Sommelier Compares Cheap vs Expensive Wines ($18-$300) | World of Wine | Bon Appétit

these are two bottles of cabernet sauvignon this one costs eighteen dollars this one costs three hundred dollars and if you ever wondered why i'm going to explain that to you today hey i'm sorry andre houston mack and today i have four different types of cabernet sauvignon ranging in price from 18 all the way to 300 and i'm gonna break it down to tell you why they cost what they do let's face it wine can be an expensive hobby right um and constantly i think it's one of the things that we buy that we're really kind of budget conscious of today i have four different bottles of cabernet sauvignon we have one for 18 59 135 dollars and also 300 there's several different factors on why wine is priced the way that it is it could be region it could be the grapes that they use it could be packaging it could be glass but i'm going to break that down for you today so the first factor is region so cabernet sauvignon is the king of grape varietals and it does really well in california and flourishes because of the weather and the climate all these wines are from california and what you notice as we go from least expensive to the most expensive there's more detail on the label about where these wines come from the more detailed you get the more essence of the place of which it came from you would get the french actually call this terroir terroir it's interesting there's no direct translation in english but it means pretty much sense of place you're going to pay more money for the grapes in that specific vineyard to get that taste of that microclimate from where the grapes are grown so we're going to go ahead and open these now we're going to start with the california wine the 18 wine and then kind of move our way up if you look at the back label that's generally where you'll find that information but here yourself so it just says california so cabernet is actually the offspring of cabernet franc and sauvignon blanc so you get like some of this freshness from like sauvignon blanc cabernet franc has a little bit of greenness to it as well really good red berries low current a little bit of red fruit a little bit of black fruit there is a little bit of vanilla a hint of vanilla i would distribute that to maybe the oak that's pretty good this is actually a really great and well made california wine i think what we don't get here is some of the nuances and the more detailed notes that you would get as we start to move further in and get more specific about the location that the wine comes from so now we're moving on to napa valley and now you're paying for napa valley fruit napa valley wine which is more specific than cassette california there's a price attached to napa valley so napa valley is one of the most famous and renowned wine regions in the world not just here in america what makes it really special is its microclimates and its different types of soil so before we talked about the previous wine herbs here you also get herbs but more specifically you get rosemary um you get a little bit of sage you get more you know lavender cassis is a big one a little bit of you know i smell a little lead this really kind of helps explain the price you're paying for napa valley fruit you're paying for these total nuances that you get that you don't really pick up and something that maybe is for eighteen dollars so our next line up is my ecommerce vineyard this is 135 dollars this is also from california also from napa valley but more specifically from mount veda oh man so like i mean here you get like it's just really intense current you know here there's definitely graphite or lead but like you know more like pencil shavings it reminds me of going up to sharpen my pencil as a kid that's pretty amazing the cool part about all of this is that as we started to get more detailed about where the wines come from and we kind of went up in price the wines have become really more expressive right so i think when we started with the first wine it was just like red and black fruit it was herbs and as we started to progress it becomes more apparent and more detailed rosemary sage graphite pencil currant cassis and that's really what you get as you start to get more of a sense of place in the wine so this is diamond creek winery this is from red rock terrace this is cabernet sauvignon and this costs 300 i know 300 bucks we're going to open this up and we're going to taste this so this is cabernet sauvignon from california also napa valley also from a specific ava called diamond mountain and then also from a specific vineyard located in that ava called red rock terrace just to kind of give you a scope of what's happening here the first line we tasted was from all over california it could be from anywhere in california and now we've kind of narrowed it all the way down to just seven acres and so when you think about from eighteen dollars all the way to three hundred dollars that's what you're paying for for lack of a better term it smells polished it's so funny like i may get killed for that that's not a real wine turn but that's kind of the way that i explain it uh this smells like cabernet it has all of those notes cassis uh there's a little bit of cinnamon there is a little bit of manure you know how i like my manure yeah vanilla tobacco truffle damp earth like wet dirt you know it talks about the microclimate of just these seven acres that you won't get anywhere else in the world the largest jump was from wine number three at 135 dollars to 300 and why is that we went just from a single ava to a single vineyard but the whole idea behind that is this it's about soil and it's about a sense of place you can really tell it in europe when you walk to the vineyards in burgundy you know you walk to one place and you can see where the soil change and you step on that line and that's