So this is one that, I'm not talking in the microphone, so you just don't bother. Oh, you still can? Okay. Yeah, suck it up. I was in Piedmont last year. They like their bubbles out there. And I was with a guy who's a champagne nut, an Italian nut, and he saw this on the list, and we tried it. And it's called Maui-Blanc syndrome. Yeah. You know, it's like, wow, is this great because I'm in Piedmont having a great meal in the middle of the night, or is it because it's really that good? In beer, that's the Caribe. Yeah. Yeah. So since then, I've not been able to try this wine. Oh, so we get to find out if you were- This is Maui-Blanc or not? If you just had a case of the Chuckles that night. I mean, and I don't know anything about the guy. I know he's small. And I don't really pay much attention to the geeky stuff, just because I think it takes a lot of the fun out of it. We start talking about how he bottles it by hand and all the other stuff. It's a beverage of pleasure, trying to enjoy it. That's the name of the game with beer. Right. Smaller the better. That's not the name of the game for everything. Dude makes it in his basement. It's got to be good. Yeah, it's good. It's nice. It's like 60, 65 bucks, 70 bucks. Georges Laval. Yeah. Champagne, extra brute. Smells fine. Citric. Kind of bready. Extra brute is not austere. It's not kind of this kind of thing. It's trying to scare the hell out of you. It's sometimes extra brute can be kind of intimidating because it's so razor like. It's so perky. It's like, I dare you to drink this and say you enjoy it. Very much so. Assertive is a word I would use for this wine. Extra perky. Good morning. It is very. Yeah, it's 10 o'clock in the morning on a Friday. The positive spin is this is a great start for a champagne tasting. Wine was all downhill after this. All right. Thanks for listening. So we're tasting Georges Laval Extra Brute Champagne. Non-vintage? Yes, non-vintage. 13 to 17, it says on the back. Is that meaningful? Does it live up to your memory? Right here? Actually, the wine I had was a different one. This one's from the town of, what is this? Coumere? Look at the bottle. It says it's from the town. Garennes? Garennes. This one might be a bottling thing. I don't know if it's a village thing. I'm just not that geeked about champagne. I don't get that excited about it. That's why we have you on the episode today. Right. Exactly. It's Champagne Georges Laval Garennes, extra brut. Fruit is sourced from Valle de la Marne and it's 90 percent Pinot Meunier. Right. Which is the unsung hero in most champagne blends. That could be the fruitiness aspect of it. Little floral. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of time extra brut has like a lemon peel bitterness. This is all like baked apple and pear. Yeah, it's pretty. Yeah. It's one of the softest extra brutes I've ever tasted. Residual sugar is one of those things. I mean, what they say with extra brut is it's really hard to quantify, it's hard to taste because there's fruit and wine and there's sugar, and then there's acidity and wine could have almost no sugar. But if it's got no fruit, it's going to seem austere and if it's got a lot of fruit, it'll be a lot more forward. I mean, you could taste something like this and say, okay, this has five grams of residual, this has nine, you're going to be wrong most of the time. You just can't, it's hard to tell. There's acidity and fruit working together and it's either imbalance or it's not. All right. That's champagne in a nutshell. Let's get this thing started. See you guys later. Yeah. Thanks for listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. Happy holidays from us at Barrel to Bottle, unless you're listening in February, in which case, happy February. I'm Greg, I do communications at Binny's. In the room with me today. Barb, I work in wine. Roger. Beer. And we're joined once again by our champagne buyer, and we're actually going to talk about champagne this time. Hi, Bob Calamia. Thanks for coming on and thanks for bringing the good stuff again. The good stuff and the stuff we sell a lot of. Well, yeah, I try to pick a cross section of, I mean, if you walked into a store and I was talking to you on the floor, these are probably the things I would recommend for you, not necessarily my favorites, but they're kind of popular and they're very agreeable, and they would probably please the most people who buy this stuff. A lot of times you have to think about your audience and you want to find stuff that's going to please the broadest. So if I walked into a Binny's store and I said, I want a champagne, and you would say, how much money do you want to spend? And I said, I got 40 bucks in my pocket. I would probably ask you what you liked first. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of stuff out there. And I mean, I did this once a couple of years ago. I went to a champagne tasting with maybe 50 houses, and I didn't taste the top cuvees or the vintage stuff. I tasted all the Bruton on vintages. And what you'll find is that the overall quality level in champagne is really pretty high and the band is pretty narrow. What you have to do is find the one that has the right style. Well, you like some are fruitier, some are drier, some are heavier, some are more delicate. But you got to find the one, you know, that just suits you best. It's not really a question of quality. And I use the suit analogy all the time or the supercar analogy. Some guys look good in Joseph Abboud suits. Some guys look good in Armani suits. The quality is the same. The material is just, you know, it's all put together very well. But some guys just look better in a double breasted Armani. And some guys look better in Joseph Abboud. And you find the one that suits you not necessarily the best per se. Pun intended. What about the men's warehouse? You'll look good in it, Roger. I hear that you like the way you look. I look best in a big fluffy sweater that conceals. Right, exactly. Large, loose clothing. And to speak about champagne style, we're in luck because in that region, that's what they do best is create something that they make the same from year to year to year. So when you follow most brands, you can follow them pretty loyally for the entire duration of your life because one bottle of Moet and Chandon or Viv Clacot or Laurent Perrier will taste very, very similar 10 years later. Oh, like White Star? Funny example. Okay, not so much that. Except for when they kill off them. They drive that one up a little bit and it's doing very well. But yeah, there's a house style and it's like, in some ways, it's like Carlo Rossi or Bud Light. They don't want you to see any variation from