You want some water?
He opens a wine, then offers me water.
I'm not sure which part of thirsty he doesn't understand.
Then I can drink more wine!
Gracious...
You have to bring the bottle back.
Otherwise you're done.
You can never find the same bottle, right?
What do you have on Saturday night?
A Halloween party.
The price you pay for good wine is you have to dress up.
What are you doing to wear?
I'm going to go as a strong man.
And then to wear tight, very small, little T-shirt
and a big belt and tight little...
like a wrestler, tight shorts.
Really?
Yes.
You like it.
It must be fun.
It's fun. You have to be drunk to get dressed up.
So, you already have a problem.
Today we talk about how we can choose a wine that we may like.
There are so many wines in this world
and some wines are even hard to pronounce.
And how can I know this wine is
more delicious than that wine?
So, it's a very difficult question that you ask.
First of all, 'delicious' itself is a relative term.
That's relative to your experience,
it's relative to what you like.
You also have another problem.
If you haven't tasted the wine
and particularly if you haven't tasted
any of those unpronounceable grape varieties,
then you won't know.
So the bottom line is, short of tasting the wine,
you have to trust somebody.
Take anybody who rates wine for a living.
After a while, once you have watched what they say about a wine,
and listened to the terms that they use,
and then gone out and bought that wine.
After two or three times, you get a sense of,
if the guy says that the wine is grippy
for example, you know what he means.
If he says the wine's got minerality,
you know what he or she means.
You start to get dialed into effectively a code.
When he says this, it means that and I like it or I don't like it.
So there is no very simple way like that.
The simplest way is to go somewhere,
have them open the wine for you and taste it.
Consumers do get invited to these tastings
but generally speaking,
the consumer part of tasting is charged.
It doesn't matter.
If you pay $35 or $55, $75 to go into a tasting
and have the opportunity to taste 75 or 80 wines
and make notes on those wines,
you also learn a lot about what you like,
what is delicious for you and what is less so.
There are many different levels of knowledge.
So, if a beginner asks for help,
then how would you help?
OK, so if a beginner asks me for help,
then I ask them to tell me 'what do you like?'
A beginner may not know what they like in wine.
If you are going to a liquor store
to buy wine and you normally tell the guy
'this is what we are having tonight
and this is what I like.
What should I have?'
Once you have found the answers to that,
they seem to be relatively good
in terms of the kind of wines you're buying,
stick with that particular guy.
Because he's already getting dialed in to your palate.
You need a professional to give that kind of advice.
It's not particularly difficult.
If the person that you're working for that you're working with
in a liquor store is employed in the liquor store
and does get to taste some of the wines,
then I think you can do a pretty decent job of helping.
And I can't understand that there would be a person
working in a liquor store that never got to taste any of the wines.
It's the same, I very often see in restaurants
where a waiter comes along and you say
'what's this dish like and what's that?',
'well that dish is my favorite!'
OK, but I don't care.
I don't care which dish is your favorite, with respect,
which dish is going to be my favorite is more important.
So the fact that the person
that's making the recommendation to you
happens to like something or not like something
actually misses the point.
The point is trying to give you something
that you will have a very good chance of liking.
I bring the wines.
You bring the wine now!
Huh!
He waits normally till I'm hoarse before he brings the wine.
So today he is just being kind.
I just want to be in peace.
Let's assume there is a person with a bit of knowledge
about grape varieties and their characteristics.
If this person is hesitating between two wines
made by the same grape varieties
and from the same region or the country,
then how would you help?
In some ways, that's a question about price.
So you can buy a Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon,
quite respectable Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon
for $5 to $8 a bottle.
And what you are going to get is something
with very forward fruit, not very complex.
If you spend double the money,
then you can buy a Cabernet Sauvignon,
even from the same area, from Chile or from elsewhere,
that has got much more nuances,
that is starting to deliver some of the quality
for which Cabernet is justly famous.
So more of the elegance, more of the complexity
and something, perhaps a little bit more subtle not necessarily.
Price can be a pointer.
Price can be a pointer.
Generally the cheaper wines
or should we say the less expensive wines
would be more direct than the more expensive wines.
For many years I taught wine classes to absolute beginners.
And I was surprised to see so many times
how many of the people really felt
that the entry level wines were the better wines.
They had confused quality with what they like.
Quality, in some instances, because wine in many ways,
particularly dry wine, is a learned experience.
So too is quality a learned experience.