considered one of the most premium areas which they call a grand cru vineyard and this here is called a premier crew so it's really that close it could be that close and it can jump in price extremely next time you're in a wine shop you know look at the details on the label the more specific about that particular wine is probably what you're paying for so factor number two is restoring an aging so there's a couple of different types of aging there's the aging where you age it in an oak fat or oak barrel and then there's also aging it in a bottle generally the barrel comes first and then it's put into bottle and then that's where the storing part comes so oak does several different things it imparts flavor it also helps set the color during the wine making process and it also imparts tannin wood tannin into the wine to give the wine longevity is oak and that aging discernible only palette yes it is i mean if we look at something like this when we talked about before more nuanced right so i started to smell you know i smell cedar right i smell a little bit of vanilla you know those things come from brand new french oak and if we look at like something like sidekick not to like pick on sidekick but but like something here there is a woody element to it but it's not expressive of like the way that ocus is present here this is more concentrated jumps out the glass it screams i've spent some time in oak where here it's a little bit more subtle you know something like diamond creek at 300 a bottle is aged for 12 months so one year and 100 brand new french oak barrels so each year they're buying barrels to make this particular wine and this is reflected in the price because we're talking about brand new barrels you know at 1200 a pop here every single year so once you toast the barrel and actually use it from one year they basically lose half their value as we move on to my commas what's interesting about this winery is that they don't use any brand new oak at all there's no barrel cost here they bought the barrels once and they've been using them i believe some of the barrels might be you know 50 60 70 years old it's a combination of barrel and large wooden fat so this wine actually spends 32 months in barrel before it's even bottled and released to the consumer also i believe that it spends another 12 months in bottle before its release so you're talking about almost four years that you don't see any return on this wine and then so something like steady state here they're using 40 of the wine is aged in oak brand new french oak barrels and the rest is done in neutral barrel so it's a little bit more cost effective than say something like using 100 brand new french oak like they do at diamond creek now we're going to move on to tenure costs i guess the easiest place to start would be land costs vineyards required land where the grapes are grown and that is a huge cost if we're starting at a million dollars here per acre for our 59 bottle of wine as we start to progress and get to our 300 bottle of wine the costs just go up napa valley is the premier growing region in the united states that's why you're paying a million dollars that's just for the raw land generally it costs anywhere from thirty five thousand dollars to forty two thousand dollars to put a vineyard on that raw land so if you look at something like this that's seven acres so that's seven times thirty five thousand that's the plant the vineyard if it's seven acres it's seven million dollars if not more and so all of those inherent costs of the land are passed on to you the consumer if you look at orbital wines the lands and the vineyards have already been paid for 10 times over they've owned that property or that land for over 400 years so that's not really passed on to the consumer if you you know bought a wine a 50 bottle of wine from the united states and a 50 bottle of wine from france and kind of felt like wow you've got more value for your money out of the european wine inherent land cost is probably one of those factors in that most vineyards don't produce any fruit that you can actually make into wine into what we call third or fourth leaf so that's three or four years that you have to wait but you can't make any wine and yet you don't get any profit from so now that we're on our third or fourth leaf now it's time to harvest the fruit so we can make wine if you use a machine generally you're using it to harvest a large vineyard right and so it's definitely economical that way and costs less money if you're hand harvesting it's in areas that you really can't get into you know hillsides all of those different kinds of things you get a better selection but it takes a team of people which is more labor intensive and that is also passed on to you the consumer so another factor when you plant and harvest your vineyard is how many tons per acre are you going to produce so if you produce a lot of tons per acre 7 8 9 10 you're going to get more fruit but less quality fruit with less concentration not a lot of nuance if you're doing one and a half acre you're going to get a better developed wine with also a lot more flavor and depth definitely if we're looking at california cabernet you know under 20 generally it's probably harvested a pretty large ton per acre one and a half is kind of the standard when you're looking at like some of the top vineyards that you're going to pay the price for so we're going to move on to vintage vintage is just the year that the grapes were harvested there's non-vintage wines but this these are vintage wines so these are vintage dated we've kind of already moved the step up these are vintage stated wines which is a sign of quality a good vintage simply means that they were the prime growing conditions to produce ripe fruit to make great wine we're up against mother nature and it's constantly throwing curve balls at you weather rain i think