year to year. And if they do find it, they're going to can you your ass as a winemaker. They want it to be consistent every time you pick up a bottle. It's got to be the same thing. And as you go higher up the range with any given producer, or you get smaller and smaller plots, then you start to see differences in vintage and differences about winemakers. There's more color, so to speak, and less of this monochromatic. But you get more individualistic wines. You're going to pay more money for them. And they may be a little bit rougher in bad years and better in good years. But it's not just about Champagne France. We've got Value Bubbly from around the world. So if I walked into a Binny's Beverage Depot and said, I'm looking for a sparkling wine, and I got 15 bucks. Yeah, the customer is not going to go, I'm looking for a sparkling wine. They're going to go, I want a Champagne for 15 bucks. I want a Champagne. I have $15. What are you going to recommend to me? There's a couple of value categories for sure. One of them is definitely Spain, and we're going to get to that in a little bit. But I think a lot of us will take it over to the Italian section in our sparkling wine aisles, and we can talk about Prosecco. Just so happens, Bob popped a quirk on one just now. It just so happens. This is not what I would call it. Most Prosecco's tend to be a little bit fruitier and sweeter than this. If someone said, well, you have to bring Prosecco to this party, this is the one I would pick. This is Nino Franco Rustico, non-vintage. And one of our better-selling Prosecco. Stupid Prosecco. Stupid Prosecco. That's so pretentious. He got in my head with that. Amari, Prosecco. I got the two bottles of Prosecco. I just came right out. I didn't even mean to do it. This needs a biscotti. And some prosciutto. All right. Anyway. This is Nino Franco Rustico from Valdo Biadene. And I think this will be a little bit drier than most people expect a Prosecco to be. Why do you think in the last few years, I mean, I assume Prosecco has been around for quite some time, even in the US. But why so much interest in it as of late? You can pronounce it. Part of it. It tends to be fruity, simple. You're not going to make, there's no, well, I make a joke when I taste these things. There's no Cadillac of Prosecco. It's not a very distinctive grape, but it does have a lot of mass peel. It's fruity, easygoing, open-knit. There's not much to understand. It's never searingly dry or anything like that. It's just very, very agreeable. I think the important technical note is Prosecco is made differently than traditional method champagne. So instead of secondary fermentation in the bottle, you get secondary fermentation in tank, which is the reason it's more affordable. It's not as laborious and not as cost-intensive to create. In addition to fruity and more sugar, the bubbles are actually technically a little bit different. So Prosecco is a little more delicate. It's more playful and fizzy than it is very assertively sharply carbonated. And I think for most Prosecco customers I work with, that's what they like about it is it's really delicate. It's really playful. It's easygoing, as Bob said, and it's not as intellectual. More soft and plush, easier to drink. And for Sunday brunch, especially with the price point they fall in, it's a good choice. This is 14 bucks. I mean, would you guys drink this? I mean, if someone opened this on a Sunday brunch or whatever, you'd be like, oh, this is fine. This is better than I was expecting it to be. And if you want to connect with your insufferable hipster niece or nephew, make sure you have a bottle of Aperol on hand that they can dump into it. Spreeds. Some of our stores stack them side by side. No, that's true. Not a bad idea. Yeah, little broke. But to Roger's question about Prosecco, and I'm glad Bob picked this one, this was kind of the benchmark for me. When I first started dabbling in wine, I'd never heard of Prosecco. This was the first one I'd had, the only one that was out there for quite some time. And the way it's blown up in the last four or five years aside, this is still the one I measure other Prosecco's by. I do think it's better than the average. And I think it's worth paying another two or three dollars for something that has a little more character. It has a creaminess and like a baking spice and a little like slight anise herbal quality that some of them don't carry. It's really pleasantly fruity. Not too much sugar. Yeah, not too sweet at all. Better than domestic sparklers in the same price range? You're hard pressed to find a domestic sparkler in the same price range. This is like three or four bucks more than Corbell. Yeah, that's pretty incredible. This falls in line with generally within a dollar or two with Domaine Chandon and Mum Napa. And I wouldn't say I necessarily like this better than those or vice versa. They're just different. This one has a little more mass appeal. As Bob said, Mum Napa and Domaine Chandon from California are also good for champagne alternatives in the mid-teens price ranges. That price range also good if you're curious about champagne cocktails, but you don't want to put bitters and sugar into a $40 bottle. A lot of people use Cava because it's clean, which is our next wine. Speaking of Cava. Say Bob, what's Cava? That's a transition. Is this Gramona? It is. Oh, sweet. Gramona La Cuvee. This is Grand Reserva, vintage dated 2015, Brut. Oh, vintage dated, you say? Fine French champagne. Like the finest French champagne? We can sit here and talk. It doesn't matter what we say. It is hard to find something vintage dated at 20 bucks though. Correct. That's one of the most special things about good, Cava from Spain and this house especially, there's an incredible value here with the amount of lees aging and bottle aging. If this were from champagne, this would be around $40, $50 a bottle at least. I would think so. Yeah. You can always count on the Spanish to undermine the French. This is one of those wines I buy. I wish we went through more of it. I think it's a great value for the money. Cava over $10 though is very, very difficult to sell. Most people, they like Cava because it's simple, it's straightforward, it's great for mixing, it's usually under $10 and getting people out of that price point though, that mindset that Cava has to be cheap is really difficult. Cava from Spain. Cava, Spain's answer to champagne and traditionally is made in champagne method meaning secondary fermentation in the bottle. There is some Chardonnay up in that region, but a lot of times they use chirello and Macabeo, yes? Yes. This smells great. I'm telling you, I hate it. I mean, it's been a couple of