Welcome back to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I am Pat. I do spirits here at Binny's. We are distanced and in the same room together for once. This is a couple of wine podcasts in a row. This is fun. So I got Gabe and Alicia back with me. Gabe, how are you doing? Hey, hey, hey. All right. Hey, hey, it's Gabe from the Lincoln Park Store and Alicia. Alicia, what the hell do you do here? Yeah. I'm Binny's wine educator by day. Really good to be back. And I love the topic today. Rather than kind of focus on a region or kind of styles of wine, we're going to look at one grape variety for this whole episode. The best grape variety. The best? What is it? Chardonnay. That is not the best. Now, so you are a wine educator by day, extremely chilled Chardonnay drinker by night? Exactly. All right. Yeah. Now, I guess first question. But not too chilled. I mean, it's an appropriate cellar temperature. Give me some Chablis and some oysters and you'll find me there every night. Now, see, I can get down with the oyster thing. The last time I had Chardonnay, I was on a wine trip to Sonoma, dumping it out in the vineyard on the ground when I didn't want to drink it because I was too hung over from sour beers the night before. Yeah. That sounds about right and that's why we have not been invited back. Okay. Sure. Blame it on me. Blame all the wine department problems on the spirits guy. I got it. They haven't forgotten. So just to give you guys a visual for those at home, I'm sitting here and to my left, I see Gabriel, to my right, I see Pat and they have very different opinions about this grape. We're going to taste through three wines cited and talk about those. Then I have a little blind tasting for you both. We're going to see if we can convince Pat that this is a phenomenal grape variety. However, I understand where he's coming from. I think Jansis Robinson said it best when she said that Chardonnay is capable of extreme mediocrity and regal splendor. Regal. I think that's incredibly true. There's so much bland Chardonnay, but it's also a grape that can be so well manipulated in the vineyards and the winery. I think, Pat, that's something that I think you could kind of dive into more, because a big player in this and a big thing that customers are always saying is that they don't like oak. Wrong. Oak is fine, but to how it's used and what it is and where I'm going to reel you in here, Pat, you've probably had the most experience tasting raw oak samples. Probably. Having various kinds of oak being used, because there's such a big difference between American, Slovenian, French. Heck, you could use some chestnut. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Tell us what that tastes like. Acacia. Oh, there's a lot of chardonnay aged in acacia, right? Yeah, none today, but maybe. I know it's a thing in European white wine. We just did a tealine single malt, Irish single malt, hand-picked single cass, it was aged in acacia. And I was like, what the hell is this? Acacia, like, we don't see that in whiskey. And then I had read that it was very low tannin, but gave body to the wine. So it's becoming more of a popular thing with European white varietals. Yeah. How you use it is such a big part of chardonnay, because again, you don't have these big explosive flavors, isn't that right, Alicia? Yes. Yes, exactly. I mean, there aren't really dominant flavors in chardonnay itself, in the grape. And so you're right, it lends itself wonderfully to the winemaker deciding what he or she wants to kind of do with it. It's very versatile. It can grow in almost any climate, cool to warm. That is why it's one of the most widely planted grape varieties in the world. I believe it's the most widely planted white grape variety in North and South America. I planted some on the corner of Milwaukee and Montrose. It's doing great next to my hill. Hey, so something you did say kind of struck me, Gabe, in that it was easily manipulated. And so this grape grows in a wide variety of climates, pretty much anybody can grow it. And then so you can coax a wide variety of flavors out of it. I know some champagne is made from Chardonnay, right? Or most champagne, is that right? Yeah, it's one of the principal grape varieties in the champagne region and used for sparkling wines around the world. And part of that too is because it can grow in cool climates, we can retain that high acidity and pick it nice and early. But also it's pretty neutral in flavor when you get it that young. So it makes a great base wine for champagne or other sparkling wines. And takes up the kind of the autolytic notes that we know so well. Interesting, so is that kind of neutrality in character of it part of the reason that it tends to get so much oak thrown at it? Can be, yes, but I also think that America kind of lost its way with Chardonnay really starting in the late 80s. That kind of heavily oaked, really kind of buttery, creamy Chardonnay that many of you listening are probably very turned off by was not always what was made in the US. In California, I mean Chardonnay arrived kind of pre-prohibition. They've been growing it for a while and in the 70s, it used to be beautiful. I mean they were fermenting at low temperatures, actually a lot of stainless steel use, very elegant, integrated oak. They weren't even putting it through malalactic fermentation. We'll get into that later, but it wasn't until the late 80s and 90s that that really caught on. That's where that real like buttery, heavily oaked style came from. I think that definitely carried through with just the American palette wanting these big, intense wines. I mean, even today, you'll still find Chardonnay at like 15.2% alcohol, which is monstrous. And you know a lot of that's going to lead to flavors that people get turned off on Chardonnay. Totally. I mean, we all