I don't know, I'm equating it with maybe overripe fruit or? Well, 23 was definitely a super hot vintage. They would have had to have picked this really early. Just saying. I just meant not specifically overripe grapes, but like overripe cantaloupe or, you know, like just it's got that fermented, which is why I kind of thought of like something funky. Yeah. To me, it's kind of it's dry and minerally as opposed to fruity. Yeah, I don't know. It's weird. It's different. I don't know. It's my fave, though. Well, you would drink this super cold. Obviously, this this is probably like at 55 degrees. So on a hot day, if you have it at Bud Light temperature, yeah, it's going to it's going to be good. Charlotte's on the stereo. Living your best life. I mean, even Bud Light tastes okay at Bud Light temperature. Yeah, they don't disclose the grape varietal on their website. Yeah, so much for they have. They have a whole page dedicated to transparency. They use the word transparency and obnoxious amount on this website. And they have an ingredients page that just says that they're organic. I like the wine, but not telling us what your ingredients is is a farce. What's the appellation here? Is there one? No, I just said... The fronds? Okay. I mean, what is it normally? Grenache or something? Well, I mean, it could be any number of things. Mostly you would think, at least I would think that this would probably come from the Languedoc. Probably yeah. Yeah, that was the impression I got from, I did a little YouTube search on this and she's like on all the morning shows and describing how her and her friend were drinking wine and they didn't know what was in it. So you don't need to know either. To be fair, there are lots of ingredients that go into wine that you would never know about and they're not listed on the label. So to that point, OK, but if you want to avoid those ingredients, you can just buy anything from the EU because they can't. Are you implying there's no mega purple? No mega purple. No mega purple. Not even a mega red. When are we going to do an all mega purple tasting? I don't know. Do you remember Ray when somebody got a sample of that and we tasted it at a wine meeting? The one where someone... The mega purple itself? Yeah. It's like tasting caramel coloring. Kind of, yeah. Yeah. Well, it's ruby red. That's what they make it from. It's actually like the fourth most planted red varietal in California, just so they can make mega purple. Really? It's a concentrate. Huh. Wow. Packs a wallop of color. If they wanted to make a wine that was lower calorie, are they allowed to cut with water to a certain level? Yes, before the wine is made. It is very common in some places, California, even, to water your grapes back before fermentation. Okay. But not after. You couldn't add water like in spirits. I didn't think so, but I wanted to double check. You don't do it that way. In the trade, they're called Jesus units. Water into wine, people. All right, Cameron Diaz, thumbs up to the wine, thumbs down to not being as transparent as you claim. I would agree with that. Thumbs up for coming to the office. Can we have some red wine yet? How much was that? The Cava-Lean is $17.99. All right, now this, I don't think the celebrity or celebrities had anything to do with making the wine. Oh, wait, I'm gonna do a grateful leg quote here. This wine could bring enough money to arm a town the size of Avalon. You know, they want to get some. Avalon's the actual. Yeah, Avalon. Raj and I are just along for the ride. It's a long-stream trip, baby. We're just gonna keep on trucking on this one, bro. They've been very successful in putting the steal your face on the gnarly head Zinfandel bottle. So this is by far the most expensive wine in their lineup. I've never had this wine. So this is Alexander Valley Cabernet. That's fancy. Oh, this is no 21.99. At least some of these labels glow in the dark, too. I don't know if this is one of them. Yeah, I don't know if... I know the Zin did, but I don't... 21.99. Yeah. Cool label. Yep. The classic steelier face with a gnarly vine in the middle of it. And of course, roses. How common are the... So the gnarly head, that's the bush vine where they trim it and as opposed to... They would call that head trained or bush vine, goblet. Yeah, trained along a wire, right? Yeah. This is a really old school way of doing it. You don't have any cordons or anything. It's just a little bush. And they're common in Australia and in really old California vineyards. We saw some of that in like Paso, right? Yeah, I've seen them. Exactly. Paso and in Sonoma. Anytime you're looking at a really old Zinn based vineyard that is a field blend, you know, it could be have like 10 different varieties in it. They're usually head trained like this if they're a hundred years old or something. Or if it's in a really windy spot that's like islands like Santorini or the