Original subtitles

- You know, how people taste,

and what wines are next to each other can oftentimes change

how the wine next to it is smelling and tasting.

- It's not easy to blind taste.

- The fear of blind tasting is basically being wrong.

- I'll tell you what, I mean I've been fooled.

- I think the most random

that we could try to make this, the better.

- If you enjoy wine,

there's nothing to be gained by blind tasting

because I think wine's all about its history and its place.

- So wine one, is the glass closest to you on the left.

Two, three, four, five, six.

- Well, we blind taste each other for games.

- For bragging rights and all of that.

I got it right, I'm the greatest.

- In that style, I mean it's a parlor trick.

- I love blind tasting and it's not a parlor trick.

It's useful in only rare circumstances.

If you're a scientist trying to study

the effect of some variable on wine,

then certainly you wanna taste it blind.

- There's some wine critics who have to taste blind,

particularly if they're working for a publication,

take sponsorship.

- You know, when I was buying wines,

we'd taste everything blind.

- When I was a sommelier, the way I bought wine

was if I nailed the wine, nailed the price,

I would then buy the wine.

- You're not biased by the producer,

by any score or what you've heard,

or what you think that you should think about this wine.

- You know, the naked wine.

When you remove all people's preconceived notions

about the origin of a wine,

you get an assessment that's very, very different

than the assessment that you get

if people are looking at the bottle.

But 40 years ago,

a blind tasting changed the world.

- The wine industry has boomed

at an exponential rate in the last 40 years.

- In the US, the wine industry is a $220 billion business.

85 years ago,

wine was illegal to make and sell, right up until 1933.

There was no industry.

- For the first several thousand years

of humans making wine, they simply collected grapes

and crushed them and did very little else,

and I think that it's only in the last century

that people really started to learn

how to manage the wine making itself.

For wine to change it had to be challenged,

and we've people to thank for that.

On the one hand, you've got the seekers, the explorers,

who go out and find where there is great wine in the world

that's never been found before,

and they bring that wine to the critics,

and the critics get together, they disagree or they agree,

and they make a lot of noise,

and then you've got the sommeliers and the resellers

who deliver the actual bottle to you.

So much of what we know about wine today

was built on the work of just a few people,

and three of those people are getting together

in Paris to taste the wines that changed them.

- Arguably three of the most important people

who have ever been involved with the world of wine.

They're all big voices, but they're also

in a lot of times, they're conflicting voices.

- These guys made wine what it is today.

She might be

the most influential wine critic in the world.

- To make it clear, I've never been in the wine business.

I've never had any connection with the wine trade,

never worked in the wine trade,

and I've worked very, very hard

to sort of keep my hands clean.

- Jancis has had a huge influence on me.

I mean, some of the books that she's written have been

part of my library since almost day one.

- She wrote The Oxford Companion to Wine,

which is the most comprehensive wine encyclopedia

that the world has ever seen.

- In regards of what region I was studying,

if there's a term I didn't know,

I could go to that one resource, The Oxford Companion,

and I could find the definition of whatever that word was.

My children tease me

that The Oxford Companion is my fourth child.

- Jancis meant to wine what Julia Child did to food.

She brought a beautiful joy and enthusiasm to it

that made the world of wine fun.

- If she says good things about your wine,

people notice that.

If she doesn't like a wine,

she's got no problem in saying it upfront,

so she's petrifying to do a tasting with.

Her opinion matters, I mean she's a serious woman.

It's now my honor

to invite Jancis Robinson to the stage.

- I think probably I've done a little bit

to make employers feel that female employees

in the world of wine should be given absolutely their due.

Wherever this award is being held

and for whichever country we would be for it,

but particularly for Australia because you have to admit,

the Australian wine scene

has been pretty male dominated for quite a while.

- You're talking about the 10 or 20 people in the world

whom are probably instinctive tasters,

where they're sort of born with a very high level of gift,

and I mean, she's on of 'em.

- Women are better tasters, better blind tasters for sure.

We have a sensory memory that men don't have,

- There are lots of scientific studies that suggest

that women actually taste more accurately than men,

but it's a very male thing

that competitive blind tasting, yeah.

- We're gonna do a little blind tasting today,

and I'm in the latter part of my career,

so today we'll see what few skills I have left.

- There's incredibly famous stories about Fred.

More people know of the legend of Fred Dame

than have tasted with Fred.

- Fred is one of the best blind tasters

I've ever met in my life.

- He was in Seattle.

Everyone's blind tasting an old bottle of Madeira.

He puts his nose in the glass and says, "This is 1905."

- I've never really gave Fred a flight, you know, of wine.

- Jay is competitive as hell, and Fred is as well,

so I'd love to see that.

- I decided to pick a couple things with some age, right?

Because age kind of masks things.

- Probably like the scene in Heat,

you know, when you have like De Niro and Pacino

sitting down having coffee together.

Hold on, not just yet.

How many Master Sommeliers

does it take to decant a bottle of wine?

- Apparently more than one.

You always wonder, you know,

how your skills have done as time marches on,

as gravity takes hold of your body, right?

Fred likes to win.

Come on in Fred, let's have a glass of wine, buddy.

- Oh, let's not.

I'm a little old for this, you know?

gosh.

- I think you're pretty good, but I bet you,

you'd call these white wines.

- Chardonnay, Riesling.

Thank you. - Done, thank you.

Done, you pass.

- Fred Dame is the grandfather

of the American sommelier business.

He is the best hospitality,

restaurateur, sommelier.

I don't think wine in restaurants would be

where it is today if it weren't for someone like him.

- The big wine list with the teaching,

with the training.

He really reshaped the landscape

of not only California wine lists,

but wine lists throughout the United States.

- Oh, I think I deserve all the credit.

- I picked the Guigal Chateau d'Ampuis Cote-Rotie.

This is a classic wine from the Rhone Valley.

It's Syrah with a little bit of Viognier.

The trick on that wine is it's got the new oak on it,

so it could be misleading and take him somewhere else.

The other trick on that wine is that it's a 1995 vintage.

So here we got a 22-year-old wine.

- Alright, well, I can tell you

whoever decanted these did one crap job.

'Cause I got a big chunk of cork floating in mine.

It looks like you used a chainsaw.

That's all I had, a chainsaw.

We're in Montana. - Okay.

- I broke it down with a chainsaw,

threw some wood chips in there.

- Point number one, the viscosity is very, very good.

It's going a little garnet from center to the rim.

It's got a little watery rim,

which tells me the glycerol's a little high.

Well, it's really peppery,

and really smoky, and really meaty,

but really, really well crafted.

This wine seems to be showing some age.

It smells like a Rhone wine.

I mean, that's what it smells like.

I'd put it in Northern Rhone.

I'd say Cote-Rotie or Hermitage.

Cote-Rotie is kind of what I really like

'cause it's so peppery and meaty.

Very high quality producer.

- So final call Cote-Rotie.

What's the final vintage call?

- There is some, I'd give it '95.

- That's pretty good, Fred.

That's pretty good.