And so the wines that were immediate appealing
and with no or none of the mineral characteristics etc.,
those qualities that one teaches oneself
to appreciate with none of those
just a direct plain, very straightforward,
simple wine for them because it was
more tasty immediately than the other wines,
that was the better wine.
And so I had some people
'you know what, a real cheap date'
because you are in love with $2.99 wine,
you know, can I take you out for a drink
because I'll buy you as many glasses as you like of that
while I sip on something Classed Growth from Bordeaux.
You brought two bottles of wine, right?
I did, yes.
They look pretty similar to each other.
Right.
Both of them are from Abruzzo.
Abruzzo is basically the start of the Southern Italy
and both of them are made from a grape variety
called Montepulciano.
The Montepulciano grape is arguably today,
I would say, Italy's go-to-grape for by the glass wine
because it is not expensive and great value for money.
One of them is a very straightforward entry-level wine
and it's delicious which is the word
you used right at the beginning
and the other one with a little bit more complexity.
Much more complexity, much more subtlety,
and overall, at least for me, more satisfaction.
But we'll see.
And is the wine with more complexity more expensive?
Oh, yes.
This first wine here 'd'Aragona Montepulciano d'Abruzzo'
is a wine made by a cooperative.
So a cooperative winery is a winery
that has multiple members
and the members grow grapes
and they deliver their grapes to the coop
and the means of production are owned
by all the members and the wines are made.
This here, 'Fattoria Buccicatino' is an individual property.
It's an estate.
This wine is organic.
It's made with great respect for the plants and for the terroir.
And did you bring these wines just to show or to drink?
To taste...
The reason why I brought the wine and not him,
I knew they would get opened.
So is it alright I open the bottles?
I'm not sure which part of thirsty he doesn't understand.
I think the problem is the name.
He can't help it. It's his name.
How about 'Bucci'.
Bacci!
Kisses in Italian.
Oh yes.
Bacci.
So it sounds lovely.
Buccicatino, we will tell him at Vinitaly next year
'Umberto, you have to change your name
from Buccicatino to Bacci'.
You want some water?
No thanks.
He opens the wine and then offers me water.
Then I can drink more wine.
Gracious!
But if you say
'Fattoria Buccicatino from Montepulciano d'Abrruzo',
the difficulty becomes duplicated.
That's why you have these fine people
working in restaurants and liquor stores
so that they can say 'It doesn't matter if you can't say the name.
Try the wine. It's super.'
And next time when you come back to the same restaurant...
Yes, you have to bring the bottle.
You have to bring the bottle back. Otherwise, you're done.
You can never...
Find the same bottle, right?
I sell a wine from South Africa.
That's made by the winery called Villiera.
Well, I've got customers who now more than 20 years later
still call the wine Villeria.
So don't expect somebody to be coming to you after one time and saying
'Yes, please. I would like some more
Fattoria Buccicatino Montepulciano d'Abrruzo'.
That's not going to happen.
2015 and actually that one is 2013.
I thought I was on 2016 vintage.
I must have pulled the wrong bottle by mistake.
OK, well. That's an interesting to see how it stood up.
Yes.
So the color on the first one does show some aging
but it has a beautiful rich robe
whereas the color of the second one is a lot younger.
And darker.
Yes.
Montepulciano is typically ripe
and feels raisiny and one has to watch
that ripeness character and to make sure
that it's always got plenty tannin but to make sure
that it's got enough acidity.
So the nose is very forward but very pleasant on the first wine.
The wine is full in the mouth.
It's got ample acidity.
It's got ample tannin.
It's actually better than just direct simple wine.
It's got some complexity to it
because it's taken the bottle aging
and it's taken it quite well.
Before even getting to this (2nd) wine
I think this is quite an amazing glass of wine.
Where can I buy this wine?
Go to a website called 'Greatwine2u.com'.
I'll do that.
Now on the nose of the second wine, there's a family resemblance.
This one is less forthcoming but it's got more nuances.
You have the palate authority of a wine of greater intensity
and more nuances.
In case of knowledgeable people,
if they ask you for your help when they choose wine
because you are way more knowledgeable than they are.
Then how would you help them?
It's lot easier in this instance dealing with very knowledgeable people
because they know what they like.
It's easy for me and I will have a very good chance of satisfying them.
The more education that you have in wine
and even more so in wine and food,
if you come to me for a pairing, the better job I can do.
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