What was the most expensive wine you've ever experienced Certainly, the 1961 Haut Brion has to be up there that I've been lucky to have a few times in my life And each time proved that it was the best wine I've ever had I've had many old bottles of Bordeaux and Burgundy Some rare champagne, Italian wine Many rare and beautiful old wines When we talk about expensive wines people often talk about Domaine de la Romanée-Conti I've had Romanée-Conti only a couple times But it is interesting because you didn't count that Romanée-Conti in Instead of it, you thought about Chateau Haut Brion 61? Right, because that's the best wine I've ever had in my life Alright But again, the wines of Romanée-Conti are exceptional wines And one has to pay for that And, you know, collectors are a different breed than People who are, sort of, 'wine knowledge junkies' Wine knowledge junkies? Junkies, especially people who are Masters of Wine, They enjoy the learning process, right? I was in Burgundy with the Institute of Masters of Wine And we had visited the Louis Jadot cellars When Jacques Lardière was still the winemaker And had been through the cellars And we were invited to their library For an evening of Paulee Paulee is like the Burgundian feast Full of toasts and wine And people singing La~ La~ La-la-la-la-la~ Yeah, you've been to Paulee, right? I don't know I'm not sure about that But before we got there, they gave us a wine as we got there, The reception wine And the wine was very, very interesting It was not fantastic, it was clearly old It was beyond sort of, just looking old It was quite brownish and for a white wine It was still alive But that wine turned out to be 1903 Le Montrachet from Jadot And I was there sometime in the 80s or early 90s So that's got to have been the most expensive wine I ever drank Now, if one could pay for it because it's priceless Uh-huh, it's priceless Nobody can buy it, right? No. And, you know, if you bought it and you spent $20,000 or $30,000 or however much you would spend on it You are in much better shape to treat it like a piece of art And not drink it Because it doesn't drink at that level It's just this... amazing old relic of wine that talks to a history that's long gone I mean a wine that was made before the first world war And was it drinkable? Oh, yeah. Very drinkable Just not great anymore It was hard even to tell that it was white wine It is very interesting We have many minors among our subscribers Do you mean these are people who work in mines...? No, no, no, no Under the age of 18 A high school student asked He'll be able to drink wine in two years legally And what would you recommend as the first wine for him or her? Well, first off, one has to be careful, even once you're legal One has to be careful about how much alcohol one consumes That the brain is still undergoing development untill age 25 Oh, you know well about it because you're a doctor Right, alcohol can be toxic to the developing brain And then also there were some studies that looked at women Young women some binge drinking in their early 20s can put somebody at risk for breast cancer later in life Really? I would say be moderate at one's consumption of alcohol Buy something, read a little bit about it, Share it with some friends Always better if you have two different wines to compare against one another Must be good for stimulating your intelligence Yeah Doing it in that way, where the intent is not to get bombed, not to get intoxicated
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That'd be good In many ways, wine is something that you get used to It's a learned thing less than people tasting wine, particularly dry wine, and immediately falling in love with it For a lot of people, the progression is from sweet and off-dry white wine And eventually you wind up through to drink dry red wine and to enjoy it So if you're talking about, you know, how do you get into it Because you perhaps are in love with the idea of wine But without really loving wine itself I suggest that, in fact, you don't start with expensive wine That you start with entry-level wine, not too cheap Because, in many ways, these wines that are too cheap are not really wine that you can learn from Because they have no sense of place They barely have a sense of great variety And they're sweet, they're like alcoholized soda pop And what do you mean by 'not too cheap'? Pay the amount of money at the level where you're getting real wine Versus really mass-produced wine made to a recipe And how much shall it be? Here, in the United States, you can buy recipe wine in the 20s And you can buy really nice, honest wine for well under $10 Look for things from the Languedoc, both red and white Because the Languedoc, which is in France, is an enormous vineyard Gallons and gallons and gallons of low priced wine But amongst them, some very interesting wines And some very authentic wines So that's where I would start looking for value and authenticity And then, as you grow into wine and you come to know wine And like wine! Don't force yourself to do this if you don't like it! But once you come to now and like wine Your mind will get to the point where it says to you, ‘If this is what I can get for $7, I wonder what I could get for $14’ And then for $40 and then for $100 And that's the way you grow into it And those very expensive wines, you need to have learned quite a lot They probably, not in every case, but in many cases, it would be wasted on you If you don't have the commensurate amount of knowledge to enjoy the wines Would you recommend some wine for the absolute beginners? It's easier to start with sweet wines Or off-dry wines Because generally, that is- a lot of people can enjoy those Then to move on to reds I'd start with something like a Cote du Rhone Inexpensive, but pretty good quality Permission to be geeky? So people vary genetically by how they perceive bitterness And so the tannins can be bitter And some people, genetically, are