- Honey, we got some cheese? - Yep.

Well, I need two more side plates.

I'll get them out of the dishwasher.

It looks nicer with the side plates.

Oh, okay.

- It shows I'm house trained.

- He's very house trained, all to do with his mother.

It's always to do with people's mothers.

- I've never minded washing up and I'm incredibly tidy.

Tidiness is next to godliness.

- Oh rubbish, anyway I'm not tidy at all,

which is a good mix.

Steven has been the mentor of so many famous people in wine.

He is, I won't say obsessed, but he is in his world.

It is his thing.

It just has been his life, it always will be.

- I'm not a mathematician,

but I tend to drink at least a bottle of wine a day.

So that's, let's say 400 a year, and let's say 55 years.

You calculate it out.

- You know, there's kind of a thing

in the sommelier community today,

where you go and you find the weirdest wine.

Well, Steven Spurrier kind of started all that.

He was always a champion of the underdog.

- Steven had a small empire in Paris,

and we all used to hang out there.

It was...

How can I put it?

It was I suppose you'd say in today's language,

it was where it was all happening.

He had a wine school

with excellent, excellent people who taught there.

He had a retail shop, and he had a restaurant.

- Definitely something to be inspired by and look up to.

- I mean Steven Spurrier is a legend.

- Especially me coming over

from the restaurant side and getting into retail.

- If I'm known for anything, it's the Judgment of Paris.

Probably the most famous wine event in the last 50 years.

It was a time when New World wines

were beginning to emerge on the world wine market,

but there were a lot of people who thought

that they would never match the Old World wines

that had been around for so long,

on which the wine market was based at that time.

- Steven Spurrier brought

the best California wines of the day,

and put them against the best French wines of the day.

- At that stage, the wine world knew Bordeaux chiefly.

- So we invited the nine best palates

in France over a wide spectrum.

- 90% of all the judges

never tasted a California wine before,

so they had no perception of what California was capable of.

- So we said, "Okay, I've gotta put in the French wines

"side by side with these Californians,

"or they won't take it seriously."

- Nowadays blind tasting,

everyone just assumes it happens all the time.

It was totally new, really, back then.

He was hoping that one of the wines

would come in top five in either category

and saying, "Hey, let's pay attention to California wine."

- Well, the rest is history.

- California wines ended up topping the Chardonnay category

and Cabernet Sauvignon category,

which I think blew everyone's mind.

- We went up against the very, very best stuff and we won.

- And then all hell broke loose.

- Shit happens.

- He never knew they were going to win, no one did.

I don't think either of us realized

the implications at the time.

Congress has it listed

as an actual historical event.

You can see the bottles in The Smithsonian.

- And that changed the world.

They weren't just a joke anymore.

They weren't just the upstart Americans.

We were a threat.

Several French suppliers contacted us

and said they would never speak to us again.

I mean, people were horrible to the judges,

and they were very loyal to Steven, the judges.

The actual event itself,

it didn't seem important at the time,

but the fallout of the Judgment of Paris

is really the thing.

- The fact that it was a blind tasting,

they weren't competing with the history and the heritage,

and all the glory of Bordeaux and Burgundy.

They were competing on their merits.

- It got the East Coast to say,

"Hey, maybe there are some good wines in California.

"Let's start selling their wines."

- We owe our existence, if you will,

to the Judgment of Paris 1976.

- That's crazy, like now we think of Napa Valley

and it's like one of the best

wine producing regions in the world.

- The biggest thing that happened was the prices went up.

I was bummed.

I was buying the stuff for nothing, man.

It caused an explosion on the business front.

Absolutely everybody made more money.

- With Bordeaux, which were the Cabernet based wines

in France, there was already a classification system

of the best wines in the world,

and so they chose the first growths of Bordeaux.

One of the really interesting aspects was they didn't choose

the most famous California wineries at the time.

I could've easily put in Mondovi, I knew him,

but his wasn't wine I was after.

They chose artisanal,

family run very high quality producers.

It's not all about Napa, I mean if you think about Ridge,

that's Santa Cruz Mountains, which are much further south.

- I made the wine that was in the tasting.

It was my, let's see, one, two.

It was my third wine that I made here at Ridge.

- All the famous wineries today

were like minuscule back then.

When you call Ridge and you know,

the VW van would come down,

all the smoke would come pouring out like,

"Dude, are you the man that bought,

"did you order five cases of Zin?"

I go, "I did."

"Cool man.

"You wanna taste some other stuff?"

"Yeah come in.

"We've got some other stuff in the van here, man."

- Every wine in that tasting had a story.

You look at Chateau Montelena,

that was a wine made by Mike Grgich,

a Croatian refugee who came to the United States in 1958

with 35 American dollars

that he stashed in the sole of his shoes.

So this is a guy who put everything

to try to capitalize on the American Dream.

It was Clos Du Val's first vintage making wine,

and to enter into that with that tasting is huge.

- So I'm at this event, right?

- 18,000 now, one more?

Hey 19,000 and 19, go 20?

- Where everyone in the business goes once a year

to buy auction lots of wine,

and we're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars dropped

in a matter of moments

over these very precious bottles of wine.

- All done, sold $32,000.

If you were seriously tasting there,

you would taste 360 or so lots of Cabernet wines.

Your teeth would be so purple.

I'm in the tasting.

Everyone's here. - Everybody's here.

- And I go to the back, and boom!

It's Steven Spurrier.

Steven effin' Spurrier is there.

The man who planned the Paris tasting,

and DLynn Proctor's there.

He is one of the most well-connected people

in the California wine business.

This guy is the smoothest operator.

- Great seeing you guys.

Always a pleasure.

- And he's got a bottle of one of the wines

from the 1976 Paris tasting.

- I pulled on the coattail of one of my dear friends

who runs Clos Du Val, and I asked him

if I could the 1972 Judgment of Paris wine.

No, it doesn't matter how much money you have,

you can't get the wines from the Paris tasting.

- You have no idea what I had to do to get this.

- Yeah, well. - You'll love it.

- I really appreciate it, man.

- Don't drop it. - Thank you.

Hey Mike.

I gotta clean my teeth, man.

These 16s are so fucking big.

It's this old room and it's Steve Matthiasson,

myself, Steven Spurrier, DLynn Proctor.

They pour out some of the wine and everyone's sitting there

with a wine that doesn't exist.

Like, you can't get this wine.

- It's more leather.

- It's like horehound candy and leather.

- Like a more kind off-- - Absolutely.

- high polished leather.

I mean, the fruit is there,

the fruit is backing the whole thing up,

but you don't sense cassis or red currant,

yet they're there, but hidden. - No, no it's totally,

it's all tertiary now.

- But the vigor, yeah, you're quite right, tertiary.

The vigor, the restrained vigor

in this wine is quite extraordinary.

- In the '70s, acidity was prized.

- Absolutely.

- You know, it was a couple of decades later,

the winemakers felt you needed

to not have as much acidity. - Not have it.

- For that breadth, but they wanted the acidity.