appreciate subtlety, but across the board, the tastes of most people in America aren't really geared toward subtle complexity. Like that it's big, it's bold, it's in your face, it's extreme flavor, whether that's from alcohol or, you know, hops or, or, you know, a heavily oak forward whiskey style like bourbon or something. All right, so where should we start with Chardonnay? If we're gonna taste one to start. Yeah, let's start with that subtle example, and kind of in the homeland, it is native to France, really to kind of right in between Lyon and Dijon to a village called Chardonnay. But we're gonna start in Chablis, and for those that just reject Chardonnay because you don't like oak, well, this is your wine. This is Domaine Servin's Chablis Premier Cru from the Vaillons vineyard, and it is completely fermented and aged in stainless steel. I love it. This is where you get away from those rich butterscotch-y baked apple kind of notes, and this is really highlighting more stone fruit, more clean citrus fruit, right? Yeah, like I wouldn't have guessed Chardonnay just smelling and tasting this, and I've had Chablis before, I know I've had this stuff, I've been to some big wine tastings to do and stuff, but I don't pay that much attention to what I'm drinking. It's just like, oh, if somebody says, you should really try this, then I try it, but I don't drink a lot of white wine, so it's never anything I really seek out. But this is textbook to, I think, not necessarily just the style of Chablis, but also just what we're saying about Chardonnay. It's very pleasant. There isn't anything that's really like crying out. It's got some zippy acidity, but it's not racy by any means. It's got some of those stone fruit characteristics, but it's not leaning one direction or the other. This is perfectly fine breakfast wine. Yeah, I would agree. I mean, it's light on its feet. It's got this white peach note that I think is really refreshing and it's balanced. Yeah, if I pull on a cork at like noon, I'm going to be really happy with it. This is a hot Saturday afternoon wine for sure. Chill it down, put it in a pint glass. That's an expensive pint of wine there. Well, it really concentrates the aromas. Yeah, that's true. The key is using that straight-sided shaker pint. That's right. The one thing to note on this wine from Chablis is the great minerality that we are getting with the wine, and a lot of people say that that comes with Chablis, but I'm really not lying, it's there. When we say that, this wine's peak of minerality, we're picking up these aromas of a flint, slate, whetstones, all in that camp there. I think it comes through really well in this wine. There's a lovely tension between all of those flavors and the acidity that Gabriel mentioned. Partially climate, partially soils, lots going on, but all stainless steel and Chablis, high acid, light to medium body, really kind of lean, lovely, kind of steely Chardonnays. Now, is Chablis synonymous with white burgundy or is one of them a smaller subset of the other? Yeah, so Chablis is part of burgundy, but it's pretty isolated, a little bit further north than kind of the heartland, if you will. So oftentimes when people are for the white burgundy, they're thinking about kind of down in the Cote d'Or and so forth. But Chablis, by law, we're only talking Chardonnay. Okay. It's also white burgundy that hasn't, it started to feel the big increases in prices across the board, but they're not as dramatic as what you found in the rest of burgundy. I think you could still find $30 to $40 Chablis that is rich and character driven and complex, but a lot more budget friendly by comparison. Well, this was an excellent wine. What does this cost at Binny's? This is $34.99 for a Premier Cru Chablis. So I think a great wine and the Servin family has been doing this since the 16th century. Wow. Small bit of experience. Yeah, I'd say. So the next wine that we're going to talk about, we're going to pop over to the United States and up into the Willamette Valley, specifically Eola Amity Hills in the Willamette. So this is Evening Land Seven Springs Vineyard Chardonnay. This couldn't smell more different than the previous wine. This is wild. This is blind side by side. I would call this the much more Burgundian by definition, like example. Yeah. When I first smelled it, I thought that, and people are a little sensitive when you just try and claim that everything is kind of, oh, this is Burgundian in style and Willamette is distinct. Many would say they're not trying to be Burgundy, they're just making really elegant Chardonnays. I think they've done this well. There's like a Barney, natural, I don't know. This is weird smelling. It's getting up to austere, but you're right. It's something just pops out right at the front there. Yeah, I would agree. There's some herbaceous note that I can't quite pin down that I don't know what to call. Definitely some herbal notes, and I would agree, kind of like a dried hay almost, even a wet barnyard maybe. But on this, we're getting lots of really ripe citrus fruits, stone fruits as well, but alongside a very kind of noticeable toastiness from oak. It doesn't reek of like vanilla and clove and nutmeg. It's not very loud in that way, but it's definitely there, a change up from the last wine. Yeah, my guess is that it's probably modestly oaked and then just low malactic fermentation, which maybe we should scratch that surface. Yeah, so this dates back a couple of centuries when we first discovered this. But essentially, after alcoholic fermentation finishes, or it can start during, but a second fermentation happens called malolactic fermentation and not to get too deep in this. But it's the conversion of acids, it's converting malic acids, which are really tart, I think, a green apple acid level to lactic acids. Similar to the style