Coteri Islands, some place like that. They even dig pits for their vines in some of these places. So, this is celebrity and licensing only probably. Yeah. As far as I can tell, yeah, it's just purely a marketing gimmick, but I know- Bobby Weir is not the winemaker, Maynard style. He planted all the vines. Although I think he- They all- He's in exceptional shape. He could plant some vines. Yeah. They all lived in Marin for a long time, not too far from Napa and Sonoma. He might live in Sonoma now, I think. Bobby Weir. I don't know. For sure, Bobby and Mickey Hart were huge into wine. Back in the day, they used to go to our Clark Street store when that was our biggest store. They were into George de la Tour from BV because we always had older vintages of them. It's a good wine. They would pop in and shop the store back in the day. What do you guys think of the wine? I would say it's pretty typical in the gnarly head style. It's pretty bold, ripe. I like it for $20 cab. I think it's pretty good. Alexander Valley's Napa or Napa Jeshwin? Sonoma. Sonoma. It's one of the better AVA's in Sonoma for cab. If you go straight up the Russian River, which as we know is relatively cool out by the ocean, but it gets warmer and warmer as you go inland and you get to places like the Dry Creek Valley. And Alexander Valley and Chalk Hill, which all are quite a bit warmer and can easily grow Cabernet, Silver Oak famously as a vineyard in Alexander Valley. Wine thumbs up, celebrity partnership, questionable. Well, it is a collectible bottle, however. So even if you're so-so on the wine, if you're a huge deadhead, that's definitely something you can put on the bar. Interestingly enough, the first wine they ever did was non-alcoholic. What? Yeah, they came out with this line of non-alcoholic wine. This is like in the 90s. And when we saw it, we were like, wait a minute, non-alcoholic dead wine? It was, yeah, it was a real head scratcher. It did have 300 mikes of pure Owsley LSD in it, though. Yeah. For all you want, if you're not a two-sport athlete, you can not let the alcohol get in the way of whatever else you're taking. All right. Well. That had some buzz. I mean, famously, the point of that people want like big wines from there. So what's the ABV on that? I mean, it tastes like it's got some heft. It seems like more of a with food. Yeah, it's hard to find ABV on this collectible bottle. They're hiding it for all the fans that shouldn't be drinking. But you have to eat it with like a vegetable stir fry or falafel or something. It is 14.5%. I'm just a brown rice. I'm just taste-ly. Well, continuing on our long strange trip. Sorry. Now, we're gonna go to the countryside of things. This is from Zach Brown. This is a project he's doing with the Old Smoky Distillery. It's a bourbon barrel-age cab in... Oh. Hey, you just had bourbon in your Prosecco. That's true, and I didn't mind that. You know, I actually tasted this before we brought it in. I was surprised that it was better than most I've tried. Yeah, most bourbon barrel cabs I've tried are gross. Well, you know, back to the dead, you know, Bobby Weir was a huge country fan. They did a bunch of classic country songs, their sets. I don't know. I would call it more Americana, right? Just traditional... Sure, but I mean, they did like... I mean, they were more bluegrass than like straight up country. If you guys just wanted to do a stoned music episode, you could have just said so. Well, but they did Johnny Cash songs and they did a lot of cowboy songs, El Paso and Mexicali Blues and Murder Ballads. Maybe you guys should come up with a companion set list to play in the background while you listen to this episode, since we can't afford to have that in the background. Plus, if you play it loud enough, you won't have to hear us. No, I think that'd be kind of cool. Here's the music you should listen to in the background. Roger, I just created a custom set list just the other day for myself for when I go out hiking. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's all music from the peanuts, the cranberries and M&M. I call it my trail mix. You mean the Vince Guaraldi trail? What a dad joke. I knew something was amiss, because I'm like, Pat's hiking. To where? There's a bar and a hill near here that I don't know about? Oh, if only. All right, Zach Brown, Bourbon Barrel Cab here. So have you been to the Old Smoky Distillery? I have not. My impression is that it's just a- A tourist trap. A Nashville bar that takes up an entire city block. They have 80-something flavors of moonshine there. I've not had aged whiskey from them. But the distillery's in Gatlinburg, right? Yes. So apparently there was a big fire there a couple years ago in the Smoky Mountains somewhere. So Zach Brown went and played a benefit show at one of the Old Smoky place, wherever they have room for him to do a show. He's a big draw. Yeah, so that was where the