- When you think about the late '70s when this happened,

you put Napa Valley wine, you put California wine,

on such a global stage,

and the bandwidth just expanded so greatly.

I mean, does Napa owe you?

- Well, I think there should be

a little street named after me.

I mean, I think that's a good idea.

I wouldn't take the Silverado Trail,

but just a little side street.

I would, yeah.

Steven Spurrier Lane. - I like that.

- If you were to do this today,

would you still do the same grape

or would you do maybe something else?

- If I were doing it again, I'd probably take Pinot Noir.

So Dustin Wilson goes

from his cushy Eleven Madison Park restaurant job,

and opens a wine retail store.

- Oh, the glamorous life of retail.

- You know, in today's marketplace,

you have to be a little bit wacky

to wanna open your own wine store.

It's a dream, I mean, I would love to do that,

but it takes an amazing amount of effort,

and everyone's always looking for the best tasting wine

at the greatest possible value.

- You know, bang for the buck.

I think a lot of people look to Burgundy.

- Keep browsing. - Oh, and what is the lot

- on this Pinot Noir? - What can I get

that is a good as Burgundy Pinot Noir?

But honestly, those wines are not really approachable

when it comes to price.

They are expensive.

- If you look at what Spurrier did with his tasting

back in the '70s and what that did for California wines,

and it's like if you look at what is going on today

and you want to have this similar conversation

with regards to not just California,

but lots of different places, very objectively,

I think we've gotten to a point now

where we can have some of these Pinot Noirs

from other places in the world besides Burgundy

be in the same conversation as Burgundy,

at a very high level.

- Pinot Noir has this distinctness of place.

It's really showcasing the wine.

- It's a plant that grows well,

and it'll make fruit just about anywhere,

but it won't make good fruit

that'll make good wine just about anywhere.

It's insanely high maintenance,

I mean Pinot is like,

you've had a thin-skinned friend before,

and you have to handle them with kid gloves.

Pinot is the same thing.

It's the ballerina in the room.

It treads lightly.

It shows exactly

what the producer wants you to see.

However, you know because of that

you see every bit of shit, as well.

It's hard to make fine wine out of Pinot,

and that's heavily influenced by where it's grown.

If it's too hot, the grapes will burn.

If it's not the right soil, they won't yield a crop.

It's very finicky that way.

It's an early ripener,

so you have to grow Pinot in a cool place.

- If I saw a label of California wine,

immediately I would think

this is not on a par with Burgundy.

This Pinot Noir is not as good

as the French label I'm looking at.

- Nobody's ever gonna argue

that Burgundy isn't the greatest place

for Pinot Noir in the world

However, the level at which other places have increased

the quality of Pinot Noir globally is crazy.

Like you can get great Pinot Noir from all over the map now.

- So, Dustin Wilson sets up this tasting.

For this to actually work,

not only does Dustin have to curate wines

that he actually thinks can hold up against the greats,

you gotta have some amazing palates in the room

with a lot of weight, so that their opinions matter,

and that what they're actually saying

is what the best of the best in the world

would actually believe.

- So, I got a text from Dustin.

I think it was like on Wednesday, and he said,

"Hey, you wanna come down to Verve to taste on Sunday?"

A couple days later, Engelmann calls me and says,

"Oh, you going to be at Verve on Sunday, too?"

- So Dustin calls us, this tasting blind.

- And then I start to get a little suspicious

about what kind of event they're walking into.

- I really wanted to assemble the very best tasters.

You need people with that sort of great credibility

and experience behind them to give this any sort of weight.

Sabato Sagaria is a fellow Master Sommelier.

One of the most hospitality, and business,

and restaurant visions and minds.

For the last several years,

running all the Danny Meyer restaurants,

he's now president of Bartaco.

Laura Maniec is joining us for the tasting.

Laura is the owner of Corkbuzz here in New York.

She's also a fellow Master Sommelier,

a phenomenal taster, badass businesswoman.

Michael Engelmann passed his Master Sommelier exams

on the first time with the highest score.

This guy is an animal.

He has got one of the greatest resumes

of any Master Sommelier that I know.

So we have Aldo Sohm,

best sommelier in the world back in '09.

Wine director for Le Bernardin, a three Michelin star,

four star New York Times restaurant in Manhattan.

Eric Ripert is the chef and it's widely considered

one of the very best restaurants in the world.

Pascaline Lepeltier,

Pascaline is one of the most respected tasters.

She's originally from France.

She's on of the biggest supporters

of the natural wine movement.

She is very much what a lot of young sommeliers

look up to and aspire to be.

I'm also really excited to have Arvid Rosengren joining us.

Arvid came here to the US from Sweden.

He kinda came out of nowhere,

won the Best Sommelier in the World competition

last year in Mendoza.

Everybody's like, wow, who is this guy?

Lastly, we have Sarah Thomas.

Sarah is a sommelier at Le Bernardin with Aldo.

She is a rising star.

She brings a little bit of a more fresh perspective

to a tasting like this.

- Those are among the best tasters there are

in New York for sure, if not the country.

- I wanted to try to make this, you know,

as well rounded as possible.

Female, male,

Master Sommeliers, non-credentialed,

but that doesn't mean anything

because these people are brilliant.

One Swede, two French people,

three Americans, and an Austrian.

- They have a really great perspective

on what the world of wine is like,

because they tasted Domaine de la Romanee-Conti,

and they tasted $10 bottles of Monterey Pinot Noir.

- Sometimes you get a chance to be a fly on the wall

in the room when amazing things are happening.

You don't even realize what kind of weight they hold.

- We've been a little secretive about the tasting,

and that's kind of on purpose.

We assembled this group

because you guys are the best of the best.

This is a blind tasting.

It's all Pinot Noir, but we're not trying to assess

where it's coming from or anything like that.

We're not trying to guess vintages.

It's not that kind of blind tasting, it's more just,

I wanna get honest opinions on the wines

without seeing the labels and knowing where it's coming from

and all that sort of jazz.

So we can be truly objective with the wines.

At the end of this, I'm gonna ask you to pick what you think

are your personal top three wines, and that's it.

Their nose, and their tongues,

and their mouths have been tuned.

A simple question like hey, you like it?

You're not gonna get that as an answer.

- Okay, so obviously, we have all the wines decided on.

We have not decided the order in which to pour these yet.

So I think the way to do this is really,

try to be as random as possible, right?

We've got a couple New World wines

and a couple Old World wines.

There's also like kind of a pretty stark wine making style.

There's some whole cluster wines,

and then there's also some de-stemmed wines.

We're also don't necessarily gonna launch

with like the most esteemed wine.

You might wanna bury that somewhere in the middle.

I don't know, let's see, maybe...

Maybe we start with something a little unexpected.

Maybe we can start with Chacra, Bodegas Chacra is wine one.

This little state in Patagonia

is making world class Pinot Noir,

in this place that you would never think

you'd even see Pinot Noir.

Initial thoughts?

- It tasted the youngest and like freshest to me.

Not quite integrated.

