So, what's the goal of this? To try five of the world's greatest dessert wines, all in a row, and maybe do something awful with them afterwards. Doug specifically said, do not slush them. He said, do not slush the d'Yquem. He took me aside and said, serious request, do not slush the d'Yquem. Something about Doug saying no. He's been warning me for a week straight that I cannot do this. But you want to hear what our- That's why I have a different pitch. Okay, we're going to take, we're going to use it as the sweetener in an old fashion. Oh, beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. You want to hear what Barbara Herman, our fine wine French buyer, said to me just minutes ago. What's that? She said, Chris, there's plenty of Yquem this time to slush. Did she say that? Yeah. I gotta give her a hug. If we got it from Barb, then it's- That's what I'm saying. And it's Barb's birthday. I said, it's your birthday, Barbara. You better run over to Doug and tell him to quit yelling at me because we're slushing this stuff. All right, this is a quick sip. We don't have time to mess around. Quick sip. Quick sip. We'll see how quick it is. I don't know, give me a regular. We'll see how quick it is. Look, I told Jeff that he had to wait 20 minutes for lunch and if we don't have lunch in 24 minutes, he's going to come in here and kill me. Or he's going to like do something terrible in my office. Tell him to have a snack. He said he already ate it to Molly. Hey, you're listening to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast, backing your feed with something quick and sweet like me. I'm Greg, I do communications at Binny's. In the room with me, Chris, I do wine. Lexi, social and stuff. Who are you? I am Emily. I'm one of the wine managers over at Montgomery. Interloper. Yeah. You guys just happened to catch me while I was walking down the hallway. I was just in the EChem class. You already tried these. I did. Don't spoil them for us. I'm trying not to. There's no way to spoil these, not even slushing. She started gushing about them and I'm like, why don't you save it for the tape? So here we go. Chris, which one do we have in a glass? Wait, before that, what's the story? What's the big deal about this? Quick overview, this is the most famous, the most lauded sweet wine on the planet. Did you just say the most expensive? I don't know if it's the most expensive. It's probably some Tokai with a whole bunch of petunios. Yeah, yes. Not even petunios, that would probably be the Essentia. Oh yeah, okay. Tokai Essentia, where they... This is Chateau d'Yquem, made with the use of something called Botrytis, okay? 400 year plus history in Bordeaux, right on a very beautiful river. They're on a hilltop. And what makes this area special is there's a very, very cold river that flows into a slightly warmer one, causing a lot of humidity and mist, which promotes the growth of Botrytis, which is a ugly looking fungus that draws water out of the grape and concentrates everything inside. So sugar, acid, everything gets increased through the action of Botrytis. It looks like that cheese that I find in the back of the drawer. Yeah. The back of the cheese drawer. Yeah, it's not pretty to look at when you harvest it, but it makes magical wines, because not only does it concentrate things, it adds flavors of its own that you don't find anywhere else. Weird things like saffron and Indian spice and really, really honeyed wines, and they can last forever. So here we are. They're made out of Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc, primarily. And this is 2022. 2022. Chateau d'Yquem. Recent release. Another magical thing about these is you can drink them on release, and they are delightful, exotic, tropical, wild, and sweet, but you can age them almost without end. Do they darken with age? Yes, they do. Because that looks like there's a gradient of bottles on the table. You will see a darkening over time of the color. If you get a really old one, decades and decades old, they will sometimes be brown, but still delicious. Wow. I like that white wine turns brown, and red wine turns brown. Like the inertia, like static inertia for wine is just brown. Well, it's just, it's oxidation. It's just, think of it like rust on metal. Yeah, okay. It's the same process. God, this smells great. And you were describing what the wine can be, and every word you said applied, tropical and vibrant and sweet and still. Yes. I don't get saffron though. See, I do. Down here? Yeah. I think there's also a lifted freshness to these wines that make them pretty magical. I always find herbal notes, you know, there is Sauvignon Blanc in here. Sauvignon can be herbal too. So you can sometimes get minty or I got Sherval out of some of these today. Really interesting. A little bit of fennel frond, even like celery water or all kinds of green notes that kind of lift the nose. But then all that richness underneath. Emily, what do you think? It's not good. I'm just kidding. Wow. We can't find more. I spit it out. No, it's really, really good. I got really delicate floral notes on this one. Chamomile, jasmine, obviously like that. Vanilla bean, a little bit of that. But obviously that really, really fresh fruit. I mean, I know it's only 22, but still it's screaming the freshness. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, speaking of vanilla, these are both barrel fermented and barrel aged in new French oak. So you're going to get some of those oak notes, but it will never, never dominate like in a chardonnay or something. It's very well into it. Yeah. It's like a vanilla bean ice cream. It's like that subtle vanilla bean that I get on this bottle, just a little bit. You might notice that you say ice cream, but there's absolute creaminess in the body, creme brulee, ice cream type. Like a toasted waffle cone too. Oh, yeah. I mean, there's so much going on here, you could talk about it forever. Anyway, that's 2022, highly lauded vintage, really fantastic. One other thing I want you to look for in these wines is the fresh acidity, but also the counterpoint of bitterness, phenolic bitterness that these I think all have in common. If you swish this around in your mouth and you've eaten classic British orange marmalade before with made of Seville oranges, with that kind of bitter edge to it, imagine that and see if that comes to mind. The peel. By the way, I want to point out that we have both 375s and 750s of the 2022 on hand. They're 230 for 375 and $445 for 750. That sounds really expensive. You get one little glass of wine per vine. Per vine. Yeah. Yeah. The yields are microscopic, not only because they keep yields down, but because a lot of the weight has shriveled away. A lot of the juice is gone by the time you press it. Is that why we sell them so small in the little bottles too? Yeah. It's a value thing, but also this isn't always the kind of thing that people guzzle many glasses of. It's very satisfying in small quantities. Let's take a ride back to 2017. Although, we have sold 3-liter bottles of this, so. Holy cow. What are you going to do with that? I want to get diabetes in 30 years. Stick a straw in it, man. One of the major benefits, as you know, of large formats is aging potential, and little bottles will age fast. So, if you have a 375 compared to a 3-liter, you might go centuries literally with this 3-liter. Not even kidding, you could buy these for your great-grandchildren. The 375 will oxidize faster. But another point about oxidation, these are highly resistant to it. You can have these open in your refrigerator for weeks without degradation. Because of sugar and acidity? Sugar and acidity, absolutely. But also because of the high sugar levels, there has to be a fair dose of sulfur in them too. Oh, just like in your dried apricots. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's not crazy, but it's definitely higher than your average red wine. Chris, call me nuts, but this nine-year-old 2017 seems more fresh than the 22. Interestingly, one of the first things I noted about it in the tasting was the color was lighter and brighter and it has a very, very fresh nose. Nice job. Super bright. Yeah. I kept going back to almost like a red apple, like a white cherry, but a little bit of a cinnamon. It's so, maybe because my head's already in the fall space, but it just feels like a fall day. Yeah, I agree. And the fruit to me rings a little, there's some pear in here, there's some apple in here, like you said. So yeah, I think it is very fall-like. What do you think, Lexi? It's very different from the last one. It's a lot more fruit than the last one. Yeah. It has the sharpness of botrytis lift also in addition to the acidity, it makes it seem even more fresh. Okay, we're going to move on. Is this kind of the... I'll ask at the end, never mind. Ask any question you like. I need to try them all before I ask if this is what they... Are they all this different? Well, yeah. In fact, that's a really good place to put it because I thought the shift from, strangely enough, just one vintage from 17 to the 16 we're about to try was pretty dramatic. I get much more caramely notes, more mature fruit, moving more into like confiture jam here. Why are these all so different? This is crazy. I also find this one to be remarkably spicy on the finish. It's a question of the vintage and also the age. If you could only try a brand new fresh 2016 and a brand new fresh 2017, but you can't, that's how the world works. Yeah. Wouldn't that be interesting? Little time travel. Wow. Yeah. This is where you're starting to get a little bit more into that aged, you know, little bits. It's so weird because it's one vintage difference and this has so much more maturity, and the 2017 was so fresh, right? It seems more Venice, like it seems more classically white wine Venice than this honey-like sweetness that we get from the others. Yeah. I mean, they will remain honeyed, but I think the impression of sugar definitely goes down as they get older. Is the stuff swirling around in my glass, the like sediment or sugars or what's going on there? I don't know what you have there. It could be just some little tartrate crystals. Do they look like little pieces of sugar or something? Yeah, that's exactly it. So tartrates are just a precipitated acid, basically. Tartaric acid precipitates out. Like tartar sauce. No, not like tartar sauce, but strangely, it's exactly what