one year that we had a harvest in 2010 we actually referred to that as the albert hitchcock vintage 30 of the crop was lost through the birds coming in and eating a lot of the fruit you know and vintage is important but i think for your everyday drinking wines that becomes less important you know so if you're looking at something like these two wines here you're going to consume these wines have fun with them as we start to move up in price point we look at you know these couple of wines here a lot of people use these as investments they're going to appreciate in value if you're really into wine and collecting mine then vintage matters right and especially as you start to make more money a lot of the more details are the same thing the nuances in detail you pay more attention to when you start to spend a lot more money 2018 is considered a good vintage in california when we talk about a good vintage is not only the growing conditions it's also about longevity perfect growing conditions for some places like california means that we're going to make these long-lived wines that actually don't start giving until 20 or 30 years after they've been made especially when you're starting to listen to wine critics at an everyday drinking level it's more about pleasure and consuming those wines and you need to pay less attention to vintage i always have a rule of thumb and great vintages you want to buy from everybody because it was hard to make bad wine that year and bad vintages you want to buy from the best because they show a track record of making great wine consistently throughout the years how do you know if it's a good vintage or not by reading periodicals and what other people say talk into the winery and those things you can figure out whether it's a good year or not at a certain price point every year is the best year to drink to wine so now we're gonna move on to marketing and packaging so we're actually gonna look at the raw materials so glass foil labels and all those things and the designs and stuff like that i would have to say that this is probably not a major factor on the pricing as we're kind of looking at like all the marketing for these four bottles here you know there's a vast difference in price but from looking at everything collectively there's not a vast difference in the amount that was spent on packaging the consumer would never know but the idea from a winery side if you're spending more than eight dollars on packaging that's considered expensive so that would encompass everything the glass is probably your major cost here we truly live in a day and age now where you can't really judge a wine by its label you know they have really great labels and fun labels and kitschy labels that actually really have great wine inside i think a lot of times when we use that term marketing we feel like we're being duped or tricked everything that you do is marketing even if you're anti-marketing as we look at something like this you know this could be the 300 bottle line and the day and age that we live in now i think you know maybe 20 years ago this would just be unheard of and most people would bypass that and look at something a little bit more serious but those days are over you know there's a lot of great wine and interesting packaging so the last factor we're going to talk about is reputation which i think for most people doesn't really come to mind but it definitely plays a role in the price you look at some of these higher end wines you know my comments at 135 diamond creek you know they've been making wine for years they've kind of set the standard for american wine making they are at the very tip top of what the best we have to offer from the united states you know what you're going to get you know what type of quality you're going to get and thus that's incorporated in the price as well versus some of the newer guys starting out they can't demand the same kind of prices even if they were doing the same quality of stuff because there's not that reputation there so they're still developing trusts whereas here they have over 50 years experience if not more of making some of the great wines in america here you can go right on their website these are allocated you sign up for the mailing list and they assign how much wine they want to sell you so no matter what kind of vintage it is a lot of people are still lined up and they still want to buy these wines based upon that trust and reputation yeah so if we're looking at these four particular wines i think the biggest factors if i was going to rate them would be region that's a big one vineyard then we'd move on to aging and barrel storage and then from there reputation and then marketing i'm sure there's cynics out there people out there to say oh this is 18 and this is 300 and you know the reason why that is that is because it's it's marketing that's just not the case in this particular instance uh there's definitely things that they do that make this cost more there's a reason why these wines are priced the way that they are and the biggest factor in that is that you can taste the difference it's crystal clear that the wines are made differently they taste differently and what it takes to make this wine versus to make this wine is definitely reflected in the price you

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Keywords: andre hueston mack, andre mack, ba andre mack, bon appetit, bon appetit world of wine, cabernet sauvignon, cabernet sauvignon price, cabernet sauvignon region, cabernet sauvignon taste test, cabernet sauvignon tasting, expensive red wine, expensive wine, food, red wine taste test, red wine tasting, sommelier andre mack, what makes wine cheap, what makes wine expensive, why is wine cheap, why is wine expensive, wine tasting, world of wine

Id: fd7DE0TLLMg

Length: 14min 33sec (873 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 15 2022