- It's funny, on the nose it smells like really stemmy,

or really like intense,

and then there's a little heat on the nose, as well,

but like, only when you exhale.

Like the finish is sweet.

- Yeah, it was almost like gummy strawberry.

- Yeah, sort of-- - Carbonic.

Yeah, carbonic.

- I hope I'm not offending anyone that I know and respect,

but it kind of feels like a wine

that someone's trying to make in a really elegant style

in a place where you maybe don't make

this by, sort of by nature.

Okay, interesting.

Again, I'm...

- Interesting, right? - I'm listening to you guys.

- I'm kidding. - No again,

it's not about being right or anything, it's about--

Are the wines gonna be revealed?

- I don't know, maybe. - In the movie?

Michael, settle down.

So that's whole cluster New World.

Let's go into a de-stemmed Old World wine

with the d'Angerville.

Marquis d'Angerville is really

I think the gold standard in Volnay.

This is the V producer that you wannna showcase from Volnay.

- This one was the most quiet on the nose,

and then I was surprised

that it had so much tannin structure,

and it was like it finished really acidic,

which for me is Old World.

It has this like chalky minerality, but at the same time,

the only thing that's throwing me off

of this like Old Word thing, is like the sassafras.

Like almost like this Werther's Original,

like that just like doesn't belong there.

So I'm not really sure what's going on,

but I like the wine.

I think it was, you know, I'd wanna drink it.

I think it's classic.

- It's very pure.

It's expensive oak, very well managed.

- A very ambitious wine, yeah.

For good hors, but yeah. - With a lot of polish,

and a lot of forethought.

Everyone who's in the biz,

and everyone who's a serious wine enthusiast

has that bottle.

We all have a name for it.

I call it the a-ha wine.

There's something that happens to you

when you taste this wine that changes the way you see wine,

and changes how you wanna be involved with wine.

It gets us on our path.

What are the bottles that got the people that I look up to,

what got them into wine?

- So right, restaurants always set right to left.

So because this is off the knife, and that's your angle.

- But, if this is-- - Except we've got

the small glass for our wines, which this is the wrong size.

- Oh, you've got a chip in your glass, haven't you?

- I think that needs to be changed.

- How could they give you a small glass?

- It's because I drink faster than anybody else.

- Wait a minute, I'm known as the fastest gun in the West.

Right, okay.

- So I am so looking forward to tasting this wine,

which is the wine that lit the flame for me.

I think most people who end up devoting their lives

to wine have one seminal bottle, don't they?

And I was an impoverished student at Oxford,

but I had a rich boyfriend

and his father gave him slightly too much money,

much of which was spent on wining and dining me.

If I had said to my Oxford friends okay, when I graduate,

I'm gonna get a job in either food or wine,

they would've been seriously shocked,

and they would've said,

what a waste of a good Oxford education.

I was first hired to be a presenter of what I still think

was the world's first television series about wine.

It was called The Wine Programme.

First the champagne,

the best way of ingesting carbon dioxide in the world.

- We once had lunch with Tony Blair

when he was prime minister,

and he said that when he and Cherie were a young couple,

they used to rush back in the evenings to watch Jancis.

- At that stage, the '80s were a completely mad decade

for Nick and me.

We got married in '81.

We had our first child in '82.

I made my first television series.

I think I wrote four books,

at least, in the '80s if not five.

- And it was also an era

where women couldn't say no to anything.

They had to take everything on.

My generation was absolutely determined to prove

that we could be mothers and successful career people.

So when the Masters of Wine said to me in '83,

how about doing the exam in '84?

I should've said no.

Nick said, "For heaven's sake don't."

All my friends and family said don't.

I stood to lose so much more by failing

than I stood to gain by passing.

- I think becoming an MW was more difficult,

and she was expecting our second child.

- But much to my amazement, I did pass the first time.

You know, a bottle of wine

is a bottle of wine to most people,

but actually, it's the stories

behind the wine that she's unearthed.

- It's a red Burgundy, 1959.

The name of the vineyard

is so glorious, it's Les Amoureuses.

The lovers, the female lovers.

It's been laying for who knows how long,

in the cellars of the late John Avery,

a fellow Master of Wine, and his family, after he died,

they put most of his wine collection

into Christie's to sell, but one of them remembered

that this particular wine was the one

that lit the flame for me, and held it back from the sale.

- Fantastic. - which was so nice of them.

- I mean honestly, I can't imagine having my first bottle

of wine that changes me being a Burgundy.

You can't even afford it today.

- What's the Vogue Amoureuses '59 worth?

It's priceless.

I mean, if there was a dollar there

it probably would be $10,000 maybe.

- Well, it's certainly a relic, that's for sure.

- Just like me, a relic.

- What I loved about this wine when I tasted it,

when I first tasted, had it in the glass.

Well A, it was a million times better

than student plonk, obviously.

But it wasn't ridiculously

expensive in those day, I mean, the price difference

between the top and the bottom

of a wine list wasn't nearly as great as it is today,

but it was the perfume mainly, just the haunting perfume.

You're doing so well.

I'm so glad I don't have to do this.

God, what a color.

- It is a marvelous color, isn't it?

It's amazing.

- What would you call that?

A sort of ruby.

- Garnet.

- Garnet.

- Garnet, garnet, garnet.

- I use garnet more for slightly bluer,

but it's a personal thing.

Mm, it's rich, isn't it?

Very, that is old fashioned Burgundy.

- Spectacular.

But almost, it's floral.

You've got wildflowers.

There's almost a touch of roses there.

It is.

There is, isn't there? - Dry roses, huh?

- Yeah. - Yeah, yeah.

- You know what fascinates me about this bottle?

Is that usually when wines get older like this,

they tend to become similar as they age,

but this is still Pinot Noir.

It still completely has the character that you expect

when you open something spectacular from Burgundy.

- So today, Pinot Noir is kind of like

the most valuable and most appreciated variety.

- It is worshiped

because there's so much history associated with it.

- Sometimes I think it's stingy and sour.

- My favorite grape on earth is Pinot Noir.

- Pinot Noir is like a bad boyfriend,

but you keep going back.

- Then, let's go back into the New World.

I think maybe Oregon

de-stemmed.

Then, we have Larry Stone's new project Lingua Franca.

Larry Stone's a Master Sommelier.

He was Rajat Parr's mentor.

Incredibly respected and even though it's new,

I think it's already becoming

one of the greatest spots in Oregon.

I think wine number three

relates to wine number two a lot.

Like it's the same kind of palate of aromas.

- I'm only bothered by the fact

that it smells like a funeral home,

because it's like floral and bitter.

I know, it sounds bad but I'm just like,

I keep going back and it's like--

Can I quote you on this one?

- Yeah I mean, I'm sure they will, but it's like--

- I think it says that on the back label, actually.

- It's interesting to see a wine that has been worked on

to get very specific aromatics,

where the structure is not yet here.

There is a disconnect between the two.

- It's more distinct, as well.

- I don't know that I agree that's a worked on aspect.

I think of this as like a less of a perfect wine,

but I don't know, it resonates with me more for some reason.