we find in dairy, it's quite creamy, it's softer, and so it reduces acidity in the wine, it adds body to the wine, and a lot of time those dairy notes that you might get in Chardonnay are caused by malactic fermentation, and it So this wouldn't happen naturally, like this is something that has to be manipulated to be done? Not necessarily, under the right conditions, it will happen naturally, it happens in almost all red wines, for example. But white wines, it's typically blocked. You can block it with low temperature, you can block it through addition of heavy sulfur dioxide. So you want to kind of make it hostile to this bacteria that causes it. But if you let it go through with some warmer temperatures. Yeah, I think that's part of the reason why California gets this bad rap, is because you do see these big mallows. And yes, stylistically speaking, we did want that as a wine drinking country. But also where Chardonnay was so predominantly grown for the first few years, that we were a wine drinking nation, it wasn't in these cooler climates like you'd find in Oregon. I mean, this is up by like Salem, this is pretty up there. Yeah. Now, so this is a bacterial fermentation that causes malolactic, is that a lactobacillus that's doing it? Well, we just read it as a lactic acid bacteria. Damn, Pat, why you got to go there? There are a lot of different strains. Okay. The favorite one is, hold on. This is so nerdy. I wrote it down. The preferred one is Enochoccus, if I'm saying that right. Enochoccus. Enochoccus. The two bacterias that are used commonly in like wild beer fermentation are Lactobacillus and Pediococcus. Oh, okay. But that's why I was just kidding. I respond like I know what you're talking about. Once more, you could say that, but you can't say village. Villages. Okay. So, just a quick shout out here to This Evening Land. It was fermented in once used French oak barrels. So, when people talk about oak, it's important to ask one other question, which is, was the oak new or was it used? The oak will lose about 50 percent of its flavor after one use. So, this is fermented and used wood, and then it remains in barrel for 12 months, and then another six months in tank. So, you're right. Little bit of oak, but not purely new. So, we're not getting as much of that kind of baking spice. Interesting. I dig that. Yeah, that was wild. I can't believe how different that was from the first one. Again, if I had to like not knowing anything, going in and just judging one versus the other, which one is old world, which one is new world, I would have guessed this is the old world. The opposite. Which one do you think you'd want to say? If it was the 10 o'clock in the morning and you're at the winery. The first one. You want the first one? Yeah. I think this one's a little more contemplative. And I'm not going to say one's more complex or something than the other, but there's just different, deeper, darker flavors in this one that I think like this would be more like, oh, I'm going to have a white wine with some select dish, you know, something like that. I think where this one is just patio pounder and this one is more like having with a meal. The Seven Springs, I want to retire somewhere to the East Coast and just sit on a dock, pull up oysters all day and just drink this wine. Just shuck an oyster, drink some wine, shuck an oyster, drink some wine. I love it. This is from Raj Par and Sashi. Is it Mormon? Oh, yeah. We'll just say Raj and Sashi. Raj and Sashi. Yeah, these guys are awesome. Yeah. Very cool. Raj, a very celebrated sommelier, and Sashi, a very experienced winemaker. So yeah, great wine, very kind of almost herbal and earth driven, funky, lovely. It's nice to see that established people in the wine industry are not afraid to continue putting out Chardonnays. You guys poo poo Chardonnay all the time, but how often are we getting a new brand of Chardonnay? It's crazy. Probably weekly. Yeah. It's crazy. You can't count it. It goes to show that people are still drinking this. They still want it. What's the biggest wine aisle in your store right now, Gabe? Oh, man. I think Domestik is still king. I think it's really hard to beat Domestik Wine, which is a good thing. But like Chardonnay, do we have as much in the Chardonnay aisle as we do in the Cab Isle, for example? No, no, no, no. Cabernet is by far skyrocketed away. It's probably double the Cabernet Isle. No, maybe not quite double. But after Cabernet, I think, after Cabernet and Pinot Noir, I think Chardonnay would be next. Yeah, Pinot Noir has gotten super popular. I wonder if people still drink white wine like they used to, because it used to be more fashionable in general, I think, to drink white wine. And I hear more often now, I'm not a white wine drinker. I'm not a white wine drinker. Yeah, you hear that from people a lot. I mean, I see- For whatever reason. You know, I see it get drank at family parties and stuff, but it's usually my older aunts drinking the white stuff. And whereas pretty much everybody's drinking red wine. They're classic. They know what it's about to start at 10 a.m. And they're not stopping till 10 p.m. Okay? It is true. I'm not saying nothing about your aunts. I haven't met them, but I'm just going to say they party. You correctly judged that they start at 10 a.m Exactly. And you won a Chardonnay. If you're trying to put back like cloying big fatty Cabernet at lunch, No, can't do it. Yeah, you definitely get more palate fatigue on red wine. All right. So a couple of things that kind of skewed my perceptions there. So what's the third one? We're softening the hard exterior here. We're going to cross the Atlantic again, but rather than go to Europe, we're heading south to Africa, and specifically South Africa. And I'm really excited to try this wine. It's been a while. This is Hamilton Russell