partnership started and he donated all the proceeds. That's cool, Zach. You know, this wine is totally not bad at all. And I think it's barely their bourbon character. Yeah, it's not. I think that's what saves it. Yeah. Yeah, my Prosecco bourbon was more bourbon-y. Yeah, mine too. But I think it's noticeable. I mean, it's there, but the- Especially in the nose, I can detect something. And I think the wine is actually pretty supple and rounded, especially after the gnarly head. The tannins were a little more chunky. This is pretty smooth. I'd say that this is every bit as good as the one that everybody's all about, that what, thousand- Thousand stories. Yeah. I think it might be better. Yeah. It's certainly not as chunky as the thousand- What's the one that we sell, we were selling over the holidays with the gift set with the rocks glass for the wine? Wow. I think I tried not to notice it. Floor Stack at Geneva. Oh, it's Cooper and Thief. Cooper and Thief, dude. I got asked for that wine every 10 minutes. It's just, I don't know if it's just become like suburban white dude steakhouse wine or what. Probably. It's definitely a thing. We probably have somewhere like 12 different bourbon-finished wines now. We have a Clark and Sheffield one, don't we? Yeah. Yeah, too. There's a Cab and a Red Blend. There's a Rum Finish now. Even Bota Box has a Rum Finish and a Bourbon Finish. We're just following Craft Beer and Craft Whiskey down this trail. Milkshake wines. I think it probably brings couples together, right? Men are all bourbon boys now and women- Bourbon, men are boys. It's a way for the husband and wife to come together on a common ground of the bourbon barrel-age wine. While listening to Boys to Men. What's this cost? I think it's on sale for $16.99. These are all more affordable than I anticipated. So that's cool. What's this thing called? Z Alexander Brown? Mm-hmm. This is the Alexander. Old Smoky, 1999. All right, our next wine is truly a legendary wine, and not just because of the- This is a celebrity wine? The man that owns it. Yes, Francis Ford Coppola. And the wine itself is a celebrity. This is such a historic name in California. It's ridiculous. This is where the, Roger, the value ends. Yeah, this is a serious wine. When Coppola originally made money, I believe off of Apocalypse Now, he was able to buy this estate in Napa. That is a legend. Well, it was half of a legendary estate and they named it Rubicon, but it was actually part of the old Inglenook estate. But as you may remember, Inglenook was at by then a jug brand. So it was Almaden, Inglenook. Let's hear your best Orson Welles. Palmassan. Vintage dated, you say? Like the finest French champagne? Anyway, this is truly a legendary vineyard site in Napa Valley. The whole point is he was able to cobble it back together eventually, and then thus call it Inglenook again. He had to pay major dollars. He basically paid enough money to finance a film to acquire the rights to the name Inglenook and retire the jug line forever. Now, we have two Inglenook cabs in the system. We have Inglenook Cabernet Sauvignon and Inglenook Rubicon. We are drinking the Rubicon. This is the Rubicon. Yeah, the cab. I was going to say the cab is listed as customer order only. All right, Roger, you got a guess on price on this? Boy, well, it's Napa and I know, you know, it's Coppola. So I'm sure he wants to market it to other people in the industry. And I'm thinking you have to spend at least $100 for this bottle. Little over double that. 225. Oh, wow. By the way, he bought this after The Godfather. He lost all his money from Apocalypse Now. Ah, yes, you're right. Yeah, that's right. He made all the money off of the Godfather movies and then, yeah, basically went broke doing Apocalypse Now. And then made it back with Apocalypse Now Redux. Just kidding. But you know, all his kids grew up at this estate. They're all like, you know, wine kids. This is in Rutherford on the west side of the valley, right? Yes. So is this kind of the pinnacle of his portfolio or does it get even more ridiculous? So he recently sold his entry-level lines, the Diamond series. He sold that to Delicato. He kept the Inglenook lines because, I mean, he lives there, you know what I mean? It's his house. So he's on the board of directors now of Delicato. So this wine is good. It's still kind of young and tight. This is a seller item. Yeah. This is a treat to taste it though. I wouldn't even call it typical modern Napa. This is a little more austere, really classic. Herbal, dry, tannic. But the tannins are soft, I would say, right? This doesn't feel like- I mean, they're very, very fine and very well integrated already, but if you suck on this wine a little bit, they're there. They will dry your mouth out. But not like the just juicy fruit balm that's so much Napa stuff. No, although this was the original Colt Cabernet, this is not like the Colt