- Let's go on four. - Let's go on four.

On to four.

- Let's go to my country.

- I don't know.

I'd be really careful with those kind of statements.

- Oh, come on. - I'm just saying, my country.

No, it's funny.

- Which my country now? - It's amazing.

- I've been in freaking New York for 10 years now.

Well, you can claim that--

New York's not a country by the way.

- It's this country.

- Let's do this next, so the By Farr.

By Farr is the name of this particular winery.

They're in an area called Geelong.

That's a limestone spot in Victoria, Australia

and I think the wine just screams like,

fresh, elegant, finessed, aromatic.

You know, leaning on Burgundy.

- No, she thinks it's French.

- I don't think it's either.

- That's very By Farr. - Yeah, that makes sense.

- Very By Farr. - That makes great sense.

Limestone in Geelong, Australia.

- But it's very vegetable. - But it's very vegetable.

- Very vegetable.

That's what it makes me think of.

- Like a whole cluster. - That's why,

that's it's very By Farr. - Yeah.

- I just need to stop you guys for a second.

He just called the wine.

Not just that it's Pinot Noir,

that it's Australian, that it's from Victoria,

but the actual bottle of wine from the producer.

- Let's reel it in instead of trying to guess what it is,

what are your thoughts on the wine?

- I mean, it sticks out in this whole lineup.

It definitely sticks out.

There's a couple of things, it's extreme in many directions.

It's a strong philosophy of wine making.

Say it again.

- It's a very strong philosophy of wine making in this wine,

whole cluster.

- Whole cluster all the way through.

- But there's multiple things, like it's turbid.

At least my glass, it's turbid, it's whole cluster,

it's very intense in all aspects.

- Everything's on.

I wrote, first got everything intense.

It's just like, woo! - You really tell though.

- And a bit wild.

- I like it, I like the wild character of it.

- Yeah, it's not afraid of a point of view with that,

and saying hey, here's what we're trying to be,

but I do think, you know, that was one that stood out to me

as being very off the charts

with compared to the other ones.

- At least with this one, we're either getting drunk,

or it's a wine we have a lot to talk about.

- Yeah. - Well exactly.

Or you just get drunk and talk a lot.

- Yes. - Interestingly, I like it.

I like I a lot. - Maybe it's polarizing.

- No, this is great, this is exactly what--

- It's supposed to be polarizing.

- It makes a lot of sense, though

'cause I feel like the style,

it's a very heart forward wine, and I mean it's exactly

like what we're talking about. - I like that word.

- But this would also be one that I think if you know,

Michael loves this, he puts it on the list.

How many people can he make a convert

out of in the dining room?

Like this is, if you put one on there

and you flesh out a list,

but if you put a whole list together of these then,

of this style of wine,

that's when I think it gets a little bit too much.

- I like your comment about savory though,

and like that wine doesn't have to be fruity.

It doesn't only have to be

like this fruit thing or earth thing.

I mean savory is a good quality to have in a wine with food.

I mean, think about that.

- Wine is a plant first. - Right.

- And then it's a fruit, so I'm kind of tired of wines

that just show one side or the other.

It's great to have both.

- Well, you know what?

That's always a problem.

What we sommeliers like sometimes

is not what the consumer likes.

What we look on challenges, and savoriness,

and all this high acid components, typically,

and again, this sounds like negative

but it's not meant that way, the consumer doesn't like.

- Yet, yet, yet.

- They want more smoother wines.

Yeah no, but it's an evolving thing.

You have to recalibrate yourself

once every few months, you gotta like--

- But you also have to be an advocate for the guest.

- But if you pour this by the,

if this was your by the glass Pinot Noir--

If it was your only Pinot Noir that you have--

Like, you're fired.

- Putting together a successful restaurant wine list

is incredibly hard.

You have to consider the business part first,

which is you can't just go out

and buy every single bottle of wine

so you can have the biggest wine list.

I mean, really curating a wine list is like,

you have to have a lot of fucking talent.

- I picked this wine today because the '68 Ridge

to me is one of the great wines from the naissance

of the super premium California wine industry.

This wine was actually made

not by Paul Draper, by Dave Bennion.

Dave was a very, very good friend of mine.

I had dinner with him on Friday night

before he was killed in a car accident,

with he and his wife Fran,

I still miss him today. - That was '88, right?

- '88, yes.

It was sad, sad day.

So we're gonna drink something today

that is dear to my heart,

because you really see the beginning.

I mean, who in their lifetime gets to see the beginning?

Fred was sommelier

at one of the most legendary restaurants in America,

the Sardine Factory in Monterey, California.

- Our wine list was fantastic at the time.

It was all French and Italian, European,

and the last page in those days,

you're talking about early '60s, '70s.

The last page were American wines.

Now that restaurant was, it was crazy.

It was fine dining, and that was kind of a new thing for,

I mean there was a few restaurants in Monterey,

but then and Cannery Row started booming,

and Ted calls me up and he says,

"I wanna show you something."

He takes me on this beautiful wine cellar underground.

Gorgeous, huge, empty.

Why don't you come take this job, come back and fill it up,

and build me the greatest wine cellar in America?

Pretty good challenge.

So here was this guy, big guy.

That was just championing fine wine

and putting it on his list.

Nobody else that I knew of

in this part of the country was doing.

- We were the first restaurants in the world.

We took the wines and incorporated the Cabernets

with the Cabernets in Europe.

We just put 'em on the same page,

the French and the American, and the equivalent.

Well, the wine people who used to do the wine list

said they'd laugh us out of the business.

I said, "Really?"

I said, "Well, let 'em laugh us out of the business."

And it became a huge success.

He built one of the deepest

and most complex wine lists that this country's ever seen.

- And of course we won the Wine Spectator Awards,

and we got all kinds of recognition under his leadership.

The Wine Spectator Grand Award is the brass ring

that wine savvy restaurateurs are going for.

- There was a lot of competition.

Everybody wanted to be on that cover every year.

- In order to get a Grand Award,

you have to arguably have

the best example of a particular region

in your wine list, in the world.

We made it every year during my tenure.

- There are restaurateurs that swear by the fact

that their wine profits doubled the year that they got it.

You had to constantly keep rethinking, rechanging,

and moving things around, acquiring new things.

Keeping an eye on new regions that might be coming along

that you wanna be there first.

Restaurant owners began

to look at wine as a profit center,

and one of the reasons that you came to a restaurant,

instead of just something that helped along with the menu.

- He'd be always be able

to get a deal on some of these wines,

and, you know, getting wines at that particular time,

you were able to buy some

very inexpensively that became very expensive.

- He'd go to Europe a couple of times,

then he'd come back and I'd get these huge bills, you know,

you wanna strangle him.

I'd say, "Freddy, what are we doing?

"We have a wine museum here or do we have a restaurant?"

One time he bought a case in Kentfield,

a couple thousand dollars.

I said, "Freddy, what the heck are you doing?"

He said, "Last night I just a bottle for 700 or 800 bucks."

I said, "Well good Freddy, why didn't you buy two cases?"