Vineyards Chardonnay. This is from the Walker Bay region. So if you kind of imagine where Cape Town is, and you head south until you're along the ocean and just move east, you'll eventually get to Walker Bay, and it's right, it truly is right on the ocean there. So beautiful, cool climate influences, and it was actually Hamilton Russell that pioneered Chardonnay here in the 70s. He crushed it. He did it literally and figuratively. This is just off the nose. This is what I want every day. This is the smell that I look for when I smell Chardonnay. Really, when I smell any white wine, I'll get disappointed if it's not this. This seems like more of a halfway between the previous two as far as nose goes. Yeah. Now, South African Chardonnay, when I think South African white wine, that's normally Sauvignon Blanc, right? Chardonnay Blanc. Chardonnay Blanc. Sauvignon Blanc is popping up, yeah. Okay. But either way, it's not usually Chardonnay though. Forever, our South African wines were Pinot Noir, and then this one white. Am I wrong? Nope. Chardonnay Blanc, most widely planted grape, and definitely what we come to think about for South African whites. But I wanted to show this because it really should be on your radar for the quality that you get, and this producer has been around for a while, and he only does Chardonnay and Pinot Noir here in Walker Bay. So we get this really cold current that comes up from Antarctica, it's called the Benguela current, and it cools down these vineyards that are just a few miles away. This is nice, does this see some time in oak? I would guess yes. Yeah, definitely a little bit. Yeah, so 95% of this, so we'll say all, is matured in French oak for nine months. Okay. A third of that is new. Oh wow. So have you tasted that yet, Pat? Yeah. For how much oak? Is it, I mean, for- It's not out of black, and I wouldn't call it over-oaked, like the oak's there, but it's, you know, the oak kind of like buttresses this pretty significant fruit character. Yeah. For the numbers that we're putting up there, it's not like a monster truck rally of oak. This is modest. This is really polite. Yeah. There was a time, especially in California, as I mentioned earlier, kind of in the 90s that 100 percent oak, especially new was kind of the thing. But now this kind of one-third new oak is as high as a lot of people go. And you're right that the fruit concentration really stands up to it here. Also, because of that cooling influence, that acid is still kind of equally part of the party. And it's really beautiful example. This is on our shelf for $36.99. Not bad. What was the previous one price-wise? Oh, the Evening Spring. Evening Springs, $34.99. Bringing some heavy hitters today. This is $35 Chardonnays. Honestly, we sat here with like budget Chardonnay. And trust me, I have scoured the earth to find a Chardonnay that tastes like this, that I can break a 20 on. And there's a couple, but if we're sitting here drinking $10 Chardonnay, you would be kicking me right now. You would throw your spit bucket at my face, Pat. I don't know if I'd do that. You'd probably try. But he would be dumping it out in the corner. Definitely be in the corner. And I have to mop that later. All right. So I'm digging the South African. This is excellent. And I think this has the potential just to lay down for just a few years. I think that some of that fruit note is going to turn a little bit darker. Really? You lay down some Chardonnay, huh? Oh, I lay Chardonnay down. Yeah, I think so. This is a 2018, by the way. And yeah, a few years, I think it'll kind of come into harmony even more. This is a pretty excellent wine. I like this one. I think it's kind of what I was looking for between the first two. The first one was just very light and crisp, the hams beer of Chardonnay, mind you. And the second one was just a little, I think, too earthy for me. I don't know. The second one was good, but it's like I like this third one much more. All right. Talking about climate, just to jump off there for a minute, I know that we're talking about how you have this big cool air influence coming in South Africa, but it's generally just hotter there, right? Yeah. Generally, it's a warm climate. And the fact that they're only putting this in wood for nine months, Pat, you could probably talk about this a little bit, about aging whiskey in Texas versus Chicago. Oh, yeah. It sure is a little bit faster. Do we think this is maybe a factor in this, that this is only seeing nine months because? It could be if it's hot there, but also you have this cool current coming in. So if it's cycling heat like that, where you're getting hot days and cool nights, and if you're not, I don't know, I guess their cellar though, if the cellar is underground and pretty consistent, then you're going to have this consistent humidity and coolness to it. But if it does suffer from those heat swings, it's going to force the liquid in and out of the oak. So if anything, it would get a more oaky mature character faster, but you're really at the mercy of whether or not you're seeing those temperature swings. Because that's really what drives the character of bourbon. So besides the new wood, it's because we got... Yeah, it gets really hot in Kentucky and Tennessee during the summer, but it also gets pretty damn cold in the winter. Oh, yeah. So we're talking about how porous wood is. Don't forget about that. It's very important. Does oak flow? What's happening? Well, I mean, what goes out also comes in, I guess. I mean, so it's oxidizing too. And so there's no substitute for oxidative aging that I know of. No, I think. Like people heat things. Yeah, put it on the stove for a little bit. Well, I mean, you see it a lot with whiskey now, is people like, whoa, this is, you know, we have this proprietary aging technique that turns a four day old whiskey, it