years since we carried it. It's just, I mean, I feel bad saying it's painfully slow. It smells like barrel spice. It smells so good. It's had so much aromatic depth and just a great value, especially when you will try some stuff from California next, but I think for the money, pound for pound, this is like one of the best products you're going to find for under $20. This one is Gramona La Cuvee, Brut. Again, this is that Penedes region, Northeastern Spain. Seems like it has a little sweetness for a Brut. Is that just the fruitiness? Then misconstruing his sweetness? Well, I think so. Yeah, there's a little bit of sugar in there. It finishes clean. That's what you were saying before. You can't really, based on the flavor and the way that the fruit plays off the acidity, you just guess at it. I would never ever guess how much sugar was left in this thing. I look for it on the finish and the back because if it's clean, it doesn't leave this cloying sense on the end, then that's good. But it's not tinny. A lot of kavas can be really, really tinny and you got to poke around and find one you like. But this one is just like, I was really surprised. Okay, let's try it again. How much does it cost? I don't know, 18 bucks. It's like the best kava in the world and it's like less than 20 bucks. This is the Cadillac of kavas, no question about it. There's not many people that make kavas. Now, in this price point, they have bottlings that go up to a couple of hundred bucks. Cadillac of kava. Say, do we need to say anything more about kava, like what freshonette is and why people don't want to drink that? You guys get freesian nays? Yeah. People still drink freshonette and we sell a lot of Cristalino. I don't know where it all goes. I think a lot of it winds up mixed up in mimosas or something else. And some people just might, I mean, it's a budget. This is, I mean, bubbles as it is, is a luxury thing. And for some people, a $5, $10 bottle of wine is a luxury. And there's a lot of people that are out there looking for this and they kind of stop at 10 bucks. Cava is a good fit. Almost the whole category fits in under 10 bucks. So whether they're mixing it or drinking it straight up on its own, I mean, there's just a lot of business there and it's hard to make a sparkling wine that fits under 10 bucks. And that's why Cava remains popular for the freshonettes of the world. The Cigar of Utus, Cristalino, those are some of the biggest sellers. And even those are giants and pretty mass produced. I think those still drink above the average $3.99, $4.99 sparkling wine from California. Oh, sure. Those are horrible. Those are horrible. Because they're made from Johnson's and Zika's. There's so much sugar in them. People complain about headaches. I never understood that either. People complain, well, what are you drinking? And how much of it are you drinking? That you're getting headaches from this s***. I mean, from your point of view, though, all the years in the business and especially buying as much bubbles as you do, as old as you are, is the way I'm saying. Very old as I'm saying. What is the draw of the 399, 499 Cooks, Andres? I got to believe in mixing. We sell it, I mean, around college campuses, we sell a lot of cheap bubbles. And I really honestly don't know. To outage customers only. Sackle with orange juice. Right. It's a mixer. It's bubbles and I mean, girls love bubbles. It's true. Period. I mean, there's nothing smarter you can do than walk into a party no matter who's there with a bottle of bubbles. I'm a girl and I can agree from a drinking point of view and a selling point of view, this is a woman's category for sure. Yeah, I think so. This next wine was one of the easiest wines for me to sell as a wine consultant. It's a no-brainer. Because I would say, how much you want to spend, and they would say, I want 20, 25 bucks. And I would say, okay, so the house in France that makes Cristal, that champagne that everybody loves, has a California property in Anderson Valley, and their entry-level sparkling wine is just phenomenal. Right, that's a good way of putting it. And this is ideally the California equivalent of a house in France that came over here to make wine. The same style would carry over, and here it really does. Rotor can be big and round and toasty, and even this one, it's 21 bucks. This is, by the way, Rotor Estate, Brut, Anderson Valley. There's a nice creaminess to it. That's the thing, it's got that dilliness and that creaminess. This is way more broader and rounder than anything you're going to get. And I love Mum Napa. Rosé is really good. There's a place for Chandon too. But this one has a roundness and a creaminess that you really don't get with a lot of these California sparklers. To Greg's point. Yeah, I think this one is fashioned much more closely after its French parents. Yeah, the house is all the way down, which is this like vanilla and creaminess, like you said, doughiness, breadiness, this breadth and like a little lemon curd on top of that, too. So it has some fruit to go with it. And the price has gone up. I mean, I think five, ten years ago, you could have this for $14.99 and now it's over $20. And I understand they've had some problems with supply, and that's what happens when supply dries up, the prices go up. But I still think if you're going to spend around $20 or if you want to be $15 to $20, spend a couple extra bucks. This is pretty good. Yeah, and their non-vintage rosé is delicious as well for mid to higher 20s. And it's worth mentioning that Rotar Estates flagship champagne, quote unquote, just landed itself a nice spot on the Wine Spectator's Top 100 list, 2012 layer mitage. If you're listening to this now in 2021, don't ask the stories. Right. Well, those top 100 lists are funny because they're recaps of a list that our wines have been reviewed all throughout the year. And more often than not, by the time they do this recapitulative list, most of that stuff is gone. You know what? That's kind of something that's neat about this actual episode that we're recording right now. Usually, we do a lot of vintage wines. We do beers that slip in and out of availability. Some of the hand-picked stuff, some of the spirits we've tasted. Most of these wines are actually going to be similar in style in 2025, when somebody downloads this to remember what we sounded like. Greg made it funny. But what we're tasting now is still going to be pretty consistent to what's available to the future. No, it's the same thing with the Rota Hermitage. It's always good. I mean, you could argue about the $30, $40, $50 price point. It's always good. And then one year, it shows up on somebody's list, and you're like, I've been