very sensitive to that bitterness And they do not like red wines White wine that doesn't have any oak, has a little sugar would be easier for them to taste and enjoy So to try to figure out what group that you're in Then there's a group of people who the compounds that cause bitterness in red wine doesn't cause bitterness for them I have a friend of mine who's a winemaker and a Master of Wine And if I have a young heavily extracted red wine I pucker up and say, "Whoa, I can't have any wine for another 10 or 15 minutes because that just wiped me out!" With him, he just tastes rich and velvety So try to figure out where you're wired and then work around that That explains about many things Because whenever we tasted together Pretty often, you tasted tens of Napa Valley Cab Then you just stopped for some time Yeah Alright And then what's also interesting is that they're things that inhibit bitterness Sweet wine has that sugar inhibits bitterness And we know that if you have tea If strong tea, some people, particularly the British add sugar to there tea Or people who add sugar to their coffee It's the same thing So the sweetness will inhibit the bitterness from the tannins in the tea or the coffee When I was in England for the first time that was a cultural shock Yeah, having tea with sugar in it And they got surprised, they got shocked because I didn't have sugar in my tea Then another trick that one can do And this is... Some of the purists, the wine purists would scoff at what I'm about to say Many of them say that drink the wine as the winemaker intended it to be drank Bullshit Yes, you know, I think many winemakers would be a little bit unhappy Maybe a bit shocked to see somebody add Coca-Cola to their wine But, you know, beauty's in the eye of the beholder And once somebody purchases the product, they can use it however as they wish But if somebody does find a red wine is a little too harsh too bitter for them One can take a little bit of sugar and put that in the wine to make it less bitter, less harsh Just like when it is too hot and if you have a warm white wine you can put just an ice cube and then... Exactly Enjoy it better Exactly I learned something from you What does a wine mean in your past, in your present, and in your future? The importance of a wine if your life Is that what you mean? Short answer, please Short answer? In the past, it was an abiding passion A drive to know more about what I consider to be the world's most civilized, and civilizing beverage I think it's important for me, this is not just civilized But 'civilizing' beverage Today, a day without wine is like a day without sunshine It's a beautiful day to work and to finish your day leisurely with a glass of wine With friends, family... We live in a golden age of wine I think what would hold wine back today is man A winemaker must be gentle A winemaker, the great winemakers of the world must understand their position in all of this thing as the policeman, rather than the creator This problem of having winemakers overestimate their importance I have seen more in the New World than in the Old World But when I get really, really mad I am sometimes driven to say, You know what the difference is between a New World winemaker and an Old World winemaker? Old World winemakers believe in god New World winemakers think they're god What are you going to do if all the New World winemakers sue you? Well, they won't sue me. I can say what I want It's more or less a free country, a free world But I'm not sure if you answered my question It was important then, it's important now, will continue to be so And I look forward to better things to come What can be a very good efficient wine purchase method Because a lot of people are suffering from too many choices in wine They don't know what to choose It takes a little bit of study to find out what types of wine you like And by that I mean, to taste unoaked white wines And then contrast that with oaked white wines And to see what style you prefer That narrows the focus down Similarly, when we're talking about red wines, then... play with that! There are all too many consumers that are purchasing wine purely based upon points, right? So unless your palate is similar to the person evaluating that wine for you You're not necessarily going to like it just because they liked it When the three of us taste the wine together You're getting three different opinions So figuring out what you like is the first step, right? Yeah It's much easier to learn about things that you like And if you have the kind of palate that bitterness from oak and extraction bothers you You're never really going to learn to like those wines Yeah, sometimes it's very embarrassing for me When somebody contacts me saying, "Please recommend some good wines! But I don't know what I like..." It's hard to recommend something to that kind of person Yeah Yeah, people use a lot of different methods to make wines taste better For example, bottle breathing, aerating using some aerators Decanting, swirling Well, first off, serving the wine at the right temperature goes a long way You don't want to serve red wines too warm Or white wines too cold Bernadette opened up a good bottle of Pinot Noir yesterday And it's been warm here It was just a bit warmer than it should be And it tasted okay We popped the bottle in the freezer for 15 minutes And boom, the fruit came out And the alcohol cut down, it became a really delicious wine It may be more important than managing with this aerating things Exactly So there's a number of different tricks The easiest one to start with is temperature It's temperature So please, our subscribers, don't get crazy to select different types of aerating tools Well, until we tell you what the best one is What was your most difficult experience as a Master of Wine in your life? I've had two people When I was presenting wine to them at tastings Who were really upset about the fact that I was a Master of Wine Why? One of