has the same flavor as a 14 year old whiskey. And they're cooking it or they're pressurizing it, or they're using this, like they're like, hats off to, you know, trying to scientifically progress beyond the constraints of time. But sure, maybe you can do that as far as the color goes or the oak character goes, but you can't just artificially oxidate something. Because you're gonna know, you're gonna be able to call it. Exactly, those green sharp notes haven't softened and they haven't, you know, oxidized away. Yes, there is something in wine that is called micro-oxygenation where- Yeah, people try. They're kind of forcing oxygen like bubbles kind of through the wine to replicate it, but you can tell. And similarly, you know, if you buy your kind of $10 Chardonnay and you're tasting some oak on it, I bet you it's not French oak barrels. So don't forget that though it's not very pretty to think about wine, oftentimes if a winemaker wants to impart those labors, but doesn't have the money to do so, they'll go ahead and put oak chips or oak staves in that vat. And those can get by. You can get by on those. Yeah. Sometimes. Yeah. But just to Pat's point, kind of less integration generally. But let's go to the part of the podcast that I'm very much looking forward to. We have three more wines, but I feel like you need to like those who wants to be in Knowing There. Neither Gabriel nor Pat know what they are. They're all yellow. So I will tell them where they're from, but then we're going to see if they can pinpoint these styles. And I think part of it is just acknowledging that the flow of money and expertise is kind of better than ever before. And so it's getting a little bit more challenging to say, oh, this is definitely an old world wine or this is definitely from this place. I love tasting soft wine. It's the best way to taste. I hate tasting blind. Well, you got to eat Crow a lot, but. Yeah. No, I'm going to eat it because no one will ever buy a Chardonnay from me again. I'm going to need to get like an I love Chardonnay tie or something. Surprised you don't have one already. I am too. It would be great. Oh man. I used to hate it. I really did. There was Hanzel's Sabea was the first Chardonnay that I had and I was just like, oh my God, I want more of that. From Walter Hanzel? No, no. This is from Hanzel. H-A-N-Z-E-L-L. Hanzel. Yeah. These guys are like the OGs. They were one of the first to be planting Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in California. Wow. One of the first vineyards and they still have some of the oldest vines. I think going back almost 90 years, I don't remember what it was, but they're badasses in that front. They're one of the first documented wineries to order a stainless steel tank for fermentation. They're also one of the first documented wineries to find out what causes malactic fermentation and how to futz with it. So yeah, that little Sabea number was kind of meant to be this really clean, easy style of Chardonnay, but it didn't lack the concentrated fruit notes of the warmer climate that it was coming from. I guess that's what I want from my Chardonnay. I wanted to taste like where it came from, which is expensive, but I'm bougie, like all other Chardonnay drinkers. If there's one Chardonnay in the store that both of you would say, stay away from that one. If you're serious about getting into- God, I'm so sorry, Mike.... an exploring flavor in Chardonnay, what's the one you got to stay away from? The one that the description just says butter. Yeah. Like the shelf tag. Yeah, if it's in the name, that's the same thing. It sounds the same to me. When your cocktail of choice is the liquor plus the mixer, you know what you're getting into. When your Chardonnay already says butter, you're like, there's nothing else to look for here. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a pretty, it's not exactly a subtle flavor. I could drop names, but no, it's not worth it. Try everything, figure out what you don't like, because you know what, some of this stuff might surprise you. Some of these big national brands, I got blind tasted on a Kendall Jackson a few years ago. I didn't call it a Chardonnay, but it definitely made me think because I enjoyed it. I really was like, oh, why am I sleeping on this? It's 10 bucks a bottle. Goodbye. Yeah, totally. All right, gentlemen. All right. So we have three wines and I'll tell you your options. All right, that'll be helpful. So one of these is from the Sonoma Coast. Okay. One is from the famed Polini Mol Rocher in Burgundy in the Cote d'Ibonne, and the other is from Mendoza, Argentina. Some great premium white wines coming out of Mendoza, not just Malbec. So let's see what you think. Number three has got a cheesiness to it. Number two is, God, I wish you guys could see us right now. You just see us drinking yellow wine. Number two has a very kind of slaydish quality to it. Oh, yeah. Three tastes awesome though. Yeah. A beautiful minerality on two. I totally agree. And a richness on three, just aromatically for sure. The other, while the gentlemen are tasting and looking and confusing themselves. The other thing to keep in mind with Chardonnay, a wine making technique that adds to this kind of texture and body that we're talking about, this creaminess is called liestering or bâtonnage. And so after fermentation finishes, these remaining yeast particles, a winemaker can choose to leave those there on the wine. As the wine ages, they can then stir them. And that does two things. One, by stirring, you're kind of opening up the bung and so you're exposing the wine to a little more oxygen. Was that the case with wine number one here? That you're having? Yes. Well, it's a touch cloudier than the others. The color, yeah. Yeah, that's coming because I believe it's unfiltered. Okay. Wine number one is Ramey's