looking at this crap on my shelves for years, and everybody wants it. Well, that Rustico that we tasted earlier was one of the, like number one on enthusiasts' enthusiast list this year. Right. What the hell? Right. You know? It tastes the same every single year, but with some guy, girl, whatever, puts it on a list, and now everyone's got to have it. I just, I don't get it. Bob, you just opened one of your favorites. This is my favorite. This is Paul Roger's Brut Non-Vintage. It's equal parts Pinot Meunier, Pinot noir, and Chardonnay. And those are the three traditional grapes in France. Everyone, it's like everybody in the pool. Everybody lends a certain quality to it. The Chardonnay lends the structure, the bones as it were. Pinot noir lends body, richness, fatness. And Meunier, once frowned upon, is now kind of like favored by the geeks, but they're very fruity. They don't have a lot of structure. They don't have a lot of body, but it's a nice touch. It's like a cherry on top of a sundae. So just to say the obvious, the Chardonnay is the white grape, high acidity. Right. And then the Pinot noir is the softer red grape, and Pinot Meunier is also a softer red grape. And if you had a Blanc de Blanc, which means it's made with all Chardonnay, you expect something that's a little bit more, it's crisper, it's nervier, it stands with the food better. If you get a Blanc de Meur, you're going to get something that's a little bit rounder, fatter, fuller body. And like I said, as a question of style, what are you looking for? And we have stepped the foot back into the country of France in the region of Champagne with this bottle. So back into actual Champagne. I mean, I love it. If you don't like this, you don't like Champagne, it's got a little bit of everything. It's not horribly distinctive or horribly flashy or horribly acidic or horribly sweet. It's got a little bit of everything. Everyone works and plays well together. And then to me, it's like anything else I look for in Champagne, it's balance. And that's what this has to me anyway. You just used the word horrible to describe one of your favorite wines. Not horrible, not horrible. I mean, okay, so there's a fruity breath here and there's a lovely floral quality dancing across the top that seems like a woman's perfume to me. Yeah, in a really pretty subtle way though. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's not the most distinctive thing you're going to ever drink, but for 40, 50, 50, what is it, 45 bucks? It's a great bottle of wine, safe bet every time, very consistent. Ballinger is the same way. You could taste Ballinger anywhere on the planet. You smell it, you know exactly what it is. I think there's something to be said for that. You can walk into any shop anywhere and know exactly what you're going to get. And the fruit profile on this is really nice. I like the sort of lemon curd or meringue almost situation. And a lot of green apple for me today, this really bright, vibrant, crisp apple note coming through. But I really like the width of it, the breadth of it. And it has acidity to go with. For sure. It really like grabs your palate. This is the first one. The back end, the chalkiness. Yeah. And I've heard Bob give the speech about Paul Roget, Brut for more years than either of us want to admit now. But the consistency of his recommendation speaks thousands of volumes, I think. And it's never wrong. You're very sweet. Thank you very much. I am wrong sometimes. I hate your guts though. Paul Roget, not to be confused with Jay Roget. They're slightly different. Wasn't the vintage of this Churchill's champagne? Yes, it was. It is. And in fact, it's called Winston Churchill. first great champagne I ever had was 1982 Paul Roget, Cuvee, Winston Churchill. I was Florida, did not know champagne could be that good. It was amazing. So if you're looking for a gift, for me. You got any history buffs? For Roger. You want to live it up Churchill style, wake up in the morning, light up a nice Churchill cigar, boom. There you go. Paul Roget. Then don't taste anything for the rest of the day. But between those two, between the Winston Churchill flagship and the entry level, quote unquote, non-vintage brew here, there is classic vintage champagnes, which across the board are some of the best in every tasting I attend. No question about it. 2008, 2009, and they're reasonably value priced around $7.80. I don't want to name any names, but I would take Paul Roger's Rosé in a good vintage, or the Blanc de Blanc in a good vintage over things that cost $150, $200, and $250. Easy. Literally last night, I had the 07, wait, no, 09s. The Paul Roger's. Rosé and Blanc de Blancs, and it's just like, why would you drink anything? They're good. Oh, because you were at the champagne tasting. I was going to accuse you of being bougie. We had the 08s and the 09s side by side a couple months ago at a friend's house for lunch. Oh, you are bougie. That's bougie. The 09s are good. They're nice, and there's what I expect to pay at $110 a bottle, but those 08s were stellar. If I checked, there's not much left in our chain. If you ever see a bottle of vintage dated Paul Roger 2008, anything, buy it. For sure. How much 09 and Brit Rosé are out there right now? As much as you want. It's spotty. It comes in, it goes out. I mean, once you get up to 110 bucks, if it doesn't say Dom Perignon or Rive Cliquot, it can be a tough sell. Even I think, yeah, one of the wines we're about to try right now, Villamar. They sell fairly well, but once you get over 100 bucks, it's a different customer, I think. Dom is a really good example of people that spend $150 a bottle because they want you to know they spent $150 a bottle and they're not buying it because they're critically looking at the wine. It's a gift. A lot of the popular lines over 100 bucks are gifts. They want their customers to know exactly what they spent, and they don't care about the winery dog or any of that bulls**t. They want something their friends recognize. Is that bad to say all that? That was fine. I think to say succinctly, that's one of the questions I ask people when they say they want to give champagne as a gift is, is name recognition important? If so, there are two big names that I'll absolutely show you, and take your $150 or $200 and call it a day. And the exit is right over there. There's the register. Totally understand that. But for quality and- That's what I ask them. Are they into champagne? If they're into champagne, then fine. If they're not, then get them something. That's a real thing, though. Like in spirits, I can remember selling scotch, and we get some of the best hand picks that we do, and they come in very plain