- I wanna be like Fred Dame.

I wanna have that wine list that's like,

maybe not as deep 'cause I pay the bills,

but like Sardine Factory, you know?

- So I think I'm gonna pull this cork.

What do you guys think? - I think you should, yes.

And I love these California Cabernets

from the era before they all went mad on high alcohol and--

- What's the alcohol on this wine?

- Didn't I look, is it 12.9? - 12.7.

12.7, isn't that brilliant?

Those were the days.

But they didn't get into that act

until the mid '80s. - Nice and clean.

- '90s even - Yeah '90s, yeah.

- Back in 1968, Cabernet Sauvignon

was an experiment outside of Bordeaux.

Today, it's the world's most planted grape.

- Give me, give me a moment.

This is a special moment for Mr. Dame.

We have to--

- The tannin is incredible on this.

It is, it's always been, hasn't it?

It's always been--

- I mean, that's been a hallmark,

particularly from that low alcohol.

- What we've seen I would say in California,

is that it's slightly coming back to more like this style.

Having gone kind of massively alcoholic, and ripe and sweet.

And there are more and more producers

aiming for a style like this,

but not everyone because they can sell

bottles of Cult Cabernet hand over fist

in your part of the world at high prices.

- I'm gonna lay this one on the critics.

- Pas moi.

- Exactly, because I think the scoring system,

and not that you weren't doing the best you could

within the system you were handed,

but it created a generation of collectors and consumers

that stopped thinking on their own.

Basically starting like the early '90s

is where you really started to see the impact of this,

is the Parkerization of wine.

- I was the first person to write

a profile of Robert Parker in Britain.

We were good friends.

He came to my house for dinner,

I went to his house for dinner, I love his wife.

- Robert Parker is probably

the first modern day wine critic, really.

He started a publication

back in 1978 called The Wine Advocate,

and he developed a very unique system

of rating wines, the 100 point system.

His intention for creating the 100 point system

as broad stroke and subjective as it may be,

was to say to people, here are great wineries

that are doing things right.

- You could argue that it's not his fault

that it became so influential.

It is a shame that I think his taste

came to dominate wine production around the world.

Parker likes big wines.

Powerful, steakhouse wines,

lots of structure, lots of tannin.

Wineries started making wines

so they could get those 100 point scores,

and sell a crap ton of it.

- It just seems crazy to have

this whole giant world of wine dictated by one palate.

- You know, it's no secret that Bob really would come out

with some very positive views on riper styles of wine,

but that is not to say that that was the only style of wine.

- If that man loves rich, oaky, high alcohol,

low tannin wines, he's entitled to that opinion.

- I don't agree with a lot of, with his taste.

He has very different taste in wine from mine,

but that's fine.

- You read a bunch of critics

and you find the critic you agree with,

and then you stick with what they say.

- In the early '70s,

California was trying the hardest it damn well could

and making wines from the vineyard,

and in the early 2000s, they were resting on their laurels.

In the early '70s,

France was resting entirely on its laurels

basically around the entire world,

and by the 2000s came along,

they were making the best wine they possibly could,

and I think it's now come to an equal position.

Everyone is making the best wine they possibly can.

- Or else.

Or else they don't sell it.

- They fall out of the race. - Yeah, yeah, exactly.

- Yeah.

- And boy do you fall out fast.

- Yeah.

- You make one mistake today, everybody's on you.

Also from Burgundy,

but from the Cote de Nuits is Domaine Bachelet.

Bachelet is in Gevrey-Chambertin.

Bachelet is really one of the greats from Burgundy.

- That was very fruity for me. - Yep.

- This was the first one that took me to the New World.

This is one back to the by the glass,

if you poured this by the glass

I think you'd make a lot of people happy.

- You'd make a lot of money.

- Yeah well, it depends how much it costs.

It tasted well made and I think almost like

for lack of a better word, like shinier than the others.

Like it was more polished up.

- I would buy this. - Yeah.

- It's my test of like whether it's a good wine.

- But the fruit's really perfect.

It's really sweet, it's really forward in the glass.

- And then Domaine de la Cote.

Then from California, wanted to showcase Domaine de la Cote.

Domaine de la Cote is run by Rajat Parr in Santa Barbara.

- This is a fun one 'cause I really did not like this

when I just went through it quickly,

and it might be the fact that it ended up last in the lineup

and it felt a little like simple, light.

Going back to it, I don't hate it at all anymore.

- I mean talk about the veg and the fruit,

I think this one has a great-- - Everything.

- A great relationship between the two

that are really harmonious compared to some of the others.

It's almost like Goldilocks.

Like this one was too much, this was too little,

then this one's like just right in that sense.

- And look, it is the one which has so far the most terroir.

- My first note was that it still has

some of that sort of what I call fake elegance.

- Pretty and confected. - Like someone was really

trying to make an elegant-- - Debutante.

- Yeah. - Debutante.

- I saw it and I don't know, I might, I'll need more.

I need another glass of this wine.

- Alright guys, so I'm gonna come around

and just collect your sheets.

Alright.

Thank you.

- How do we know if Russia interfered

with this tasting today?

- So, let's see here.

We had ended up having for top picks.

- There are three number two. - Three number twos.

- And two number sixes. - Two number sixes.

A four, and a five.

- Nine plus four. - Plus one, 14.

This is where the Russians get involved.

Attention.

- Two. - I heard a Russian accent

come out earlier.

I was like, I don't know if she should be tallying this up.

- Five, you agree? - Yeah.

- Three and seven. - Huh!

- Yeah. - Okay.

- 14, exactly. - Wow.

- Wow. - Thank you.

- Oh wow. - That's the exercise.

- 14 and 14. - Arvid cheated.

- It's tied, it's tied. - Two and six tied.

- You know, the idea for the tasting was

that basically great Pinot Noir can come from anywhere.

I'm really excited to see what you guys think here

after going through this.

Okay, so the way we'll do this.

We're gonna go three, two, one

and then we'll have the others afterwards.

Alright so, in third place taking a bronze medal.

- Our third favorite. - It's number five.

- Number five, which is Bachelet Corbeaux '15.

- That's a little too expensive for by the glass.

I don't know, maybe about the Danny Meyer group, but...

- Let's keep in mind

that the next two wines had a tie score.

- Yes.

- But we're gonna pull it out in the order

that we've decided to do this here, to rank them.

So the next one.

- That one's gonna be tight. - I'm stressed out.

I'm stressed out.

- Is Domaine de la Cote. - Oh.

- Bloom's Field. - Interessante.

- This was six, yeah. - That was number six.

- Wow. - And then...

- I feel pretty solid about this.

- That's my Burgundy. - Alright, we'll take it.

Saved us the embarrassment.

- That's says something, huh?

- So this is I think very,

very telling. - That's a nice,

organized setup. - It's really interesting.

- That says something how good that wine is.

- I thought it was Chambordesque, the Volnay.

- Yeah, that one was freakin' great.

- Well so, you know, these two wines were,

you know, they tied. - Yeah.