Chardonnay from Fort Rossi View in Sonoma Coast, 2017. Number one, the first thing that stuck out to me, it had this zippy citrusy quality to it. And almost like a tingle of acidity to it that I thought really stood out. It's racy. There's no doubt about it. I would guess that would be the South American one. Okay. All right. So we got a guess for this kind of vibrant. It is, it's racy. It kind of dances on your palate. The acidity here in the first one. I would say kind of solidly in this Meyer lemon, white peach, orange zest, kind of definitely kind of these cooler fruits, I think on the first one. Depending on where that vineyard is in Argentina, they could definitely be kind of dialing that in. I'm really tied, actually, because I like the idea of just for how light and lean it is in comparison to the other two, where the other two make me think that it's coming from a warmer climate. This one makes me want to say that it's the Burgundy. The Burgundy. But knowing Argentina a little bit, it could be... I just don't want to be wrong. I just kind of associate that more citric quality with a white wine, and with these hotter... I don't know. I associate it with Sauvignon Blanc, and I think like Sauvignon Blanc is like California s*** or New Zealand stuff or something. I just think of that as more of a New World flavor in wine. The citrus element? Yeah. Yeah. Typically, actually, we find citrus playing itself out in the glass when the wine actually is from a cooler place. Interesting. The fruit hasn't ripened. If you think about citrus, stone, and then tropical fruits, we kind of progress through that list as the climate is warmer, as the grapes ripen further. We're still right in New Zealand because it is cool in New Zealand. Yeah. Definitely. Yep. I'm going to say it's burgundy. Pat says South America there. All right. Well, I'm going to wait to reveal. Yeah. You got to wait till after you taste one too. Oh, jeez. But overall, I really love the first wine. Yeah. It's really nice. I think this is more in line with the Chablis we had earlier as far as occasion drinking. That's just a nice big glass on a warm afternoon type of thing. Yes. I also think that you're not in a polarizing space with this wine, just like, as you say, Chablis. I think it's going to attract a lot of people. Wine number two is Vina Cobos by Paul Hobbs, Bramere Chardonnay, the Los Arbolitos Vineyard in the Uco Valley 2018. All right, so let's go to wine two. So we already talked about kind of this, this wet slate note that you get on the nose. Also a lot of stone fruit, a little bit of a smoky quality to it, but nothing. It's like rinsing a peach in a river. I like it. This is also delicious, just off the nose, because it's not uber complex by any means, but it's very, it's curious. I think on the palate, though, you'll be pleasantly surprised. I think kind of everything steps up. I think it's a really beautiful wine. I think it's a more intense palate than the nose leads to believe. I didn't want to say austere, but it's more of a mild nose. Then it really explodes across the tongue in a pretty fun way. It's a nice wine. It carries. There's just waves of acidity coming through, and it's really just playing itself out a couple of times over. This is very good quality. I mean, I think all of them must be, I'm guessing. But this is very good quality wine. Any guesses, gentlemen? Our options were? We had Sonoma Coast, Mendoza, and Burgundy. I'm going to go Sonoma on that one. Actually, I'm going to go Mendoza on this one. All right. Wine number three is Domaine Bachey, Le Gros, Pellini Montrachet, 2016. All right. Wine three, our last wine. I would say the most opulent on the nose of the three. This is radiating. This is shooting out of there. If we're talking about breakfast here, this will certainly get you out of bed. Yeah. Out of bed. I have this one in bed. Keep an ice box of Chardonnay right next to me. So this one, especially you feel that creamy texture that we've been talking about, both from Malalactic Fermentation and from Listerine and from this Bateinage. This wine saw both. This wine saw Thyme and Oak, new and used. That's a common theme throughout all of these. But I would say the texture is the richest, I would say. Yeah, for sure. Fullest body. Yeah, definitely. It was just kind of, you know, it's not like chewy, but it had this noticeable plushness to it that kind of just washed across. Yeah. Yeah, but both the fruit on the oak are kind of, you know, together. One is not screaming over the other. I'm assuming this is a young wine, so that's not an easy thing to accomplish. That's really dialed in. I think for that reason, I'm going to say it's the Californian. I was going to go burgundy on this, just because I think this is the highest quality of the three. And therefore, I would go with your highest priced old world stuff. So we'll do the reveal here, but I will say I am very impressed. Wine number one is from Ramey from the Sonoma Coast. Wow. Fort Ross Seaview specifically. Beautiful wine here. So this went through full malolactic fermentation, bachonage, we had that leaves during 12 months in French oak. Dude. Single vineyards, I hear the Martinelli Turtles Ranch. And this is from David Ramey, a very esteemed wine maker. And he really helped pioneer the style, really classic style. And by saying that, I mean kind of pre the opulent, rich, buttery California style. Yeah. That's a kick ass wine. Isn't it? That's definitely what I associated Ramey to be more into. I think the last bottle of Ramey I had was almost a decade old. And I was showing its age, but it was still stellar. But it was not like this. It was so much richer and creamier. This is knocking me out. This is messing me up. Yep. So he committed to native yeast fermentation way before school back in 1991. He credits LaFlave out in Burgundy