packaging. It's hard to know what the distillery is. And if you give that as a gift, it might be one of the most exceptional scotches on our shelf, but I get it. But they're still only going to buy blue label if they only want them. If you're spending a lot of money on something as a gift, the receiver is going to be like, what the hell is this? You're right. It didn't help. We're getting better. The packaging on our hand picks is getting a lot better. It doesn't matter, though. It doesn't matter how good it gets. Right. It came in like the white and black package, like the generic chips from the 80s. That's how our hand picks used to come. But still, I think that name recognition is always going to be important for people. You're not going to get around it. Also, they're fine. Dom is pretty good. Right. You can taste like, this is a nice class. One of the ones that gets picked on occasionally, Krug is still one of the most fabulous champagnes. Oh, I love Krug. I absolutely love the stuff. So, the best thing to do, if you really want to show off, is that if you invite someone over, you have the brand with the name recognition. Whiskey people do this a lot. You have a Pappy Van Winkle, then you also have the whisky you believe in, and you have them try both of them next to each other. That, I think, is one of the only ways that you get people to realize. That gets to be expensive, I would imagine. Also, there's a little bit of a surprise. I mean, we're all like that. You don't want to think you're like that, but we're all like that. It's like, I know better, and I'm going to show you. Yeah. I did that with a friend once with a 15-year Pappy. Some friend you are. Something from high west that I liked a lot better. It might have been midwinter dram or something, but served them the same. We just sipped them, and I said, which one do you like better, honestly? It's not wrong, it's just. But you can change their mind. Like what you said, they're still going to go out and buy the other one. Right. Exactly. The reason that I bring it up is that what's nice with that is that you can have the thing that's unobtainable and then offer them something they can actually buy. At least with some of these higher-end Champagnes, they are still available, although under-appreciated. Then they pick out Jim Beam Red's tag. That was their favorite. Going back there. You do you. Going back for quality to price ratio, for talking vintage champagne, I would pick up anything Paul Roger, vintage dated over a lot of the other even higher-end, Tete de Cuvées or Prestige Cuvées, we call them, just because the quality is so high for We're on to the next point now, Roger, why don't you introduce the next one? This will be funny. How dare you. I'd like to point out that the cursive on this is a bit showy. It's a little difficult to even know what they're getting at. Vilemon et C. Vimar. Vimar. Vimar. CIE. What is the second word? Just call it C. I don't know what that means. I don't even care. It's Vilemon. Vimar. Vilemon. Roger, pass it back down. Seventy percent Chardonnay, 30 percent Pinot noir. Discorgement. August 2016. That's cool. Say, Bob, what does discouragement mean? You do the technical stuff. Okay. Yeast blowout. Well, I'll try and do a quick 30 second, not too technical. I've never been a fan of, I mean, we're trying to like sell wine here. We're trying to get people involved in it. And if you start getting too technical, people start leaving the room. The long and short is what you do. You start with grapes and a little bit of sugar and then you add some yeast and you get a fermentation. Generally, with Champagnes, they come up to be very dry. You don't want anything that's too sweet. And then they add some more yeast to it, sticking in a bottle, ideally the same bottle that you're going to actually buy off the shelf. And the second fermentation happens and you get the bubbles that stay inside the bottle. That was the shortest version of that I've ever heard. But you also get a bunch of crud. I've done it a lot. I've done it a lot. And it sits on its yeast. That's what they call it. Once you put that sugar and you stick the cork in it, the yeast and sugar work together and they make bubbles. And those are the bubbles you taste in Champagne. And after a fixed amount of time, whether it's a year or two years or six years or 10 years, you discourage it. You tilt the bottle upside down so all the dead yeast cells kind of make a little plug by the cork, by the temporary cork. And then you freeze the neck of the bottle, generally, and you pop out that temp cork, and out comes this ball of dead yeast stuff. You put a cork in it, put a capsule on it, send it off, and you're done. Boom. And sometimes... Is that too short? Well, no. No one gives a s***. That's discouragement. I mean, that's like where they take off the crown cap and put in a cork, and that's for real. Put it in the permanent cork. Right. And then sometimes they'll seller it beyond that. Right. Some people, yeah. Sometimes. It's like a bottle cap. You pop that bottle cap off, and out comes the spent yeast cells, and put a cork in, and it's done. It's the rough and tough of it. The reason I ask is when it's actually on the label of a non-vintage champagne, or sometimes vintage champagnes will have discouragement dates. It's an easy way to tell a little bit about freshness, and that's not to say you have to buy it within a certain period of time or to speak to shelf life of non-vintage champagnes. But there are different discourgements, and sometimes one discouragement of a non-vintage champagne may taste a little different than another because of the amount of sugar they use or what have you. But if there's any question about what a discouragement date is, you can always check a website or ask your wine professional. That was boring about discouragement. I feel like I wanted to be- I know. Well, no one cares. I mean, no one really cares. Also, it's literally the third time we've done that. Okay. Well, I mean, you think about the champagne buyer, especially when it's coming to the stores now in November and December, how much champagne do they really drink? I mean, go out in the isle out there right now in the Lincoln Woods store. I mean, it's a good set. There's stores that have a much, much bigger sets than that. How do you make any sense of all this stuff? They just like, okay, I give up. Maybe buy one of what's on sale or maybe one producer that I've had before. I'm just going to ask someone for a recommendation. Make this simple for me. I got 20 minutes, get a bottle and that's it. All they need is a rough and tough guide. We forgive them a few names that you like. I mean, they don't want