cream of tartar is. If you use it in baking, this is the exact same thing. Whoa. OK, cool. Who wants fish sticks? Sugar cookie? Speaking of fish sticks, we were discussing pairing in the class, and a lot of people in the States think of these as dessert wines, and a lot of people who think they're sophisticated, and this is a sophisticated pairing, like to pair it with foie gras, something really rich. But you can pair this with all kinds of savory foods, and especially spicy foods. I mean, think anything that you would pair recently with Asian cuisines that have a lot of chili spice in them, but also just straight roast chicken. Somebody, Liz, suggested Moroccan tajine, which I thought was brilliant. I was about to say paella. Sure. Yum. Yeah. Because of the- In the class, they broke it down by year. Less than 10 years is really good for appetizers and cheeses and stuff. A little bit older than 10 years, that's when you can start getting into your white fishes, your crustaceans, stuff like that. Maybe light pastas. Yeah. I think scallops, lobster, any of the really sweet seafoods. Incredible. Then you're like 20 to 30 years, that's when you can get into older cheeses, maybe a little bit more of a white meat, like your chickens, your fall grass, things like that. Then your 40 plus years, you can start getting into- He had the example of wagyu beef, that would be really good because of the darker fig notes, as that gets more amber-like. Yeah. Okay. I love that somebody is tracking all of that and they have a spreadsheet. Having that opinion is like having an opinion of business class and first classes across various international flights. I can't relate to having that. What do I pair this 37-year-old? We're all in the 1% in this one, Marv. I mean, by definition, just trying this, yes, this is a rarefied air of the wine world right here. No doubt. Okay. Very interesting transition into more mature flavors. Now, we're going to jump all the way back to 2007. What? Which is a fantastic year. It is not. That was the year of Black-Eyed Peas. There's nothing wrong with Black-Eyed Peas. This is decidedly Fergalicious, okay? There's nothing more. Well, is it Sacralicious or Fergalicious? Sacralicious. Fergalicious. Anyway, I got a feeling this one's going to be pretty good. Oh, wow. You and Jim. You and Jim. Look, it went right over his head. What? I'm not. I don't pay attention to Black-Eyed Pea puns. It's not. No pea puns for Jim. You guys ever eat Hoppin John? Delightful southern dish made of Black-Eyed Peas. Oh, my God. All right, 2007. Boy, the minerals sure shine more. It's like limestone. Agreed. I don't want to be wrong. It's still like lime freshness and citric fruit, but it seems like this is underlying bed of complexity resting on. Yeah. The way they retain that freshness and lift and citrusiness throughout the ages is quite incredible, isn't it? This is the first one where I started getting into tea territory, a little bit like a black bitter tea. But like bitter in a fresh way, not like bad bitter, if that makes any sense. It's like potpourri. Yeah. Do that without popping your peas, Greg. Potpourri. Potpourri. I mean, as we know, bitterness can be a great counterbalance to sweetness because we use it in beer all the time, right? The more malt you have, the more bittering hops you need to balance, right? Sure do. And that's in place of acidity, but here we get bitterness and acidity. And you'll see that in the wine world too, and like Southern Rhone Whites, a lot of times a phenolic bitter edge takes up some of the slack that lower acidity does not cover in those styles. So you've got these wines going in every direction and incredibly complex. I didn't think they could gain complexity like this. This is really eye opening. And not only just like just throughout the years, but also on the tongue and the palate. I mean, it's changing when you have it in your mouth, and then it just kind of grows and it's a totally different wine. Indeed. Yeah. This is a mark of a truly fine wine, something that evolves in the glass, something that changes in the nose every time you sniff it, every sip you take, you notice something different. I mean, that's complexity. Suddenly, he has me thinking about like the ephemeral nature of life itself, and- Damn, this is the second existential crisis you've had this week, if I recall correctly. This isn't a crisis, this is existential acceptance. They did say that this is a very emotional wine, so there we go. You're right. It's evoking all these emotions, all these memories, going back in time to 07. Getting nostalgic over there. Greg is driving home from work, listening to the Black Eyed Peas after having the worst day at work. I do have a feeling it is going to be a great night, good night. Greg U is. Weren't you another member, Greg U? Is that a Will.i.am? Yeah, Greg U is. We're going back two more years. We've got an 05 here. I feel like I've sorely neglected pricing, but it's all been pretty much the same so far. Are these older vintages available? Yes. Oh, wow. Everyone we're tasting here is available to buy. So let me just go over this while you're pouring. I don't remember, but the 17 and the 16 are both available in 375s. They're 255 a bottle, so a mere 15 bucks more than the 230 for the 2022. 