as an inspiration. Yeah, he's been in it since the 70s. So this was founded in 96, but in wine since the 70s. So he knows what he's doing. Beautiful wine from Ramey. This is on the shelves for $37.99. The vintage is 2017. I'm going to buy that. If someone drinks a lot of Chardonnay, this is f***ing me up because this is excellent. I had guessed Argentina on that, I think. I'm just so glad we're both wrong. Wine number two. We did have someone write on this one. This is Vina Cobos Bramere. This is their single vineyard from Los Arbolitos in the Uco Valley in Mendoza. This is new to Binny's and really excited to show it. This was the one that we thought was lots of minerality to it. Beautiful acid, just a really refreshing example. The Uco Valley within Mendoza is really nestled up into the Andes. We get high elevation, which gives us those cool nights that makes this such a refreshing Chardonnay. You get a really big range in effects coming off the mountains too. Wind is a huge factor coming off of that. They're really complex coming from there. I think I was playing off you a little bit from what you were saying. You had very good points as to why you were calling the first one Argentina. I think I played off that to think that. But also thinking like, if it is Uco Valley, it could be really miles of different things. Yeah, and just to show how beautiful the fruit is on this, this also is 12 months on Lees and 30 percent new French oak. Whoa. But yet it's playing itself so subtly in the wine. The Lees I think make it a lot more deceptive. Yeah. I wouldn't have thought it spent that much time on the Lees. Is this of Paul Hobbes fame? It is. Oh boy. That dude knows a thing or two about a thing or two. He does. He certainly does. He's reading good. I mean, this is fantastic Chardonnay. This is for what is it? How much? This is new to Binny's. It will be on the shelf by the time this podcast is released. Probably around 42 bucks. I'm into it. God, that was good. I think if I want more of any of them, just right off the bat, I don't care what number three is, I want more of that one. Wine number three, Pat, well done. This is Burgundy. Since I called the Old World wine correctly, that means I won. This is true. Yeah. This is Domaine Bachey Le Gros, Pellini Montrachet, 2016. This is on the shelf for 59.99. I will say, though Pat correctly identified probably the money that's put into this wine, in terms of value, we did see some great examples prior in terms of the Ramey and the Bromear from Vina Cobos just for the price point. What's the price on this again, sir? 60 bucks. This is 12 to 15 months, a new and used oak, and again with the Bachelnage, the stirring of the lees. The Bachey family has been doing it in Burgundy for six generations. It's a gorgeous wine. Yeah. We covered the globe here and also experienced a lot of different Chardonnays and hopefully highlighted a lot of the wine making techniques that come into play and really are decisions from a wine maker. It's hard to categorically reject this grape. Pat, what do you think? Yeah, these are good. I would expect if you spend $35 a bottle, you're going to get a good bottle of wine. I guess maybe my experience with Chardonnay tends to be more in that $10 to $15 range, but if you're intrigued by Chardonnay and you want to start kind of going down this path of exploring something a little finer, a little more nuanced in it, you Pat, I think this shook up two worlds, yours and mine. Do you want a glass of Chardonnay after this? Yeah, I'd drink a glass of this. Okay. Would you rather have a Ham's right now? Of course, I'd rather have a Ham's. We've done nothing today. You know what? This has made me rethink things because that Polygni Montrachet did not drink Burgundian, quote unquote, as much as I thought it did. Frankly, that Ramey, you could tell that Lee's contact was there, you could tell that there's a different style of wine making there, but I wouldn't associate that with traditional California Chardonnay. Yeah, if you're coming up to me in the Chardonnay aisle, don't tell me you don't like Coke and don't tell me you don't like Chardonnay. Yeah, and I think you bring up a good point. Let's be careful. We're all guilty of this, of just saying California Chardonnay. Obviously, California is a very big place with a lot of different kind of climatic influences. This wine from the Sonoma Coast from Ramey is two miles from the Pacific. That's very different from Chardonnay in Napa in the northern part with no cooling influence. You go down into Santa Barbara County as well all the way down the Central Coast. Lots of different regions of course within California. There really is no better time to be drinking domestically. I think that's something that Argentina shows us with how much of their wine is consumed domestically. I think we all want to be curious. We all want to be learning, but it's never a bad time to start drinking domestic. No, especially right now we're living in an age where we have a lot of tariffs on imported wine and things like that. There's good value to be had domestically for sure. God, I hope there'll be good value to be had. Well, gentlemen, thanks for tasting Chardonnay today. Thanks for letting me have Chardonnay. It's always a good day. You know, it was good. It was better than the Chardonnay that I, you know, half drunkenly threw out on the vineyard floor. Yeah. So when Aunt Margie comes around next, you know, Easter or whatever it is, you just give her a nice cold pint glass of that. Yeah, Chardonnay, a lot of fun. Drink better Chardonnay. Yeah. Yeah. Life's too short, drink better. Leave the Pinot Grigio at home. Do you guys want to give away 20 bucks? Let's do it. I'll take it. I love giving away money that isn't my own. So that brings us to the Q&A portion of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast, where