the whole nine yards. They don't want to know about Discorgement or La Cour de Tourage or any of that stuff. I just brought it up as an educational component, but I agree. That's why I try to make it fast. Most people just don't give a crap. They just need a rough and tough, give me a name that I can trust or give me a name that the recipient of this gift is going to know and that's it. But we do cater to the nerds with the podcast. Yeah, that's chops. I mean, there are things that I buy where like, I know this **** is not going to sell, but if I put this out there, I know somebody is going to think, oh, this guy is legit. He went out and got this obscure. We have a sparkler from Armenia. It's delicious. It's 20 bucks. I love it. I know. In the case, they should have put toe tags in it. It's never going to sell. You know it's never going to sell. But maybe one guy, and I did this once, I bought a Greek Sauvignon Blanc. How much pot do you have to smoke? Nathan sold a ton of it. That's a shout out for Nate Cornish. Rob Bove. It's skokie too. Two six-packs a month is a win. That you put something out there and someone in the store just took a couple of minutes, read about it, looked it up, bought a bottle, took it home, and he's selling it. That's part of what makes Binny's Binny's. That's true. I bought a couple of bottles of that Armenian sparkling wine myself. It's delicious for 20 bucks. It's a really nice bottle of wine, but who's going to pick it up? What's it called? Cash is how you pronounce it. It's K-E-U-S-H-S-E-H. K-E-U-S-H, I believe. All right, folks, we dare you to be cool enough to go check it out. Now, we're going to get a bunch of requests. No, that's fine. I loved it. Let's not get into that. No, that's part of it, though. You loved it because it's obscure and you know no one's ever going down that path. I remember the day I tasted it here with you first, and you had it open and you were like, it's sparkling wine from Armenia, and I was like, great, thanks. You said, no, it's going to be better than you think. I tasted it and I loved it here, and then I was in Skokie, and I was like, Chad, I need a bottle of Fizz, anything new and unique. He's like, actually, I got this one from Armenia, and I really like it. I'm like, dude, you're absolutely right. Let me buy it. And I looked it up. So, fun fact, it's like some of the highest altitude vineyards in the world, and they're growing champagne grapes, not champagne grapes, they're on indigenous stuff, and I can't remember the names of them now, but they're really weird and hard to pronounce. The leading one translates to Queen Berry, Queen Berry, which is my new stage name. It sounds like a stage name. Anywho, let's go back to what we're tasting. Yeah, hold on. We still have Vimar in the glass. I do, and it's awesome. Yeah. This one's called Vimar Grand Selye. They do a non-vintage version. They do a vintage native version. These things start about, I think, 70, 80, 90 bucks, and they go up, and there's a Negotiant, and then there's a Recoltant, and the Recoltants are their growers, and to be a grower, champagne, and this is what they call farmer fizz or whatever, you have to be in control of 95% of your fruit, meaning you can't buy more than 5% of your fruit, and that's very hard to do. So you might look at someone, I mean, who would they call? What's a good one? Goutourbe or Marc Cabrar, and they would call them farmer fizz, and Villemarde is one, I mean, you ask anyone who knows champagne, is Villemarde grower fizz, and they would say yes, but they're not, they're a Negotiant, and they buy more than 5% of their fruit from other growers. I don't know if the rules are too loose or if they shouldn't have them at all, but there's a lot of them out there, and I buy them because I like them, and I think they're more distinctive. And a lot of these growers, they buy from smaller parcels. They're like more buying, they're working in one town. So the advantages to that are that you get something that's more distinctive, it has more of a personality, and the wine will suffer more with the vintage, the quality of the vintage, but it's got more, it's more distinctive. Whereas if you're someone like Moet, you're buying from all these different villages, and things can even out, and you can supplement it with a town that got less rain versus a town that got a lot of rain. You could just cover a lot of things up if you're buying from a large, broad swath of vineyards. Viumar, I mean, everyone would tell you it's farmer fizz, but I don't know how much they buy, but it's not farmer fizz. But it's sold like it's farmer fizz, and everyone tells you it's special, and it is special, it's very, very good, it's very distinctive, but it's not farmer fizz. So where do you draw the line? When does this cease to matter, whether it's a farmer fizz or not, if it's negotiating, it's a recultment. It's a huge matter of taste. I think it's like a black turtleneck thing, it shouldn't matter. Yeah. I agree. I think it behaves like a grower champagne, tastes like one, and I like to sell it as one because I agree, it's more distinctive than the average non-vintage bottling. It's bigger. They're really big round wines. I like them. There are indie bands who are on major labels, but they sound like indie bands, and there are schlocky rock bands who are on independent labels who don't sound great. Does anybody listen to music anymore anyway? You know what I'm saying? Good analogy. No, they still do. I like that analogy. And that you can have a really artful thing that has some money behind it and gets some distribution. And you can have some vapid content that's exactly the same and some really great stuff that's independent and some really vapid stuff that's independent. I mean, it's what's in the bottle that counts. And in short, VMR is technically labelled negotiate because they purchase more than 5% of their fruit, but they're purchasing it from really high quality vendors. their neighbors and people they know. And by the way, music has gotten to the point now where everyone's afraid to say what they like because they think someone's going to make fun of them. It's not obscure enough or it's not f***ed up enough, so I'm not going to put myself out there. That's true. You know, it used to be a lot easier. There's only the radio and that was it. Now there's everything out there. You taste are bad and you should be bad. I know, I know. I don't think music will ever get better than Stevie Wonder and Van Morrison. I don't know. Fight me. Music's a journey. It's not really, I mean, you don't end anywhere. You just keep going. Speaking of journey. Let's go back on that last wine again, is Give It. It's