How to drink wine and pretend you're enjoying yourself. With wine manager, Ben. And two former wine managers. How to fake it. Which part of that equation makes it that hard to enjoy? Is it wine manager? There are two of us who are so far removed from the sales floor in this specific capacity that we don't really remember what it's like. And there are three people who this is like fresh and triggering, drama-inducing. Have we started? Nope. Tim, save that for the outro. I mean, I did hit record, so that's all I'd say. Fair enough. And it's a cold intro, but the actual episode after the intro music starts right now. You are listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm Greg, I do communications at Binny's. Hey, I'm Pat, I do whiskey stuff. I'm Jenna, I also do communications. I'm Chris, I do all kinds of stuff. You guys, Alicia skipped out on this episode. She was supposed to be on- Loser. Had to go home and tend to her family or something. So we got Ben. Hi. Hey, welcome back, Ben. Thanks for having me. It only took, I think, a year, two? Since the last one? Yeah. Not that anybody was counting though, right? No, I've been- He's been marking it on his calendar. A lot of other things keeping me busy. I didn't realize this was tearing you apart. A year? One more day of tears each day. So Ben, you're wine manager at Lincoln Park, Binny's Beverage Depot. Yes. Cool. And we pitched Ben, come on and talk to us about wine. And the idea for an episode that you have is- Wine rules that need to be rethought or reconsidered. Misconceptions, things that I've heard from customers, guidelines, rules that may or may not still apply to the world of wine. Pre-conceptions. Yeah. I read through your list and I'm guilty of many of them. And I'm just going to assume Pat is too. That's a safe assumption. I think that's a very safe assumption. I very much enjoy fish with red wine. So we're the Chuckle Nuts and you guys are going to teach us on this one. Cool. Sounds good. Cool. Where's my glass of wine? Guideline number one that I hear from customers is, only bad wine comes in screw tops, boxes, etc. If it's in a screw top or in a box or in a can, it must be lousy wine. People still have that misconception. It's 2020 to people. All the time. Oh, really you're recommending, but it has a screw top. How can you play slap the bag? Speaking of, I saw some like 9-liter bag in a box packages at Italian grocery stores. There we go again. Pat, were you in Italy recently? I was in Italy recently. Thanks for asking. Really likes to talk about how he was in Italy recently. Oh, that's the last screw tops there. A lot of bag in the boxes there. Crossbarn by Paul Hobbs, Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir. So as the listener might have surmised, this 2019 Crossbarn Pinot Noir from Sonoma Coast has a screw cap and it was very easy for you to open this bottle. It was true. Yeah. Man, it's pretty delicious wine. It's coming from Paul Hobbs, iconic California wine maker, making some really top of the line Napa Valley Cabernet. Has a couple other projects around the world, including his Crossbarn, which are really meant to be more affordable entry level wines, but still showcasing the regions and the grapes of California. So high quality, definitely under a screw top. What would make a wine maker choose to do a screw top versus a cork? Is this purely an economic thing where they want to make it cheaper? I mean, I know the debate's always been like, well, how is it going to age? If we lay it on side, won't it leach some flavor out of that cap or something? Where's the science stand on this now? No, it won't leak wine. It just leaks flavor. Is that what you're implying? No, it doesn't pull from- It's not going to leak. No, there's a, I said leach. Isn't there some membrane or plastic or something inside the cap that could potentially, that flavor could taint the wine or something? Is that the fear? The initial impetus behind crew caps, I think, was just to solve the out-of-control TCA problem that corks were having at one time. Yeah. Plastic membrane is more dangerous than this plug of tree bark that's jammed in the bottom. This 100-year-old... 100-year-old TCA was a bigger problem at some point than it is now? Yes. Absolutely. How do we get that under control? Well, some companies now make TCA-free corks. They actually do very scrupulous testing, but not everybody buys those. But yeah, they know more about it now. Really, part of the problem was introducing chlorine to the cork and chlorine in conjunction with a fungus that's growing in the cork. It causes TCA to... Did you know that chlorine makes some funguses grow more? Really? Yeah. Freaky, huh? Meanwhile, Ben's wondering why he's even here. Thanks for coming, Ben. You guys had it covered. Can we talk about this wine? We can talk about this wine. It's gamey and spicy. I mean, it has ripe cherry fruit, too, but it has this funky herby quality that's not bad. I think it's loaded with strawberries, personally. Yeah. Real true to form Sonoma Coast, Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast on the ocean there, a little cooler. You get a little bit more of that savory quality coming through the Pinot. But yeah, high quality, true to form Pinot Noir under screw top. What do we sell this for? 30 bucks. That's what I'd guess. Oh, an expensive screw top. Hold on. Let me bring up our app. Could be more now. All my prices, you have to adjust for inflation by like four years. Me too, except like 12 for 13 years. I'm like, oh, four pack of Bourbon County, what's that cost? $13? $30.99 on sale with the Binny's Card right now. Normal price, $35.99. This is an expensive screw top. You can spend some money on these if you want. Could you age this wine though? Like I was saying, would you lay it down on the side still or just keep it up right? You don't need to lay it down on the side, but you could if you wanted to. They make screw caps now that purposely allow varying amounts of- That was my next question. No way, really? I thought the whole disadvantage with aging a screw top wine is that it didn't allow the minute oxidation that a cork does. You can even choose your amount of permeability at this point with a screw cap. Wow. Hail science. The future, man. Right in the future is where we live. Why are we using cork still? The tradition. Yeah. And the cork industry. The cork lobby. Bougie Frenchman is what I'm hearing. How about a cork lobby? Big cork, keeping us down. Big Portuguese cork. Yeah. Make a big show, bring a wine out to a dinner party, really take your time and then just crack open a screw top. Doesn't quite have the same ritual to it. No, that's fair. And there is a sense of revelry involved in uncorking something from the cellar, that just pulling something out and be like, yeah, I've been holding on to this wine for 30 years. And then just twist and break metal. More than most beverages, there's a romance to wine and there's a ritual to wine. And uncorking something, there's flair to it, and it's fun, but... Let's make that moment of romance the pour. Yeah. That's the important part, man. I want to get the glug, glug, glug, glug, glug sound. That's what I care about. But I never want to see corks go away from sparkling wines, even though some are in screw caps now. Really? Even though like a crown cap? Crown cap is perfectly... You never get the proper, either the pop for celebration or the proper subtle