- It's really cool. - That's so cool.

In the town of Volnay,

to me there's very few producers

that can compete with Marquis d'Angerville.

- The person who has Domaine Marquis d'Angerville

in d'Angerville,

he's taken on an epic, epic estate,

and they are some of the most compelling wines in the world.

- This Domaine has been in my family for 200 years.

I'm only the sixth generation running it.

- Some of the vessels they use for fermentation,

these large vats are hundreds, and hundreds of years.

They have no idea how far they go back.

So we're talking about a time honored tradition

at that winery.

- For me my favorite, favorite, favorite region,

favorite little village in Burgundy for sure.

- I think I met Raj about seven, eight years ago.

Every time he comes to taste here,

I learn something from him on my own wines.

- Since I was 10-years-old, I wanted to be a chef.

I came from India.

My native language was Hindi,

but in India English is a first language,

but definitely Hindi was, you know, what we speak at home.

I came to New York in '94 to cooking school,

to The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York.

He wanted to head west,

got a job at Rubicon under a Master Sommelier,

Larry Stone, and he got to learn under one

of the greatest wine tasters in the world.

- I had a six month visa,

so after six months I had to go back,

but luckily, Larry Stone decided to sponsor me

and that's the reason I'm still here today.

I consider myself as an American winemaker,

even though I'm from Indian origins.

He's somebody who travels a lot

and tastes a lot and that's what the most important thing is

to programing your taste and your experience

of what you know about the world.

He has an encyclopedia

in his mind, in his nose, in his mouth.

- When I tasted Burgundy for the first time in '96,

I was like, "Wow."

So then I went there,

and I've been back every year since '96 to today.

I haven't worked in a restaurant in like

well over four years.

In fact, when I'm in a restaurant,

I get a little anxiety sometimes going like,

"Oh wow, I should do something."

But no, I don't wanna do anything

'cause that life is behind me now.

It's like Michael Jordan switching to baseball.

You're one of the greatest sommeliers in the world,

and you decide to make a switch into wine making

and actually leave the floor?

It's a bold move.

I think the reason I kind of became involved

in making wine is basically here to satisfy a dream,

the thirst of finding a place, a new place in the new world,

where you can grow Pinot Noir.

- He's been on a mission to kind of tell this story,

and he's been a big believer

in Santa Barbara for a long time.

For his wines to perform at this high level like this,

with tasters like that,

and to be compared to some great Burgundy,

I think is phenomenal.

- So this is the third wine of the afternoon,

and the wines of Jancis and Fred have been very emotional.

I think mine is probably the most emotional

because I was 13 years and four months old

when I first tasted this wine,

and it's a Cockburn's 1908 Port.

My grandfather turned to me and said,

"I think you're old enough for a glass of Port."

I took a taste.

It just knocked my socks off, and I said,

"Gosh grandpa, what's this?"

"Cockburn '08, my boy."

And at the time, like a lot of my colleagues,

I collected stamps,

and I was reading at school about history and geography,

and Cockburn's '08 had what stamps had.

It had a date, it had a country, it had a region,

and I began to, curious enough,

learn about wine through my lessons without ever tasting it.

Fred, if you could open that?

I think I can do that.

You've got the wine

which sent me into the wine trade.

- Steven is one of those wise men now

in the wine industry, in the wine world,

has become himself a winemaker in the United Kingdom.

Steven Spurrier's making sparkling wines,

which technically speaking, it's the hardest thing to make.

- I think Bride Valley is a pretty brave enterprise,

because it's not by any means

a proven area for top quality sparkling wine.

The cool side.

He went to the western, in Dorset.

In Dorset, England it gets the whole wrath of the Atlantic,

so he gets a lot of rain, which reduces the yields.

Not a lot of fruit comes in, but if anyone can do it,

it's probably Spurrier.

- But it's farming.

I mean, I just sign the checks and I sell the stuff.

I don't understand farming, and farming annoys me

because farming doesn't work the way I want it to work.

- But being the other side of the table for once.

You're the seller instead of the buyer or the critic.

You're the person producing the stuff, which is different.

You're contending with things like weather

that you can't control.

Doing a vineyard's the most wildly stressful thing.

I get really upset when you meet nice old people,

and they're retiring and they've got some money set aside,

and they say, "Oh we've always dreamt of having a vineyard."

And I think, don't.

Just don't do it, don't bother.

- But, I'm very happy with the vineyard.

I think that's alright.

- I'm hoping it's gonna be more than alright.

I hope it's gonna be a 20, oh a lovely color.

Thank you.

Hmm.

- I mean, it's fortified.

We have to admit this is not a table wine.

It's a fortified wine,

but it's a fortified wine which is 110-years-old,

and I don't see how anybody

could put more than 30 or 40 years on that.

- I'm just gonna let you two keep talking

because I'm really enjoying this.

You know, you don't do this every day of your life.

What is it they said in Gladiator?

"Are you not entertained?"

- It's a story in it, yeah. - It's perfect, it's flawless.

- It is wonderful.

It's certainly very, very sweet obviously.

A little bit of orange peel. - Burnt orange.

- Yeah, but it's got an amazing freshness, as well.

One of those barky, spices.

It's not quite cinnamon, something else.

It's got spice. - A little nutmeg.

- Yes, maybe nutmeg. - This is butterscotch.

- But it's more subtle than butterscotch, don't you think?

- No, it's more vibrant than butterscotch.

- The fruit's intact here. - Yeah.

- You know, there's a freshness.

You're right.

You expect it to be, oh 1908,

it's gonna be really tired. - It's not.

- Like an old tonic.

Like some 40-year-old tonic or something, all tired out.

- No, it's revitalizing. - Yeah.

- This is one of the wines of the world

where you absolutely have to wait

for decades before it really shows itself.

- Yeah, I think Port as a category is declining

rather than growing. - Sadly.

- I told you, I can't think,

can't remember the last time I actually had a glass of Port.

- When I first started in wine in 2001,

people like loved their tawny Port or their vintage Port,

but now I think people are just in a rush.

- The idea of Port is not fashionable, yet again.

- You're so faddy, you Americans, you know?

- Well no, what happened to Port,

we have a problem in the United States.

Not a problem, we have a reality

and that's that 95% of the wine consumed

in the United States of America is consumed

within eight hours of purchase.

That is the reality of things.

So when you're talking about aging wines and all that,

who cares, right?

And let's face it, it's been foisted upon us

by the industry who don't want us to age something.

They want us to buy the next vintage.

- Yeah, buy and then consume and then buy again.

- And then buy the next vintage.

That's the whole philosophy

of the American production system,

and one thing I will say,

if you raise the consciousness of a generation

to something that is just different enough, and trust me,

these millennials are just different enough,

they wanna be something crafty,

and they wanna bedtime story to go with it.

- Well, there's lots of bedtime story with this.

- This has a great bedtime story.

- Yeah.

We're dying to know how these were chosen.

- The last one's a lot darker.

It must have a bit of burnt ash in it.

- Thanks. - Mm-hmm.