07 and 05 both jump up just a little bit to 295 for a half bottle. I'm going to point out that the floaties in the bottle, this is one of the reasons why you might decant, so that you can pour slowly off and then you've only got the schmutz at the bottom of the bottle, and then you're not pouring that in glasses. The other reason to decant. The nice thing about tar traits is they're very heavy and usually pretty large pieces. It's not fine sediment like you find in some older whites or reds, where your wine can become cloudy if you don't decant carefully. There's nothing about these that are going to hurt you. They're just super, super crunchy. Compared to the life on the last one, which was 07, this is like waffle syrup. Yeah. Oh my God. No doubt. Yeah. You're starting to get into that fig date territory. I get a little bit of nutmeg, a little bit of allspice. It's definitely taking on a totally different character than, obviously, that first 22 that we started with. Absolutely. What better demonstration of how these evolved than 22 to this? Remarkable the way they evolve. That's wild. You know what this kind of reminds me of? Have you guys ever had honey throughout the seasons, like a spring honey, like a fall honey? This is like a fall honey. It's so dark and it tastes so almost bitter-like. I love dark honey and amber. We're honey weirdos around here. Yeah. This is not quite as extreme as, say, a buckwheat honey that can be really, really bitter, almost overwhelms the sweetness. But you can get, depending on what bees are forging on, you get completely different expressions of nectar to honey. There's herbal savory qualities here. Oh, yeah. See, you're noticing the herbs. I think the herbs stay with them all along. Well, it's like it went from mint and basil, like high-toned thing, down to time. Yeah. Are you all getting this pithy bitterness edge on all of these? Yeah. Yeah. It's fascinating, right? I think each one is, and I'm so sorry to the Chateau because they're not going to love this. I think each one is like one of those really delicious little fruit cups, but all of the fruit is different each time that we keep going through this process. That's how it tastes sweet with that little mixed fruit situation. Yeah. You're focusing on the overall same, which is these are all recognizable Sauternes, but they each have their own unique little character. Very different. Yeah. Some people wonder why you age wines. It's not that the wine gets better in any particular parameter. It just evolves and changes, and you might like a different stage. Like some people, believe me, I've served a lot of old reds to people, and some people just absolutely hate them and love that fresh intense punch in the face of a young Cabernet. The Cabernet is not going to be that young fresh punch in the face just 10 times better after 20 years. It's going to be completely different wine, and you may or may not like it. It's alive. It's ever changing. All right. Dr. Frankenstein, I presume. So we are incredibly fortunate to be able to try this lineup of these relatively extremely expensive wines, but they're not unattainable. You can buy them, or, I mean, I say this a lot lately, but check out our upcoming events. This will be poured at a bunch of holiday, the younger vintages of these probably, will be poured at a bunch of holiday wine tastings, whether it's Thanksgiving or the holidays. And then in the winter, we're going to be doing our Bordeaux preview of UGC, and trying the very first bottlings from the barrel of the Sauternes is always like super amazing. And it gets kind of forgotten compared to all the other stuff at those tastings. If you're kind of confused about Sauternes, which I was as of like till two years ago, our 30 under 30 has one too. Oh, nice. So you can try and understand what the heck it is we're talking about. And it's a, I think that's a great place to start. Absolutely. I mean, just to get the tactile joy of drinking something acidic and sweet, and have it with almonds and blue cheese for crying out loud. Yes. Get yourself a hunk of Roquefort. Chris, you got any closing thoughts here? My mind is blank because the sugar has rushed to my head and I'm feeling fine. Okay, we're going to have to check his blood sugar. Emily, you have a cool job. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, this is a bucket list wine that I've tried. It's, I'm floating and I can float home on that high of sweetness. But no, seriously, this is an amazing opportunity to be able to try not only one, but five of them. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. All right, get out there and taste some stuff. Thank you. I just want to say once again that we had like 30 people here today who went back to all their stores. So if you have a question, there's probably someone in the store out there who just tasted all these wines and can rap with you about them for hours if you let them. You're right. But don't let them. Because they gotta get back to making boxes. Right. It's time to slush this. Let's go. Let's do this. Should we do like a super secret one or are we? Yeah, we should. Yeah, we should. Super secret slush. It's not secret. Barb asked it's her birthday. I mean, she has to have some. All right. We'll see if that happens. Back in your feed real soon. Until then, thanks for listening Barrel to Bottle Podcast, Binny's. I'm Greg. I'm Chris. I'm Lexi. I'm Emily. Keep tasting. What a star. Nailed it. Nice. I always wanted to make the Black Velvet cocktail out of Zamperignon and Bourbon County Stout, and they were like, absolutely do not. How dare you? So I used Kristallv instead. It's always a workaround. I'm telling you, like none of this is sacred. It's expensive and we respect it, but also it's supposed to be fun. That's why, I don't know where this is going to roll. Maybe it's at the end of the quick sip or maybe we just only share it with our friends. But Doug specifically told us not to slush this. We're going to slush it. We're not slushing it. I made old-fashioned. No, we're going to slush it. I made old-fashions and I could see Lexi ready to fight me because I eyeballed four old-fashions. Everything was measured. All of the ice cubes are different sizes. They're ghost ice cubes that I made for something else. Tiny little ghost ice cubes. I did use ghost-shaped novelty ice cubes. Yeah, but here's the thing. These are all variations on the same thing. We got the same four ingredients, five, I guess, if you count ice, which is I used Rittenhouse rye, or sorry, I used Sazerac rye, which is the 80 proof. I used the Chateau d'Yquem 2005 Sauternes as the sweetener, and it was about two to one, about two to one on the sweetener because it's not as sweet as sugar. And then I gave it a tiny drop of Regan's orange bitters, and I gave it a little bit less tiny of a drop of the Angostura bitters. So how's it taste? It's very velvety in the mouth, I find. Oh man, oh yeah, the thickness of it. The real variation on this would be the 2005 Chateau d'Yquem. Is the 2005. With the most expensive bottle of Pappy we can find. That would be kind of the same thing. You know what, that wouldn't work in this cocktail though. Why not? You need a lighter on its feet whiskey for this. It's too heavy, too heavy. I'm not saying it would work. I'm just saying it's the same thing as the black velvet with crystal and it's a very expensive whiskey and a very expensive sweetener. All right, so scientifically, you're right, Lexi. The one in my glass isn't the same as yours, but tell me that's not good. I don't like it. Ah! Buts, buts, buts. I got some real floaters in the bottom of mine. Yeah. Okay, so this is also going to be very sacrilegious, but I think that if you were to, and I'm so sorry again to the Chateau, if you were to cook it down. You want to make a reduction of d'Yquem? You could make a really cool syrup out of it and then add it. I jokingly told Chris to make a ham glaze out of this. Yeah. Well, this is true and I did not use Yquem, but I have made a Sauternes reduction sauce for various things. I used to make a little Poussin with Sauternes reduction. What's that? Some kind of bird, right? Yeah. It's a chicken. Okay. Why didn't you just say chicken? I don't know. Because he can't make that hand motion when he says the word chicken. Chris, do you like this whole fashion? I actually do. I think the texture is great. I think it really moderates the edge of the whiskey. It's incredible the way this is so easy to drink. That's exactly the purpose of an old-fashioned cocktail. You sweeten up lousy whiskey so that you can stomach it. But this is actually pretty good whiskey, so it just makes it even better. Yeah. It's growing on me. I like it. There's something on the finish that I like, and I think it's the wine. Really? Yeah. Again, I don't drink a lot of whiskey at all, actually, ever, so that already isn't just a jolt to the palate, but it's growing on me. Apples and pear fruit lift at the finish. I thought that the 2005 tasted like cheese, and I wasn't able to say that, but I don't taste the cheese here. Not in a bad way either, but I would actually love to have that with some blue cheese, because it had the cream. I know that's a pretty common pairing with all Sauternes, but that one in particular on its own tasted like cheese. Yeah. I mean, that happens in wine. A lot of champagnes get cheesy. But yeah, I mean, any strong contrast of salty and pungent with Sauternes is pretty incredible. All right. Cool. So there you go. I'm going to cook this down into a syrup. Can you use Chateau Guirault or something instead? Yeah, I mean, I don't know what that is. You can buy a much less expensive Sauterne that is still incredibly good. These are, despite the price of Chateau d'Yquem, they're kind of like on a mountaintop all by themselves, literally and figuratively, they are classified in a class of their own, in the 1855 Bordeaux classification. But the quality of all of the grand crews that surround this property is really quite remarkable, and you can get a half bottle of good Sauterne at 20 bucks. Right. Thanks for sticking around after the music. We're not going to say our names again. This is just the afterthought. Keep tasting? Keep tasting. Cheers. Keep tasting. Okay, fine. It's a bad luck. Here's to you, Jim. Keep tasting. All right. Take it slizzy.