whisper. The hiss of a well manhandled cork. That's right. In a quiet restaurant with white tablecloths. The mark of true skill. Well manhandled cork. That's what you got to do. All your manspreading and mansplaining, how to open the champagne bottle. Let me interrupt you and tell you not to tell me what to do. Okay. All right. Ben, what is the most expensive bottle you have seen under a screw cap enclosure? Like some of the australia, like New Zealand. Yeah, there's a couple of countries that have really embraced it. australia, austria, Germany. Germany, yeah. You've definitely seen some French producers. They actually have some like burgundy under screw top at this point. Really? I mean, there's a German practicality joke in there for sure, but I wouldn't expect to see your burgundy. Generally, lower end burgundies. You're not going to see grand crews under screw cap. But Plump Jack Reserve at like, I don't know, again, I'm- What's that like a- Wow. I'm going to date myself. Yeah, $250 a pop, which may be much more now. Their six packs, at least for a long time, were half under cork, half under screw. Who does that Plump Jack think he is? And wait, in the same mixed case, there were screw caps and cork. So you could have your choice. That's just messing with people. Guaranteed the cork sells first. Well, I mean, the ideal is that you buy it and you compare. You buy the whole six pack and then you have three and three and compare. Wow. Ben, can you tell us some of the benefits to using a screw top over a cork, if any? Well, one thing that comes up to us a lot is people are doing like parties, weddings, catering. There's just an ease of use to it. Also, you have people, honestly, with just like arthritis, they have trouble handling a cork screw. For me, I really don't think twice about it when I see a screw top. I don't look at the closure when I buy wine. I got a handful of screw tops in my fridge at home. For me, it's a non-issue. I can't have TCA then either. Well, that's not true either. There can be TCA literally in the cellar. There have been cases where entire cellars have been contaminated, like if there are wood beams and somebody cleans it with a chlorine bleach or something, you're going to have your whole wine cellar infuse with TCA that will then infect your Smelled wine bottle labels that have TCA on them. Yeah. Wow. This is weird, but for years, a lot of Argentine wines are South America. Yeah. Things that were shipped up from South America, the box is redolent of TCA. The arthritis point is very solid though. I had a customer at a store I used to work at that would have us not open, not take the corks out because we can't do that. But she would ask us to take the foil off for her because just with her, she was older and with her hands, she just couldn't, that was one thing that just hurt her, whereas that's not an issue. Unfortunately, the wine she purchased didn't offer screw top, otherwise she would just would have gone for that. I have a tip for opening these things too, if you do have problems with a grip, is that instead of trying to unscrew the actual cap, if you turn the collar, it cracks the cap off immediately and then you can unscrew easily. That is a handy tip. It's unbelievable. I've watched people struggle with the actual cap and then you just take it and go click and they're like, what? How did that happen? Learning new stuff. Let's go. Yeah. Rule number two, don't overfill your glass. Oh yeah. Why would you only fill a wine glass a third or a quarter of the way full? To give more aroma, right? Exactly. Yeah. I remember one of my first food service jobs working at a wine center and cafe. I was working the bar and pouring drinks. A customer came up with her glass, she was absolutely furious with me. This is an insult because it was a large bordeaux shaped glass. We did the standard restaurant pour of five ounces and looked like the glass was only about a third of the way full. She had been underserved. Did you tell her that that glass would hold an entire bottle of wine? Yeah. Literally. Yeah, so I just kind of topped her off till it was about half way full and charged her for two more pours. Yeah, I mean that's a good reason not to order by the glass if they have small glasses and they give you a full glass of wine. Oh, that's funny. I just like that a lot. obviously, you're saying this is something that is important to retain. Yeah. Yeah, Greg, you need some room to get your big schnoz in there. Pre-conception confirmed. Isn't that why some restaurants will just bring like a wine glass sized carafe of wine and put it on the table so you can pour it yourself? A quartino. Is that what it is? Some people call that. Yeah, a little quarter bottle size carafe. Yeah, 187. Hey, when I was in Italy, they were just pointing at it. That wouldn't be an Italian term. Okay. Well, it goes to the overall glass usage. This is where I think people can get a little finicky and maybe it's time to rethink it. Standard Bordeaux-shaped glass does serve a purpose. You want to be able to swirl it, gather the aromas. So don't overfill that. But I really don't overthink it too much beyond that. I mean, this Bordeaux-shaped classic bell-shaped wine glass is pretty much my default. I serve almost all my wine out of this. Yeah, you're really pulling out different glassware for white wine versus this. Yeah, I use the same. This seems like a pretty reasonable shape for any wine. It's arguably better for something like champagne too, right? No, absolutely. Yeah, I've pretty much given up flutes. I use flutes if I want to feel fancy, but then you're like refilling your glass every two minutes because- I agree. I think the flute is the most beautiful way to pour champagne because it's long and you get those long elegant streams of really fine bead. But if you actually want to smell your champagne and treat it like a wine and enjoy the gustatory sense of the actual beverage, then a regular glass is far superior. Ben, what's your house glass? Like an actual glass shape. It's a coffee mug, isn't it? What glass do you use at your house? Well, either just like a Redel, just classic Bordeaux red wine glass. The venom one? Yeah. Not too big, sturdy. I've broken a lot of glasses over the years, so I value functionality. Honestly though, I also drink a lot of wine, just have a little bistro cafe, three ounce, four ounce glass. If I'm cooking, I'm not going to use a stem, I just pour something and just enjoy it. Not every time I drink wine. I'm also a big fan of stemless wine glass, these guys make fun of it all the time. No, not every time that I pour wine, I'm looking to analyze it and take notes. It's a beverage, sometimes you just want to enjoy it. I usually use one of my many stemless wine glasses that someone has gotten me that's Golden Girls themed or Harry Potter themed or says, I'm just like my mother, oh no, or something like that that I get for Christmas every year. Time to drink a gallon of chardonnay. Please stop giving me these glasses. Oh my. Chris, what's your house? The local Goodwill is going to have a hell of a selection one day. Totally agree. A standard Bordeaux style glass is perfectly serviceable for 99 percent of the wines you're ever going to drink. If you want to get fussy, that's fine, but you can live a fine life of wine drinking with just one or two different shapes of glass. If I'm not drinking out of a stemless glass and actually use