We put on a tasting in New York

and the purpose and the idea behind the tasting

was to kind of start a conversation amongst sommeliers

about Pinot Noir and where it grows in the world,

and how things are kind of evolving.

Basically, some of those top three wines,

the ones that we have in front of us here,

basically were a tie.

They earned roughly the same amount of points.

So it was a very, very close call between these three wines.

So we thought it'd be really interesting

to bring the wines here, taste them with you all,

and basically do the exact same thing

and just to see where your palates land with these wines.

- They do seem very different to me, each one.

When I first tasted number one,

I thought maybe a little bit too much green,

but it's actually growing on me.

I'm actually liking it a lot.

Number two,

very pretty now.

Maybe the most Burgundian, even if it's not from Burgundy.

Three is very concentrated, isn't it?

And a kind of Burgundy lover might say,

oh, you know, why should Pinot look like that?

It's a bit too dark for a classic Burgundy.

But I think it might be pretty nice

in kind of two or three years.

That's as far as I've got.

I'll listen to the kings here, and then revise my thoughts.

Fred?

- Somebody really likes oak, right?

A lot, good barrels, though.

Very nice, wine number one

I think some expensive wood went in there.

I think some expensive wine making went in there.

Then you got a soda pop, right?

And just really bright, clean.

It's got that Bing cherry,

that quality I associate with the New World, pretty much.

She thinks she's more in the Burgundian style,

which considering some of the recent vintages,

I couldn't arguably argue it.

I think, I mean, it's clean.

It's almost a little vegetal on the nose.

- We should say they're three nice wines, actually.

- Yeah, I'm nitpicking here.

This reminds me of stuff from Otago.

Somebody's an acid head, right?

But it's good, you know, it's well made.

This to me is a New World style here.

- So fresher acidity than you maybe would have thought,

given the aromatics. - Yeah, it is.

- And the color-- - I mean, let's face it,

everybody certifies these days,

well, except for the Burgundy 'cause it's illegal, right?

Right.

- The acidity is really what stands out, look at that color.

I mean, you had to really push that.

Stylistically, Jancis is right, they're totally different.

Right.

- I'd probably pick number three.

- Very good.

- I have a personal idea of what Pinot Noir should be

for me, and number three is not at all

what I want in Pinot Noir.

It's far too dark. - Too concentrated.

- Too concentrated, it's got far too much oak,

and I'm sure I agree with you, Fred.

It's a good wine, but if I go down in my cellar

looking for a Pinot Noir to drink with a poached chicken,

that's not the one I'd take.

I think I'm going for the reverse order.

I think I agree with Jancis.

I think number two is probably Burgundian.

I like that wine a lot,

but I've got a lot of wines like that in my cellar,

and so that to me is Pinot Noir straight down the nine.

This to me, wine number one was a slightly fuller color

and a slightly more youthful aspect to it.

It's Pinot Noir with a twist for me,

and of the three that's the one I prefer.

- Interesting. - What'd you like?

- Well, Jancis hasn't picked her favorite yet.

- No, I haven't.

Two for today.

- Very good, very good.

Interesting so, one, two, three.

Yep.

Aren't we inviting?

- Alright, didn't see that coming.

So Steven, you picked wine number one.

- I picked that one, yeah, yeah.

- Great. - Because it's different.

- Different. - For me.

- Jancis, you picked wine number two.

For today.

- Today, because it's speaking to you

and if you were gonna drink something today,

this would be the one you'd like to drink.

And Fred, you picked wine number three because--

It's big, bad, and bold.

- Big, bad, and bold, I dig it.

Okay, well, I feel like we should just reveal the wines.

- Go ahead. - Yeah, go for it.

- Okay so...

Wine number one

Gevrey-Chambertin, Domaine Bachelet 2015.

Wow.

- Steven, that's yours.

Corbeaux from your crew.

Too oaky for me.

- Jancis, wine number two is the Californian.

- Good for them, good for well, Raj will be thrilled.

Will he not? - Raj Parr, yes indeed.

- Who has been trying to make Burgundy

in California for a long time.

Correct, correct.

- He's in my, he's succeeded as far as I'm concerned.

- And then Fred,

d'Angerville Champan 2015. - Good lord.

I'm a d'Angerville junkie man.

Wow.

So that's 15.

- It's got 15.

It's got that horsepower, that's why.

- 15 yeah, really concentrated fruits.

- Big and austere.

- I thought that was Burgundy and I said,

I've got a lot of this in my cellar.

I don't have a single bottle

of California Pinot Noir in my cellar.

So you know, how much full of yourself do you--

- I'll get Raj to send you a case, okay?

- Very interesting, thank you. - Yes.

- And nice that it shows, as you say, how Pinot is evolving.

- Yes.

Yeah, this was, you know,

the Domaine de la Cote was certainly the surprise.

- I think it says a lot of very positive things

because the wines are beautifully made

and you have to think back 30 years ago, 40 years ago,

there was a lot of very bad wine, very poorly made wine.

- 30 years ago, longer than that judging wine in California,

if you got the Pinot Noir panel,

you'd do anything to get off of it.

I mean, you'd trade.

I'll take the fruit wines, I'll take the White Zinfandel,

just don't me on the Pinot Noir

'cause it's gonna suck, right?

The wines blow, and they did.

They were terrible.

Then you look at today and you see,

here's a wine made by Raj

that's standing up to two legendary wines.

Right.

- I think that's the greatest news in the world

because you're saying, there's great parity

occurring in the world in the quality of wine making.

- Correct.

- Well, you know, place, and terroir, and all those things

will always have that hold on your heart.

Let's face it, the modern world is changing things.

- Yes.

- To a great extent, and I think you see it right here.

Given they each chose different wines

and what they preferred,

I think shows that even at a high level

with some of the best wines in the world,

that you can still have differences in preference.

I think that's also really important

because I think people should be drinking what they like,

and not just what other people tell them they should like.

And this was really cool to see them kind

of pick these things out

and like each of the wines for different reasons.

There is so much wine in the world,

and so much of it is good.

So what we value is really based on perception.

When people taste wine,

they often listen to the voice of the winemaker

or the critic, or a friend who says

this is the greatest bottle ever or a price tag,

and blind tasting takes all of that out

and lets the wine speak for itself.

This tasting was important

because it shows that you can have wines that do speak

of a sense of place from lots of different places.

Not only that, but wines from around the world now

are such, such high quality.

You don't have to just drink, you know,

the great French wines of the world.

You can get just as much pleasure

out of a fun Santa Barbara wine now

than you can about an overgrown Cru Burgundy.

- The beauty of what we do

is that the world of wine is constantly changing,

and you need to keep up.

- I think that the world of wine

is in a better state now than I've ever known it, actually.

More interesting, more varied.

It's certainly in flux.

Isn't the world in flux?

- I think wine is an ever-changing scene.

I mean, it's been changing all of my life

and it's gonna change probably even quicker.

God knows how many millions

of bottles there are in the world,

so there are a lot more wines out there that I can drink.

So I guess it's because there's always something new.