you submit your question for your chance of the $20 gift card. Hit us up on the social media of your choice, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, maybe, at Binny's Bev with your question or email them to comments at binnys.com. If we pick your question, we give you a $20 Binny's gift card. Pretty fair deal, right? So today's question comes from Paul in Bolingbrook. Paul asks, I've heard you guys talk about corked wines here and there. How does someone know when a wine is corked? Very good question. Google it. Google it. Come on. That's not the customer service level we expect from you, Gabriel. I'm afraid of God, he went at that out. We, of course, accept corked wine returns. But yes, let's tell you about what to look for because I must confess, we do get some that are returned that are actually not corked. It's a sneaky thing because sometimes some things can be mildly corked and you can drink around it or you can confuse it for being some sort of just wine making technique that was like, oh, now it's just funky, it's interesting or whatever. Sometimes it needs to air off or something like that. I always have a really tough time unless it's very blatant in my face, but once it's crawls in my nose, never comes out. Yeah. For me, it's noticeable for me when it's really obvious. What are the clues we need to pick up on on this Alicia? Yeah. When a wine is closed with natural cork, about 1-3 percent of natural corks in the world are infected with trichloroanisole or TCA. Damn, we're good at that. This plays itself out in the wine as smelling very musty, like damp cardboard or Pat's basement. Smelling great right now. I'll have you know, I bought a new dehumidifier. What are you brewing down there? The other thing to look for is just very muted fruit. So if you're tasting the wine that would normally be kind of quite fruity, and it's just not what you're expecting, that fruit is totally muted and you get that musty, again, kind of wet cardboard smell, that will be TCI. And to your point, it's in varying degrees. And so sometimes it can be very hard to detect, but when you lock in on it. When you do, when it really gets in there, it's tough to get around sometimes. And sometimes you do just kind of come to terms with it like, eh, maybe it's an old bottle. You're like, all right, I can get around this. I'll live with it. But yeah, if you pick up more than one of those notes, it's probably hands down corked. And frankly, don't bother if you have another bottle laying around. Just pop the cork back in there, bring it back to your local store. We'll take care of you. Yeah. And don't be one of those people that smells the cork and thinks that you're going to decide the quality of the wine based on smelling inside of the cork. That's not going to tell you much of anything. What do you think it's going to smell like? So, go ahead and pour a small amount. Then go ahead and swirl that. And that's why in a restaurant, they pour you a sample. They don't pour you a sample from your bottle order to see if you like the wine. They pour it just to make sure the wine is not faulty, all right? So if you don't like it, that's your fault for ordering it, but... It's on you, you big dummy. Yeah. And don't be afraid to let that wine kind of sit there for a little bit. Let some things blow off. And dude, you know, Google just really quickly, wine faults. And you'll get this long list of flavors that are going to be off because maybe it is flawed, maybe it's not just like cork, but it never hurts when you have that example. It's also we do this at the store. When we get a really bad funky bottle come back to us, we make everybody smile. Everyone's got to throw their schnauz in there. Yeah. Yeah. So just a couple of two. I mean, if you smell kind of like a horse saddle barnyardiness, that's called Britannomyces. Or whatever Pat's brewing in the basement. Yeah. That, you know, doesn't have to be a fault, actually, in mild levels. Some people really enjoy that. But sometimes we find that in small, rub wines. I've had some Italian red wine that has a pronounced Britannomyces character, and it's just part of the wine. Sometimes you hope for it. Sometimes you want to find a little bit of that in your winery. And, oh, God, I've had that question before. People come in, it's like, you got any wine with bread? Like, not on purpose. I don't know. If you smell or taste your wine and it smells like now polish remover, that's probably volatile acidity. And that is also one that you can, you know, definitely one that we've had people turn bottles for. VA, that's understandable too. So number one giveaway for TCA is probably that mustiness and that wet cardboard. Wet cardboard, classic kind of character of oxidation though too. But that's more of like in a beer sense. Like, you know, a beer is oxidized when it's got that wet paper, wet cardboard kind of character. I think the next player that really kind of solidifies it is that lack of fruit. At least you were saying when it just seems dull, when it seems super muted and you can compound those two factors. And it's got a bit of mustiness to it. But that's you're pretty much in that telltale territory. Yep. So Paul, there you have it. Good reminder that if you buy wine from us and it is corked, please just return it and we will swap it out with a good bottle. Preferably don't drink three quarters of it and then return it because maybe it wasn't so bad. But when it's corked and you know it, please just bring it back. Feel free to bring it back. Always take care of that. All right. Paul, 20 bucks coming your way. You guys, thanks again for joining us. It's fun to explore a great variety that I have spent the last 10 years taking an absolute dump on. I love it. All right. Until next week, I'm Pat. I'm Gabe. I'm Alisha. Keep tasting.