the stems, it's the Riedel Venom Sauvblanc slash Zinfandel glass, because it's a real basic, works with everything kind of glass. Now, I would argue that there is a purpose to stemware if you're really fussy about not changing the- Coffee mug has a handle for a reason. Right. Exactly. You don't want to change the temperature of your wine. A snifter is a snifter for a reason, if you want to warm something up in your hand, but that's not what a wine glass is for. Yeah. I think a lot of it just comes down to, kind of looking at the context. Is it just, again, do you just want something to drink? Kind of at a party? Don't really need to pay attention to your glassware so much. Do you want to sit down and really enjoy it and spend some time with the wine? Maybe a better glass that you can get your nose in and analyze a little bit better. Sweet. Right. I happily knocked back some Montepulciano out of a juice glass at a basic Italian restaurant. That's okay with me. You're looking at me like, yeah, I've had wine out of a boot. A boot? Everybody knows. I'm not piling on to that. Everybody knows boots are for beer. That's true. It was a wingtip. And stiletto heels are for champagne. Ben, what else you got? The classic red wine with meat, white wine with fish. Is this confirmed or denied? I would say this is just completely outdated. That does not represent cuisine at all. I don't know if anybody here has ever been presented with a tasting menu and asked to pick a bottle of wine that goes with it, where the first course is oyster, wagyu beef, kimchi, and pear. What do you got? It's- That's a hell of a first course. It's more of an amuse-bouche just to get the palate going. Sounds like an Alsatian Gewürztraminer to me. It's honestly one of my go-tos. Yeah, Pinot Blanc, move on. But that being said, I do like getting people to think outside of that a little bit. White wine with steak, I think, goes fantastic. Acidity, classic Italian Gruner Veltliner with red meat is outstanding. Red wine with fish, salmon is the classic, Chardonnay or Pinot Noir. Yeah. Pinot Noir with salmon, huh? Oh, yeah. I didn't know that was a thing. That's a classic. They're a Northwest guy. Yeah, but I was drinking beer. I wasn't drinking. Yeah. I was eating plenty of salmon. There's plenty of salmon in Oregon and plenty of Pinot Noir and they go marvelously together. It's true. Salmon can be rich. It can be fatty. Yeah. Having acidity and structure to come through. That's the thing is those fattier fishes sometimes need a little more weight and maybe even a little tannin. I would also point out that like you were saying, there's so many disparate flavors in modern cuisine that it doesn't even make sense sometimes to pair to proteins. It's about the sauce or the accompaniment. What direction is this going? I also think people are astonished by the idea of white wine with steak. But think about like a beef taco or an Argentine steak where you might want to spritz some lime or lemon on to your beef. A bright, fresh white wine is doing the same thing. It's cutting through that fattiness and really sparking off the richness of the meat. That's my opinion. So that goes hand in hand with this next bottle you're passing around here, which is a Gruner Veltliner. Is this not the wine that Greg always makes fun of on the podcast? No, that's Vigelta. But Gruner is fine. Gruner is the one that Jim came up with a montage of us saying for like three or four months. Oh yeah. Gruner, Gruner. Gruner Veltliner? Yeah. One of my go-to wines, closest thing I have to a house wine, austrian Gruner, kind of always hits the spot. Goes with just about everything. At the very least, it's not going to ruin the meal. And also, I'll note, under a screw top again. Nice. We're two for two so far. This is an awesome wine. It's nice. Dang, I like Gruner. Super vibrant. I didn't know that. Super vibrant. It's a bit acidic too, right? Oh yeah. I dig this. I can see this going with red meat. Yeah. because it cuts through the fat. Exactly. This is the kind of thing you could serve with a white fish, a Wiener Schnitzel. Yeah, you could serve this with liver pate. Or yeah, or with a meat. So I was in Italy recently, and they had chicken liver pate at most. You guys, this would be really good with salmon. just saying. It would. Also, too, think about context, like, when are you having red meat? 90 degrees, summer day, in the sun, in front of a grill, do you really want to pop open like a big, bold Cabernet? No, have a glass of this. So this is the hams to the beer choice here, which why would you want to drink an IPA in that situation outside by the grill? You can have a cool, refreshing hams. I'm sure this is like the PBR of wine. I was going to say, I'm sure this is the PBR. It could also be the PBR of wine. As long as it's fresh. Yes, exactly. This is really good. Ben, how much is this one? This is really good wine. Nope. I don't think I brought prices for any of these. Ben, you are the least prepared person on this show since Pat. Did we say what it is? I stand up to this tyranny, okay? Yeah, this is a Kremstal Gruner. Yeah. Well, it's a Kremstal Gruner. Viengut, Stadt Kremstal. 14.99. We are just all saying words out of it. 14.99? Well, this is 15 bucks. No wonder it's your house wine. Okay, that's good. Wow, this is an awesome wine for 15 bucks. Yeah, it's got lots of fruity esters, but it's got a little spice to it too. It makes one to one euro exchange rate. This would be good with spicy cooked pears, because it's got the same fruit quality, and then the sugar in that would stand up. It might make it taste bitter. This would be good with shrimp. This would be good with shellfish. Yeah, oysters would kill it with this. This would be good with octopus. Heavy, heavy cheeses. octopuses have souls, you monster. This would be good with chili. With chili, it would totally be good with chili. just like a refreshing ham. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Since we're on a topic of food guidelines and rules, and encouraging people to break them, are there any food guidelines that actually do stand up, that are worthwhile keeping in mind? Sweeter wines with desserts, right? Otherwise, the wine gets bitter. If the wine isn't sweeter than dessert, doesn't the wine get bitter? That's putting a more fine point on it. Yeah, slightly sweeter wine than what your dessert is. Yeah, that's kind of a rule you kind of have to stay to, otherwise they both taste gross. Sugar goes with spicy. Yes. Yeah, sugar cuts through spice, and the big tannic wines absolutely do not go with heat. And high alcohol. So like a low alcohol Riesling Cabernet with a Thai curry, fantastic. Cabernet with that, disaster. Yeah. Barberman paired like a lower alc bordeaux with spicy Thai food, and it worked really well. Yeah, I had a Cote d'Or with like Vietnamese pho, and I was really pleasantly surprised. I never think it would work, but this kind of like the savory beef broth quality, and like they just kind of made the wine a little fruitier. It was fantastic pairing. Yeah. A couple of years ago after inventory, I went to a pizza place in Evergreen Park, and we had the darush Caravan Red with bruschetta or bruschetta, however. bruschetta. bruschetta. Not a pairing I would have expected. Yeah, you cared the one most recently in Italy. Yeah, do you mind translating for me? But that's typically like a heavier red blend that I wouldn't expect to have paired