Dew. What do you guys think of it too? About Viumar? Yeah. Now, if Viumar is like say 90 bucks, and the Paul Roger is 45 bucks, which one do you like better? If you had to go out and buy one, would you go out and buy two bottles of Paul Roger or one bottle of Viumar? Two bottles of Paul Roger, but the Viumar is outstanding. I would buy one bottle of Viumar because I'm only going to drink two-thirds or three-quarters of it in one sitting anyway by myself. I want something that's going to be more distinctive and more special. But if I'm going to a party or a friend's house, then I'll bring two bottles of Paul Roger. The thing is, I would sit there, I would take two Paul Roger just because I mean, I marvel at the things that no one marvels about, just the balance of it, the how it's got a little bit of everything. Every element sticks up its hands and says, hey, I'm here with every sip all the way through the bottle. I just like the balance of it and that to me is the most important. Is that too geeky? It's not geeky. It's pretty geeky. Now, this is the thing. I think about this stuff a lot. I don't want to bore anyone to tears and I can sit there and talk to people about all this bulls**t about champagne. But really, all I do when I taste this stuff or I presented this stuff, yeah, there's certain things I like, but I know they're not going to sell. What I'm trying to imagine is if you bought this bottle of champagne for 40 or 60 or 80 or 100, would you be disappointed? No. That's what I think when I buy champagnes. There you go. There's the chaps right there. Yeah. Well, thanks for joining us everyone and we'll see you. But no, that's how I think about it. If you were the average customer, does this bottle, if you spent 80 bucks on it, would you be disappointed? Whether I like the style or not, if I think if they wouldn't be disappointed, I buy it. Roger's right about our audience. Our audience is already pretty tapped in and geeky. Yeah. It depends. I mean, it's everybody. I'm sure people enjoy it. I want to think there's a dozen people out there that are listening to this going, maybe I'll learn something, maybe I'll get some sort of toll hold here. For sure. So next on this marathon. This is, well, I got to bring one of these. This is a Laurent Perrier Rosé. It's 60, 70 bucks depending on where you go. It's by far the most popular rosé between 50 and $75. I like the bottle shape. Killer. The packaging is smart, everything about it and same thing with something like La Marca. I don't think I even tasted La Marca when it came out. I just looked at it and I'm like, yep. That's going to sell, yep. That's it. You stole Grand Dame, put Tiffany Blue on there, yep. That's it. It doesn't matter what it tastes like. This is a win. They hit it right out of the park. This is the most graceful of anything we've tasted today by a long shot. Right. I thought about Biacar. That's another very delicate, very pretty rosé. But in terms of sales and mass appeal, the Laurent Perreuse is just huge. Correct me if I'm wrong. This is maceration, correct, and not Sagnet? Oh, you could not give a s***. Oh. I think it's something that's geeky but we could touch on it. Do you know that, Craig? We could touch on it simply. If this is maceration versus Sagnet? Yeah. That's hard to do. Maceration is really hard to do. I think it is. To do it consistently is very, very difficult. A lot of times when rosés are made, there's like three, four, seven percent of pinot noir, still pinot noir, just blend it into it before it goes through its second ferment. That allows you to get a little bit more consistency in your color on your rosé. To macerate skins is a little bit more difficult. You have to watch it very carefully, make sure it doesn't get too dark, too light. Because when you have something that's, whether you like it or not, mass produced like this, you want it to be the same every single time. So in as dumb as English as possible, maceration, you're saying all of the grapes in the entire cuvee are smashed up and fermented all at once, whereas Sainte-Yé is a method. And that's where the color comes from. I mean, when you see a rosé champagne, that's where the color comes from. Generally, it's people putting pinot noir in it, rather than putting red grapes in it and letting them do their own thing. And what makes it so hard is when you've got the pinot noir skins in there, the color really comes from the skins. Right, like any other, yeah. When it's all mixed up in one, you have to pull the skins off earlier. Whereas if you're making a red wine with the skins, then you can use red wine making techniques, get the extraction, and then add that still red wine into the produced champagne to make a rosé. There's more and more control, a lot more control actually. And that second method is called Sainte-Yay. For listeners that maybe aren't as familiar, one thing that I think comes up is that there's a stereotype of, probably because of white Zinfandel, people think of pink sparkling wines as inherently not as good. But I found it interesting that in France, some of the most revered and the kind of champagne you would do for special occasions and gifts, are the true rosés. Yeah. Krug Rose though, I was at a dinner, was served Krug Rose with every course and it hit on every note. It was like the bet. Let's think about champagne on the whole, in the main, the best food wine you're going to get. People worry about this Cabernet or that Cabernet, they're saying, bullsh**. Champagne is the best food wine period. Yeah, to touch on two points there, 100% agree and I would say rosé champagne especially, incredibly food-friendly. The other thing to touch on, as Roger pointed out, there's a lot of sparkling pink stuff out there these days. In Binny's stores especially, we do try to separate ones that are sweet from ones that are more traditionally made like champagne. But the way you know if you're looking at a bottle is if it says Brut. If it's pink and it says Brut, it's still going to be a dry and probably champagne style sparkling wine versus a pink Moscato or sweet pink, something else. Maybe counter-intuitively in the world of wine, you think of red wine as being a stronger, like fuller experience. But in champagne, the body and the structure really does come from Chardonnay. So pinker or blanc de noir or whatever, more red grapes tends to be a softer, more intricate wine whereas a blanc de blanc tends to be more monolithic. Oh, I don't know. Ooh, fight me. What you're saying is rosé champagne isn't necessarily fuller bodied. Right, exactly. People have this perception that a little more red wine means more structure, but in champagne, it's kind of the opposite. It