them said, "We left England, and we got rid of you guys We threw your tea into the harbor And now you're trying to recolonize us by telling us that if we're not Master of Wines we don't know enough about wine Well, screw you!" And I hadn't said anything to him You know, and I had another guy I was busy tasting wine in his store We were tasting the 2003 Burgundies He is a Burgundy lover, the owner of the wine shop And he tasted a lot more 2003s than I had And as we were tasting I said, "You know, I don't care for these all that much They seem to be quite hot. They seem to be a little short And I think that this was, obviously, a very warm vintage." which it was So I think they're good wine, but not great So instead of saying, "Oh, well. That's your opinion I disagree with you" He said, "If you don't think these are some of the best Burgundies that you have never tasted Then you need to take that fancy qualification of yours And shove it where the sun don't shine!" It's completely unnecessary And most people who know wine will tell you that they agree with me All these years later That 2003 was a decent vintage But perhaps a little too warm And wines made in Burgundy were not great What did you say with the sun, dance, what? 'Shove your qualification where the sun don't shine!' Meaning, 'Shove it up your ass'! Is there still a goal to achieve for you? So what is the one motivator that continues to drive not just me but all human beings The possibility of self-actualizing to be the best you that you can be To be the very, very best version of yourself in a way that is obvious, not just to the people around you, But more importantly, in a way that makes you happy with yourself Where you are happy to say, "I've arrived" But you never do quite arrive Because you always think I've got something yet better in me I want other people, young people, to join me on this journey But you already have me in your journey That's true Do you need somebody else? I want everybody who comes along with us If you are going to get in wine, and wine can be expensive, If you are going to spend money on wine Let's get you drinking really special stuff Carefully chosen, carefully made At the highest level, the public doesn't always know what to want Because they think that the best they've had is the best they're ever going to have And they want to have that again Well, what if we could take them to a different level? So it's our job, in many ways, not to be marketers It's our job to market ourselves as the brand and say, "Trust me, this will advance your knowledge in wine And what you wanted this morning will be changed by having had this wine So that, by the time tonight comes and you've had this wine, you will want more!" So that's what I want I want to go on a continuous journey of knowledge, understanding and growth For me, and for all the people who choose to follow us I love the idea And I finally got to know the reason why I've always wanted more wine every night That's right So many bottles, so little time Could you show us a photo of you when you were much younger? Why would I have such a thing? I've always been this age! That doesn't necessarily sound good! I can't think of any photographs of me Sorry, Valerie? I've got plenty! Your wife said she got plenty! There is a little hope, Peter She still loves you Would you show a photo of you when you were younger? Sure, I will get that for you Is that the photo that I received yesterday? Yes, but then, I've got one even when I'm much younger that I found last morning also I see, so I'll show a nice photo of Patrick to you What is the wine for you? The one that's in my glass is the one for me If you can't be with the one you love Love the one you're with♪ Love the one you're with♪ Haven't you heard that song? No If you can't be the one you love Love the one you're with♪ Every now and again, you'll open a bottle of wine and you'll say, "That guy's heart and soul and commitment were in this bottle! And for this reason alone, it is something unique And this has made a special day for me" But I don't want to tell our subscribers that because I am more fund of that genre than that genre that this genre is somehow lesser and that they shouldn't drink it I want to be in the position where I help them to learn to trust their own palates And whatever genre works for them And if they are interested in acquiring wines like that of the genre I will provide them with the best of genre Even if it doesn't happen to be the wine I choose to drink that night So that's the reason why so many subscribers love you Don't you? Alright, thanks, Peter Okay Yeah, thanks for all the short answers (It took over 3 hours to record...) You would hate having an interview with me where I was as short as possible 'Peter, when did you fall in love with wine?' '1971' 'Anything more to say?' 'No' 'Do you prefer red or white wine?' 'White' 'Anything more to say?' 'No' 'What about bubbles?' 'Fine' You want that? No, no Thought so It's good The final question, what is the wine for you? The meaning of wine in your life? For me, wine has been friendship of sharing experiences and food with friends And then it's been a vehicle for me to travel thorough many different cultures To see different cultures through wine It's been a vehicle to travel and taste different cuisines And it's one of the few ways one can time travel Time travel? I've never thought about that That's what we're doing! Just the other night, we called you over And we had a 1998 Italian Merlot Uh-huh And then you reflect back, 'Well, what was I doing in 1998?' Uh-huh And in 1998, that was the year I passed the Master of Wine exam And I have wines from when my children were born I was in Tokai in Hungary And you went through the history of Eastern Europe Pretty astounding to be able to do that Sometimes you move my mind That's a wonderful finale comment, Patrick Thanks Thanks for watching~ Subscribe and push the like button Don't forget them Cheers