with something so light and acidic, and it was amazing. It was delicious. Maybe it was because we were up all night counting things, and I just wanted alcohol in my body, but I thought it was very good, and a surprising pairing. Those are the best. When you're surprised, when you think something is not going to work, and then it turns out to be fabulous, I always loved it. I think there's very few wines that would ruin a meal. I think people sometimes get a little too hung up on finding that one right pairing, but actually most pairings are actually fine. You have to start with what you like. That's almost the number one question I ask people when they come in, and they ask, can we pick out something for dinner? Well, what do you like or what don't you like? Let's dial that in first. You're not going to suddenly like something that you think isn't your thing just because you're having it with whatever you're having. because there's this traditional rule that it always goes with it. just try stuff and have dinner with more people so you can open more wine and try more stuff. But I would argue that there is the potential for food pairing to bring a wine into a realm that you enjoy when on its own you might not like it. Like think about previous podcasts where we were trying like Italian bruchetto or something very, very sweet. And you guys like, oh, this is going to be gross and sweet. But then we paired it with something spicy. Does this ring a bell? Yeah, hot sauce, man. Yeah. And you're like, oh, well, this obviously works. The whole, the punchline of the whole hot sauce episode was that they got us to like this $12 bruchetto di Aki. It was like an hour 15 log slug, but man, was that sweet. But that's a prime example of a wine that you taste. You go, this is maybe too cloying. But when it's playing off of the right flavor, it brings that into check. And so much has to do with the spice or the preparation. And the difference in producer and the difference in place. Not all Zinfandel tastes the same, and not all Zinfandel is going to pair the same with whatever you're having. Zinfandel in particular, that's very true. Yo, I'm a big Gruner fan now. This is terrific. I'm so excited for you. Reminds me of this time in Italy recently where I had this Trebbiano. Can we please make this into a drinking game? Well, you know that austria and Italy are- Please take a shot. Share a border. It's true. Okay, what else you got? All right, next one. Serve red wine at room temperature and white wines cold. Yeah, this one's a little tough. It's half true, isn't it? It's a little bit about that. How cold is cold? What's room temperature? Yeah, that's the thing. I would encourage people to drink your red wines colder and your white wines warmer. I think the mistake a lot of people make is they leave a bottle of red sitting out, because it's supposed to be served at room temperature, and room temperature is like 75 degrees. Or they leave their white wine in the fridge and pull it out immediately before serving. And the danger with that is the red wine is too warm and it kind of tastes a little, I don't know, kind of volatile and maybe like the alcohol is a little too apparent. You know, cooling it down kind of helps dial those flavors in a little bit. And on the opposite side, the wine, the white wine, if it's too cold, all the flavors are muted. It tastes kind of lifeless and kind of flat. So I think a lot of people have had the experience of you pull wine fresh out of the fridge, pour it, doesn't really taste like much. And over the course of a meal, it starts to warm up, it sits in your glass, and all of a sudden, it's a lot more expressive. Totally agree. Yeah. The wines that are best served very, very cold are the ones that are neutral to begin with, like Treviano from Italy. Ice that baby down, that's fine. I also think that it's good to have a pretty good chill on very sweet wines because it tends to take the edge off their coin nature. But you're absolutely right. White's too cold, red's too warm most of the time. It's suspicious when a salesperson pours a white wine for you that's ice cold. What are you hiding and what is this going to be like? I will do this thing. You guys have done this thing where you just manhandle, sorry Jenna. When you personhandle. Greg can do it with one hand and I have to do it with two. Your dainty female hands. You guys have all done this thing where you wrap a hand around the bowl of the glass to warm the wine just to get it some note from it. And there are some wines, red wines, that really take a chill well. Your cleaner Beaujolais with like coming out of the fridge is pretty good. Yeah, absolutely. Like chill, you know, experiment some lighter bodied fruity wines, chill them down even further. You know, again, especially in the summer, nice and refreshing. Yeah, I agree. Low tannin, fruity. I find high tannin and high alcohol wines, red wines, very unappealing at a very cold temperature. It accentuates tannin, dulls the fruit. So don't do that. No, no, no Napa Cab straight out of the fridge. Our listeners have heard the story at least three times, but it was at the rooftop across from Wrigley, like really cheap seats for What's His Name and What's His Name, Piano Man and Benny on the Jets. Billy Joel. Yeah, Billy Joel and Elton John. Elton John. And we started talking to some people near us and had a good time. And then she found out a couple, she found out that we were in the wine business, so she went to get drinks and she came back with a couple of glasses of wine for us. But they were red solo cups full of ice and like some jug Malbec. And they just tasted like dirt. just dirt. He's like, isn't it good? Why did I was like, thank you. I have to go to the restroom now. All right, what's next? Move on to the next wine here. Barbera d'Asti from Vietti. So Pat, you got an Italian wine here. Oh, really? Did I tell you I was recently in Italy? I heard that. I'm glad I'm able to turn this into a bit. So the rule here is, don't cook with a wine that you wouldn't drink. A lot of recipes call for red wine, white wine. I think a mistake people make is they buy the cheapest thing they can because they're like, oh, it's just going in the pot anyway. Or cooking wine from a grocery store. Definitely don't do that. Yeah. Guilty. Really? What's wrong with you? I don't know. What am I going to do? Drink wine? I need a wine that I can just screw a catback on and put in the pantry. Oh my God. You are such an elitist about whisky. You are using that s***. You are actually buying that s***. Oh my God. Okay. Ben? Yes. Where are we going? Well, a couple of points of this. One, Pat, don't use that wine anymore. All right, I won't. If you want to drink it, don't cook with it. It's like anything else. You are buying good ingredients or making a point of getting good meat, good vegetables, you are taking time to cook properly. Why are you skipping on one of the ingredients? Why are you going bottom of the barrel on one of these? That's a really good point. Is this a preconception confirmed? People definitely come at it from two sides. I think this is people are starting to think through this. It's a good catchy little phrase. Don't cook with the wine that you want to drink, but I definitely have it sometimes. Plenty of people are like, well, I am just cooking with it, so I don't need anything good. I need your cheapest bottle of red. How often do we hear that in our stores? This is the corollary to this is too nice of a tequila, I can't make a margarita with it. Yes. That's fair. So like this, so big fan of Vietti, one of my favorite producers across the board, they have great wines from entry level up to some top Barolo's. This is maybe a little bit nicer than I would recommend cooking with, but this is exactly the type of wine where as I'm making a pasta sauce, I'm going to open this up, pour myself a glass, throw a few glugs into the sauce. One for you, one for me. If I'm braising a pot of ribs, maybe I'm not going to use an entire bottle of this, but this is an example of something that I can enjoy drinking, I can serve with the food, and I can throw into the meals. What are we selling this for, Jenna? 