is kind of the opposite. Yeah, okay. Blanc de noir to me is like it's the flesh on the bones. That persistence, that length, that comes from the Chardonnay. That thing that keeps it on your palate forever. There's exceptions to every rule, but just counter to perception. Of all the events we do, I always try to attend some of our grand champagne seminars because I think to fully appreciate these, you have to taste through a variety of them. Yeah, I call it the latter. At once, which when you're really going to get that opportunity, unless you really throw down some money to buy several bottles of champagne and try them side by side. So I highly recommend as someone that very casually tries champagnes to attend one of our tastings because that is really an invaluable opportunity to compare these and figure out what you do like the best. Thanks, Roger. We work really hard to put those together and- You think it is amazing. You're tasting thousands and thousands of dollars of champagne. Yeah. And just able to take a look, even if you only pick a couple of producers just to go through their range. When I attend those more often than not, what I see the most of is people waiting in line for the Prestige Cuvée pours and I understand that. It's a once or twice in a lifetime opportunity for a lot of people to taste Dom Perignon or Cristal. But I advise more of what Bob suggested, which is go through and taste a bunch that are built similarly and find your favorite. You can taste Dom and you can take Cristal and the other expensive ones too, but really pay attention to the ones that you can afford and buy on a regular basis. Learn how styles. Yeah. Learn what you can. It's difficult with crowds sometimes, but ask questions about the ones you like. That's how we figure out what we like about them. It's made with Chardonnay or it has more lees aging. Also, grams per liter sugar is a pretty big deal. You want to find the sweet spot. Pardon the pun. I guarantee you'll be surprised by something. I brought that up because I tried rosés and I'd never had a rosé champagne that they were always my favorite at these tastings so I really think it will open up your eyes. Can we bring it back to go? Have another glass of Georges Laval. Yeah, I thought it might be neat to pass this around again at the end. This is going back to our first Champagne, the Extra Brut. So this is now going back to the driest of the ones we had. And I think sometimes this is a good way to end a tasting like this, because it's so perky, as I said, and it's gonna be a great palate cleanser, but I think it's gonna taste different than it did right out of the bag. It does, it does. More spice, more perfume, as apparent. Yeah, a lot of it, that's the thing, is like so much of it's your palate, and it's not really at the wine's changing, you are changing. That's really a hard thing for people to get, especially when you're tasting. Grand Avenue used to have a tasting called the best of the best. Every year they would take the 40 best wines and who decided what the best were. But the top dozen, they would put in the cellar, they would open up a day early, put them in the cellar, and the smartest people in the world, or the luckiest people in the world anyway, would go there an hour before the tasting and taste the wines that had been open all day. So you open like a Dominus, and it's 99 bucks at the time, and you're like, oh, this is good. And then you go up this ladder, tasting all these wines that are progressively better. And then you get to something like Clarendon Hill's Astralis, and you're like, oh my god, this blows me away. Then you go back and taste the Dominus, it tastes like grape juice. And there's like, and I think good tasters like this, once you taste enough, you don't have to go up that ladder anymore. You could just jump in anywhere and say, okay, this belongs here, this belongs here, this belongs here. But you really do, especially with champagne, taste a progression of them, because what you think you may like at 20 bucks, what you may find is that if you spent five bucks more, you'd get something that was dramatically different, dramatically That's awesome advice. Thanks, Bob. You're welcome. Thank you. One of the last nerd things I want to touch on is the stems we're using to taste these wines. We keep calling them wines for a reason, because they are crafted like fine wines. I wholeheartedly encourage every single listener and every friend and family member and employee to taste champagne out of a regular wine glass as opposed to a flute. Flutes are fun and they're celebratory and they're traditional. If you're just going to have a toast at a wedding, that's totally fine. But the reason we taste these out of more traditional wine stem is because it's a better experience. You can put your nose in it, the aromatics come out more. Especially wines this delicate, they can be very delicate. You do want to have something at a broader bowl and a broader nose, you pick up more of it. Why you would put it in what they call them coupes or a flute like that? All it does is restrict it. If you go to the top wineries, you go to the top chateau anywhere in France. They're always going to serve it in a big glass. Big glass, let the wine breathe, really experience it to its full spectrum. Some people even decant these things, which I think might be a little bit crazy. To put a pin in that, my point is, if you want to look at a pretty glass of champagne, put it in a flute. If you want to taste it and smell it and experience it, put it in a wine glass. Well said. Whatever you do, just taste. Get out there and taste. A lot of it. Exactly. Bob, thank you for bringing this excellent champagne. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Once again, happy holidays to everybody unless you're downloading this in August 2024, in which case. Hey, champagne is appropriate any day of the year, especially in the morning. That's what's so difficult is they spent all this time marketing the French dead about making feeling this is special and this is a celebration. Now, like, wait a minute, you can have it every day. Well, no, you can't because it costs 30, 40 or 50 bucks. Well, you can have Rustico most days. You could, yeah, if you had this sparkling bug, yeah. I drink sparkling wine at home more often than I drink any other kind of wine. You bougie, we know. Yeah. I drink Rhone's. I just like Rhone's still. That's another episode. Thanks for listening to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. We'll be back in your feed next week. Until next time, I'm Greg. I'm Barb. I'm Roger. I'm Bob. Keep tasting. That's awesome advice. Thanks, Bob. You're welcome. Thank you.