Cabernet that tastes like a chocolate milkshake. Right. Like, seriously, some of the middle 20th century vintages of Inglenook are still going strong. Like if you can find like 68, some of the early 60s, 59 Inglenook legendary California Cabernets. Wow. Yeah. I'm sure those are inexpensive. Well, for a wine novice, you can tell this is a serious wine. Do you want to pair it with one of these Pearson salted nut rolls? I brought plenty. As far as the cellaring of this goes, most people are buying this and then keeping it for how long would you say before? Well, I mean, 10 year point would be probably a sweet spot for this. This is 2018. So it's still got a lot. And I'm not saying that that's where it's going to start to drop off, but it'll probably start drinking really well 8 to 10 to 12 years. Yeah. And they intentionally make this wine to age. It's not something that is expected to be drunk upon release. This has classic austerity, as they would say, that you rarely find in Napa anymore. Although you do find it in some places like Montelena, I think is also a leaner, more traditional style that is definitely meant for aging and is very austere when young. That's the Bottle Shock Paris thing. Correct. When is Nick Cage going to have his own line of wines? That would be phenomenal. Yes, it would. Because this is his uncle, I believe. Yes. Mm-hmm. He'll probably plunk down a vineyard next to Maynard and call it Raising Arizona. Hey, I heard Celebrity Tequilis referred to as Neposados the other day. That's the only thing I'm going to refer to them. That is the best. Pretty great. I assume we concluded with this, you know, be hard. Yes, this is literally the showstopper. Yeah. Well done. This wine is, it feels like a crime to have it open right now because it's really not ready to go yet. Yeah. Well, it has got hidden depths here. It's going to unfold over the years. And maybe after the next podcast, we'll come back to it and drink a little more. Actually this is the type of wine that will be better off if you drink it tomorrow. You can leave this open for a couple days and it'll get better and more drinkable. That's interesting. Inglenook, we'll see you in 90 minutes. Hey, good looking. Be back to pick you up later. Hey, Ray. Thanks for putting these together, man. Yeah, my pleasure. It was fun. Yeah, pleasure to have you on. Someday your store will be open again and then you won't get to do this. I'm going to say that the quality across the board was kind of surprising to me. I think so. I didn't hate any of these. Again, I'm going to go back to that Tequila podcast where I was loathing 90% of them. Oh, there were some of them that were so bad. I think that's the running stereotype right now. Since we've been kind of inundated with the number of celebrity brands, I think the presumption is like, oh, this is just a money grabber. It's an old school debt cut thing, you know? Sure, you can use my name. How big is the check? And it's not the case anymore. I enjoyed this. This lineup was great. And besides this obvious special occasion, treat yourself type of wine, or if you're filthy rich, an everyday bottle, I was impressed with that the other ones were at pretty nice price points. In the wine world, they were pretty moderate in price, so it's fun. It's not like when we drink all those celebrity tequilas and we're just like, ugh. Listen, I promise it'll be at least another year before I make you taste de Leon again. I mean, there was so much added sugar and whatever in those. It was just like, what? Aspartame. Is that 1813? Yeah, it tastes like bubble gum or something. Cotton candy. Gross. Yeah, cotton candy. That was it. That was brutal. So none of this was that, so that was nice. Favorites from today? I think the, I like the gnarly head Alexander Valle was pretty good. I like the red Pinot Grigio, the Mary J. Blige, sun goddess Pinot Grigio. I like that a lot. What was the first one we tried again? That was the Prosecco. Or not the Prosecco. The X from Sarah Jessica Parker. Yeah, that was the one with the massive guava bomb. Yeah, that was pretty interesting. I mean, coming from the beer world where I have to drink IPAs that taste like every fruit known to man, I'm obviously going to gravitate towards the- It's our old friend sulfur-based thiols. Yeah, exactly. Thiols are the new buzzword in the IPA world, so that was the dripping with thiols release. This is a really fun lineup of stuff. A fun wine episode. Dang, whoever heard of that? What is going on here? It's been a long time. All right, listeners, we'll see you next week with a real snoozer. Ray, thanks again, man. Listeners, hope you enjoyed it. Do us a favor, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. Tell your mom we said hello. We'll see you next week. I'm Pat. I'm Roger. I'm Chris. And I'm Ray. You gotta give it the keep tasting. 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