16.99, I was just going to say. That leads me into my point. I mean, at 16.99, like Ben's saying, if you don't need a lot of it for cooking, you're not spending a lot on a cooking wine. Yeah, I would argue 15 bucks is price to cook and drink. Yeah, exactly. This is delicious wine on top of it all. This is a fantastic Barbera. And going back, it's a red wine you could drink slightly chilled if you want it. Absolutely. I think the temperature is at right now. It's very nice. It's a little chilly in here today though. Well, you had these in a fridge? Yeah. So that's actually a good way to get your wine at the right temperature. Keep it in a wine fridge. Mine at home is set to 55. I think the one here is at 45 because it's more for white wine. But I had them chilling in the 45 degree, pulled them out about an hour ago. It's in a real nice point right now. On the nose, immediately, you get this fresh raspberry and you think this is going to be nice and easy. Then suddenly, there's this cedar box and orange peel and this oxidized quality that like belies the complexity that you wouldn't usually expect at this price point or possibly from this varietal. I don't know. Yeah. This is a stellar example of relatively inexpensive Barbera. It's got some really pure fruit flavors. What kind of grape would be used in a Barbera d'Asti? Barbera. Barbera. From the Ostie region. I knew the Ostie things. Yeah. The other corollary geographically would be Alba. It's the other thing you'd see a lot, but it's grown outside of that area. That's another Piedmont region? It is a Piedmont region. Yeah. Piedmonty. Same village where Moscato d'Asti comes from. Is this grape known by any other names? I don't think it has one. Almost every grape has tons of synonyms, but I can't think of one. Especially in Italy, I'm sure there's regional dialects, but 80 different- Wouldn't you know having just been there? Yeah. I was in Italy recently and a tour guide in Siena was talking about how there's like 90 different dialects of the Italian language. There's a guy in Ostie who's in his back. He's like, that's the backyard grape. But this is also just a great food wine because it has really fresh acidity. Barbera tends to have high acidity and it's great with richer, fattier, and protein things, but it also is light enough that I think this could pair with a tuna steak or something like that. Have it with fish. I can see that. I'd also encourage people too to experiment a little bit. Have fun with cooking with wine. Don't just use it as one ingredient they have to use. just get drunk when you're cooking. Yeah, really go nuts. I cook with vermouth a lot. If you need to deglaze a pan, wait for vermouth or in a sauce, it just adds a little more complexity. It's a good use of vermouth that's maybe a little long in the tooth too. Yeah, it's been sitting around. You had it in the fridge for maybe a month and a half, and you're like, this isn't quite as live as it used to be. Pat, is that a problem at your house? No, of course not. just theoretically, if one were to have a bottle sitting around. Yeah. You found the other bottle of vermouth at the back of the fridge. It was really hard not to bring vermouth back. I don't know if I told you guys, I was recently in Italy. I brought back a lot of amari, but I declined to bring back any vermouth. He ran out of space. I've even done some cooking with spirits, like throw a peaty scotch into a dish, add a little smoky character if you're cooking meat or fish. Now you're just being wasteful. But I only use the grocery store cooking scotch. It storms out. You use Finn Laggan, no name Isla Single Malt, that's like $20. The Seagram 7 of Isla Single Malt. It has the store's private label as the first five on the UPC. Yeah. just in this area, they cook with wine a lot. I mean, there are famous dishes from this area. There's Risotto alla Barolo, so it's literally risotto cooked with Barolo, and it comes out really deep purple. Or there's something called Brassato, which is meat braised in Nebbiolo. Is that like a beef Bourguignon? Yeah, vaguely. I mean, it's a wine braised meat dish, indeed. famous dish from Burgundy, beef Bourguignon. fabulous. because Burgundy is like the name. Yeah. All right, Ben, pick it up. What number are we on? Number six. Only drink wine from the best vintages. I don't even know the best vintages. Well, that's- Who determines the best vintages? Well, that's kind of my point too. Like these last three wines- Some snooty magazine guy. Nobody's paying attention to the vintages of these. You're right. I haven't even looked at it. Yeah. I wrote down one of the three. It was 2019 on the Crossbarn. Was that a good vintage? Hell if I know. Probably it's California. It's hot all the time. Was it a year when it wasn't on fire? It might have been on fire. Every year is the vintage of the decade. Right. I completely agree with this. One of the things that I think people miss about wine is, we tend to talk constantly in the wine business, maybe not customers as much, about terroir. This is a great piece of land and it has a certain aspect, and it has a certain climate, etc. But it's fascinating to watch the same terroir in different vintages. Sure, there's a totally warm vintage, it's all even, and there are no heat spikes, and there wasn't too much rain, and the wine is absolutely fantastic off the charts. But it's also super interesting to try the next year when it was a little cooler and there's a little more acidity, and you start to learn the family resemblance, and the actual flavor of the vineyard, and the producer's input, and all of that, starts to make sense to you in all these disparate kind of years, and you really shouldn't just stick to that. I mean, good vintage these days basically translates to warm vintage. Yeah. Softer wines, luscious wines. Ripe. Ripe wines. But that's not always what is called for, and you're really missing a lot if you don't try things in quote unquote off years. Chris is saying, you gotta take the good with the bad. Well, you have no base for comparison. If all you do is drink these quote unquote great years, and they're all climatologically similar, you have no basis for comparison. And there's always lots of talk about the homogenization of wine across the planet. Everybody's looking for more ripeness from the grapes, putting into fancy oak, blah, blah, blah. And then everything starts to taste the same. But you can really see differences if you try things from years that aren't as popular. Good wine maker or good producer will make a good bottle of wine almost regardless of the conditions. And like you said, the character may be different, but the quality is still going to be there. Right. How about declassification on off years? There's bargains to be had there. Yeah. The climate's bad that year or we don't feel the grapes living up to it, so we're not going to make our premier label. We're just going to make the secondary label. But in reality, it's probably just as good. Yeah, absolutely. That happens all the time. And you end up getting whatever goes into the fancy single vineyard offering in their regular bottling. And that's a great year to buy that, even though it's a quote unquote off year. Speaking of off years, I have customers, even with a region like Bordeaux that is almost more so than anywhere else, people are obsessed with the quality of the vintage. Yeah. They make a point of buying the off vintages. because they're drinkable early. Yeah, and they're good value and oftentimes not as expensive, demand isn't as high, but the quality is fantastic. A couple nights ago, I opened a 2017, which really had no interest from a lot of collectors, a lot of consumers have had an early reputation of a bad vintage. It was light, it was elegant, it was just a really lovely bottle of wine. Yeah, some people derogatorily call that a restaurant vintage. It's ready to drink early, you don't have to age it, but I agree. Why is ready to drink now slanderous? I've always wondered the same thing. Yeah. You got to drink something now. You can't always drink perfectly seller 25-year-old Bordeaux. Well, exactly. If you're doing that, you're really restricting yourself. If you try to open something like that really early, you got a massive tannins and sometimes shut down wines, whereas you get, like Ben said, elegance, lift, lighter body sometimes, and beautiful food wines. I'm ready to drink now. Yeah. All right. On to the next. Speaking of good vintages and older Bordeaux, the rule here, the misconception is, the older the wine, the better it is. There's two parts to this. One, I think people definitely just have it in their head that wine across the board improves with age full stop, which is definitely not the case. And the other side of it is, the vast majority of wine is meant to be drunken on. It's not going to improve with age. It's not really meant to age. Very, very few wines will improve with long age or long term in the cellar. And not everybody likes older wine too. What I always tell customers is, it's not necessarily better, it's different. The flavors change, it evolves. I personally tend to like my wine a little bit on the younger side. I've discovered a little bit more fruit, a little bit more tan and grip. The other night, or actually yesterday, I opened up, I forgot I had this and recently moved, so discovered some things that I had. That's how it happens. A bottle of the Xavier Gigandas, it was a 2015. It was really nice, but it was definitely starting to fall off. I opened it at the right time because if I waited much longer, it wouldn't be good at all. That's a region that you typically wouldn't age very long either. I mean, that's something that you should probably drink young or with maybe a little bit of age. Yeah, a lot of times I think older wine is kind of a fun curiosity. It's more interesting than good. Yeah, I agree with that. I love my friends pull out older bottles from their grandparents' basement. They're like, oh, they had no idea. It was just something that was never meant to age 50 years. We pop it open. It's fascinating. And then we dump it down the sink. Yeah. Moving on to the Chateau Peyrabon 2009 out of the Haut Medoc. What? Why do we still have this? because nobody's buying it. because 2010 was the vintage of the century and 2009 sucked or something. No, 2011 sucked supposedly, right? 2009 and 2010 were kind of back to back. Back to back good vintages. Yeah. So why are we tasting this glass of olives in Brickyard? So this is kind of an example of a wine that I don't think it necessarily was meant to age like 13 years, but it has. 2009 vintage. Yeah. It's holding up. I think it's definitely on its way down. It's not going to improve any further at this point. It's a wine that I think probably was meant to be drunk a little bit younger than it is. I mean, it still has some fruit or it still has some heft, but a lot of- Don't send this back. Fruity fruit notes are going away and you're left with savory notes and tea and- It's all like mature development at this point. Yeah. Which is exactly to Ben's point that old wine isn't necessarily better. Even if it's Chateau Latour, it's a matter of taste. Many people, in fact, I would guess the vast majority of people prefer fruity or younger wines and are baffled when they're presented with something old and very, very complex. But where the fruit is playing second fiddle to, things like leather and tobacco and earth and all of these things, it's just a completely different experience. So the point of aging is not for it to stay the same, but better somehow. It's not getting fruitier. It's not becoming more of its essential young self. It's evolving into something very different. How much of this do we have? Yeah, a good amount. We've actually gotten it a few times. Jenna, how much is this one? 24.99. That's incredible. 25 bucks to taste something that's already been aged 13 years. I think that's well worth it. Well worth it. You don't have to wait. It's ready to go. I wouldn't wait much longer though. I think this is about to start tasting like lacquer. Yeah. I wouldn't put this in the cellar. I think this is if you want to try something, what does an older Bordeaux taste like? I'm curious what that mature development is. Yeah. Here's an example and you help figure out like, well, do I actually want to start drinking older Bordeaux or do I want to stick to the younger versions? One of those old wine salesman lines that I think it still probably rings true a little bit is that once upon a time, you had to age wines for them to taste good because they didn't know how to make wine very well and it would just be really gross up front, really tannic and mean. But if you wanted to taste like what a really good wine would taste like in your grandma's day, this wine is for you. Yeah, and I can kind of do that too. If a wine is like kind of young and harsh and mean up front, it's not going to magically turn into like a better wine because you put it down for five or ten years. They can transform, but a bad wine is not going to improve just because you put in your cellar for a while. Yeah, you need to start with the proper balance. To end up with the proper balance. An ageable wine, you mean? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Interesting one. Pat, you're going to get a couple of these on your way home? I know it's not as savory as some of the wines you had in your recent Italian trip. Yeah, I don't know if I told you, but I was in Italy recently, and I didn't drink much Barbera that I was in Chianti, so I had a lot of Chianti and I went to a Brunello winery. But this Barbera d'Asti has my eye here, especially for 16 bucks. He's going back in Barbera. Another 20, 30 years, that's going to be a nice spot too. No, don't eat your Barbera. He's being sarcastic. That was only for Pat. Pat, age the Barbera. However, this weekend with some ream sausage, some juicy ream sausage, that's going to be insane. I do love a juicy sausage. Yeah, I know. Okay. Next. Next preconception. Kind of two related ones. A more expensive wine is a better wine or higher scored wine is a better wine. Scores are a fix. They're paid fix. Who cares about scores? Do any critics taste blind these days? Many of them will claim they taste blind. I don't know if anybody does. I've read articles from reviewers who argue that you have to understand the context and place of the wine in order to appreciate it. Oh, that's a paid hack point of view. In order to not embarrass yourself. Yeah, right. Or piss off the sponsors. Yeah, it's up to Barrel to Bottle to keep everyone honest here then. Yeah, it's pretty rough doing blind tastings with these guys. Regardless of whether they're being paid or not, you can't put all of your trust into someone else's opinion of something as subjective as tasting in any type of food or beverage or what have you. Your tastes are not going to match up with this person's all of the time. We are never wrong, but everyone else is, and you just can't trust them. We're never wrong even when we disagree with each other. Yeah, exactly. We're always right all the time. 100%. If you don't like Cabernet Sauvignon, you're not going to all of a sudden love a 98-point Cabernet Sauvignon. Well, how can you boil such a complex and magical life experience down to a single number on top of it all? I read this incredible book. I gave it a 92. Yeah. It's just stupid. Well, the context matters so much. The food you're having it with, the people you're drinking it with, even the mood you're in. Whether you're in Italy or not. They have great wine in Italy, I've heard. I'm not sure though. But it doesn't taste the same when you get back. I mean, even how hydrated you are is going to change how something tastes when you're drinking it, to be honest. I mean, so all of these factors that people don't consider or think about, you just can't put all of, I want a 98 point wine and nothing beyond that or nothing below it. It gets confusing when people cross-reference it with price, because then they'll say this $20 wine is rated higher than this $30 wine. Why is the more expensive wine? Yeah, the more expensive wine should be better. Yeah, there's this idea that the only criterion of a wine price is the quality, that somehow wine is immune to all these other economic forces. If you price them by score, then all of a sudden you run into those situations where a two-hands Shiraz wins Wine of the Year and triples in price overnight. A barefoot that has like a gold medal winning wine on all of their bottles. Orange County Gold Medal. Look how many medals are on a Paps Blue Ribbon can and there's only like $60. just the one. just the blue ribbon. You obviously haven't paid attention. All right, look, I think that one of the greatest disservices about wine criticism is that it does boil things down to a number. A film critic, it might be a one through five. But the reason that it's a 100-point scale is because we all went to elementary school and we're all programmed to think in a 100-point scale in terms of A's and A minuses and B's and B pluses. As much as it puts a bad taste in my mouth to admit that Pat Brophy's Fakaktha system of judging things is better than a grade, it's because it doesn't specifically translate to a letter grading system. That's right. That's the best system. Very good minuses because you're like, what the hell is he talking about? Then you have to actually engage with his opinion and his experience instead of a two-digit number. That's all you have to say for yourself? Yeah. Yeah. Also, it doesn't make any sense. My scoring system, when I go to a wine tasting, it's literally like a plus or a minus. It's just a total gut-check upper down vote on it. Yeah. Maybe if I love it, the true standout of the show, two pluses. Two pluses? Yeah. Man, that's like a B plus. Yeah. Pontani is a similar system when we're tasting barrels. We're tasting through a bunch of barrel samples. If he thinks it's a potential candidate, he gives it a star and that's it. If there's no star on it, it's not a potential candidate. If it really wows him, he'll maybe write a star and then just choose to override any vetoes. I'm a fan of the smiley face, like no mouth and then sad. No mouth, it's just no mouth. Yeah, it's just eyes. My writing is barely legible. There's no way my smiley face system would be able to discern what's up and what's down and what's a straight deadpan line for a mouth. Anyway, though, getting back to Ben's point. These wines, you have to think of in a 10 to 15, and then you're 15 to 20 or what have you. You're chopping up price segments. Yeah. Exactly. You can't compare, like Ben was saying, this $20, 100-point wine or 90-point wine is not necessarily going to be better than this $100, 100-point wine. They're in two different levels. I mean, minor and majors basically. And even like 100-point wines, like I've tried a number of like objectively flawless wines that are completely boring and forgettable. They're just kind of like soft, supple, fruity, all the boxes are checked and you forget about it as soon as you put the bottle down. You guys are talking about the difference between a very, very good and a very good plus. Well, that's true because there are trends in wine criticism. I would say we're still in an era where people value that kind of style. Really, really ripe grapes put into really fancy oak and it's all seamless and super smooth. That's nice, but sometimes it's boring as hell. Yeah. Yeah. I think much more important, if you're going to pay attention to critics, just throw the score out, read the notes. Read what they say. Read the note. Learn their language and learn the person that you're meeting. Learn if you like their palate. Find the critic that suits you and find something they really like, try it, and if you don't really like it, you need to start paying attention to a different critic. Yeah. 95 points doesn't tell me anything about the wine itself and what the wine tastes like and how I might like it or what I might eat with it or et cetera. You have to just know what the wine is going to taste like to know if you're really going to like it. Wait, are you going to pull out a really terrible 98 point wine to prove this point? Oh, yeah. Well, even better than finding a critic you agree with. You know, I love finding customers who come back, say, hey, you know, took a couple of your recommendations. They're fantastic. You know, well, it's got. Yeah. When Chris started writing for me, we got a complaint from one of his good customers that he was gone. He was going to find somebody new. Yeah, I completely agree. And not only that, this personal interaction, you can't interact with a wine critic. I mean, I guess you could write him a letter or something. But he could tweet them. Yeah. But with Binny's, with a gentleman like Ben, you come into this beautiful store and you tell him how much you love what he gave you last. Then he computes that he takes into account what you did and didn't like, why you didn't didn't like it. And that ends up in a new recommendation. Right? It's interactive. And we're here to sell you wine that you want to drink, that you're going to like. There's no purpose in selling you something you're not going to like. And I am terrible with names. I would never remember my customer's names, but I would help you one time. And if you came back to me, I would remember exactly what you bought and what I recommended the first time and we can go from there. And that's generally most of our staff on our sales floor is going to be like that and be able to cater recommendations to your likes and dislikes. We want to know you. We want to build a relationship with you. Okay, don't make it creepy. I mean, I don't want to see you ever outside of the store. Like, if I see you in public, I'm turning the other direction. But... Oh, I like this one. I like where this is going. All right. So we're going to pour some bubbles here. Fine wine is always dry, never sweet. So we have a bottle of Laurent-Perrier Demisec Champagne, semi-sweet champagne. So sweetness in wine. This one is absolutely unfathomable to me. Americans love sugar. It's in everything except for wine. Wine, everybody is convinced to be good needs to be completely dry. Any sugar in it, any sweetness. I can't kill a sale faster than if I say, oh, it's a little sweet. But I absolutely love sweet wine. So I always kind of champion it. It's really underappreciated right now as category. And they're absolutely delicious. You know, I think from like full dessert to kind of like a Demisec like this. It's hilarious. People come up to me, this happens so often. They're embarrassed and they'll say, I never actually buy this, but I got some family coming over. They only drink Moscato. Can you pick out a bottle for me? And I always enthusiastically champion it. Like, yeah, I love Moscato. Who doesn't love Moscato? It's fresh, it's fruity, it's easy drinking. Everybody should be drinking Moscato. I reluctantly like this. It's pretty good. But that is true. I mean, there are gorgeous, gorgeous dessert wines out there. And we tasted that weird Italian one recently. obviously, there's vaunted sauternes and things like Tokai. I mean, what's wrong with less, you know, a sweet wine can be good if it costs less than $300 for a split size bottle like a sauternes would. All right. I think there's a whole generation that's outgrowing their entry point in wine, which was Beringer White Zinfandel or something worse. Maybe if you're old, it's Annie Greenspring, and if you're young, it's, Franzio White Zinfandel. Franzio White Zinfandel. And you're trying to get away from that and prove that you're a grownup. So you shy away from that thinking that every sweet wine is of that caliber. I think that's fair. I mean, one of the easiest ways to cover up poor materials, poor winemaking is to add a whole lot of sweetener to it, right? Yeah, yeah. But then on the flip side of it, again, some of the finest, most collected wines in the world are sweet. Absolutely. And to turn your story about people coming in and saying they, you know, absolutely don't want any sweetness in their wine. Imagine going into a produce store and saying you wanted a bone dry peach, right? Fruit is naturally sweet, right? And this is made with fruit. So some sweetness is a natural thing. It doesn't have to all be fermented out. And it's all about balance in the end. If you have sweetness, you must have a commensurate amount of acidity. Otherwise, it can be cloying. But the best sweet wines in the world are never cloying. They're absolutely delicious, balance, a high wire act of sweet and tart and all kinds of stuff. This is, I mean, it's sweet, but it's not overly sweet. It's not overly sweet at all. It's just kind of a nice fruitiness to it. Well balanced, and you're right. It's just, it's fruity and juicy. But this feels like I'm gonna get hung over if I drink a lot of it though. Well, I think you get hung over if you drink a lot of dry champagne too. I guarantee you there's less sugar in this than in Burbank County Stout. Oh, definitely. By a long shot. Less alcohol too. Or like most cartels these days. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. And it's only 59.99, which for like a traditional champagne and typically the sweeter styles tend to run a little higher. Yeah. It's a very nice price point. I think we could also argue this isn't one of Ben's points, but this is coming off of a conversation I recently had with my father that bubbles, champagne, sparkling wine in general, is not just for celebration or for holidays. You can have it all year long. And that does bring us to point number 10. Oh, hey. Champagne is only for celebrations. Drink champagne daily. Yeah, 100%. Champagne belongs on the dinner table. It is not just for celebrations. I think a wine like this, it's kind of wasted if you're only toasting one day a year with something like this. Yeah. How sad is your life? You're only happy one day a year. And champagne is one of the most versatile food wines out there. You hang out with people in the industry long enough, you'll hear some variation on if you don't know what else to have, have champagne. because it goes with everything. Like, rose champagne for me is the top of the pyramid when it comes to wine. And I'd have it with just about everything. sushi, steak, scrambled eggs with hot sauce, like, I think it would work just fine. Fried chicken? Oh, yeah. Fried chicken. It is magical. I used to make a beef tenderloin that I would butterfly and fill with lobster tails and then douse that all in like a chive butter. And then you sprinkled it in gold foil. We're gonna need you to bring that in the office one day. Roll it up and roast it so you've got like the surf and turf all together and there's nothing better than a rosé champagne with that. It's fantastic. It covers all the bases. Yeah, we're gonna need to try that. Why did you say used to? I haven't made it in a long time. Well, no time like the present. Ben, I was starting to think that I am too tall to wear skinny ties, but now that I see your attire, I see that it's clearly I'm thinking in the wrong direction. Yeah. The wrong dimension. Yeah. But you are too something to wear skinny jeans. Yeah, both. This was great. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I love smashing misconceptions. It's so stupid. It's really satisfying. Some of these might have made sense like 50 years ago. I think there's a kernel of truth to just about everything. Well, the only food they serve you on the airplane is like, do you want the steak or the fish? Those are the two choices. Then like, I don't know, maybe it's a little more binary. The two wines are Cabernet or Pinot Grigio. Or the Burgundy or the Bordeaux or whatever. Yeah. But we don't live in that world anymore. We live in a world that's post-consumer lowest common denominator, and you can try anything you want. And I would say, too, the key point is, wine is extremely complex. These guidelines, we all kind of rely on them. It's too complicated for any of us to really get our head around. But any guidelines you have really should be there to increase your enjoyment of wine. Yes. Guidelines, not hard and fast rules. Everything boils down to drink what you like and try stuff. Yeah. because how do you know if you like it or not? Totally. Drink more is what we're saying. Yeah, more vermouth. But responsibly of course. Thanks for listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. We will be back in your feed next week. I think we're tasting celebrity bitters. Until next time. Hey, since we did celebrity tequila, there's now a Lenny Kravitz Soltol. Yeah. I said, did Jeff get me Kravitz for a commercial? Oh, man. Sorry to interrupt. Tequila adjacent. Oh, my God. We'll be back in your feed next week with something fun. Until next time, I'm Greg. I'm Pat. I'm Jenna. I'm Chris. I'm Ben. Keep tasting.