A Big, Delicious RED WINE that WON'T BREAK THE BANK?! - $15 FRIDAY, Aussie Edition. SV VLOG, ep.40

Hey guys, happy Friday! It is, once again, $15 Friday and I hope you guys have all been enjoying some of the Hong Kong videos I've been releasing. We are in the Australia state of mind, I figured I would keep it in Aussie land for this week. So today we're going to be doing the Yolumba family, Shiraz Mionye. If you're looking at that and going, wait a minute, I know Shiraz, I know Mionye, they're not the same colored grapes. You're right, they're not the same colored grapes. They are different colored grapes and they are co-fermented and blended together, which is actually a very common thing to do if you're not familiar. In the Northern Rhone, in Côte-Rotie, it's a very, very common practice to blend a little bit of Mionye into the Syrah there. It makes it a little bit fresher, a little bit livelier, and it also adds a little bit more of a floral element to brighten up that really dark, roasted, gaming-y quality of the wine. So the Aussies are following suit. They're doing the same thing and they're blending 95% Shiraz and 5% Mionye. And of course, this is only $15.99 on Wine.com, so keeping it nice and economical, nice and budget-friendly. Because I know a lot of you out there are not into spending a ton of money on wine, which I totally get. I've been there back before I was a sommelier. Even in my early days of being a sommelier, $15 was a lot of money to spend in a bottle of wine. Eventually, I got to a point where it felt more comfortable, but I do think it takes time. Whether you need to start with a $5 bottle of wine and move up to $10, $10 to $15, $15 to $20, there's steps that people really need to take to feel comfortable with before they start diving into those $50, $60, $100 bottles of wine. And I totally get that. So let's start small. I think the fundamentals of wine, you have to start at the beginning, and this is my way of doing it. So we're starting today with this $15.99 bottle of Shiraz Mionye. So if you're looking at this bottle and you're noticing this little screw top on here, don't be fooled by the screw top. Just because it's a screw top, like I've always said, does not mean it's a cheap wine. Though this is a little bit less expensive than some of the other wines that we've done before. But the Australians, as I've pointed out before, they're on the forefront of technology. They really believe in screw top. They think it's great. I think it's great too. Especially if you are someone that's newer to the game, having a screw top is a really great way to ensure quality of a bottle of wine. It means the wine's not going to be corked. It means you're not trying to pull a cork out of the wine and potentially have it contaminated by TCA. So I love the idea of having a screw top wine, especially if you're a beginner and you want to eliminate that one little corked variable, screw top's always a great way to go. Just sort of ensures freshness and it means maybe the winery is a little bit more technologically savvy. So we're going to open this bottle. This is Yolumba and this is from the Eden Valley in Australia. The Australians are known for doing a lot of Rhone varietals. They do a lot of GSM, so Grenache, Syrah, Morfet, and then of course they do a little bit more of that Northern Rhone thing too with the Shiraz and Guillaume. Actually before we get into this, I do want to break something down because I think this is something that tricks people up a lot and I want to break down the label of this bottle before we go any further. So let's take a look at this label. On the front we've got Yolumba and that's the family. That's the brand of wine. That's the umbrella that everything sort of falls underneath of. So you've got Yolumba. Underneath of that you've got the triangle block. That's the specific vineyard that this wine is coming from. It's the triangle block vineyard. Below that you've got Eden Valley. That's the region in South Australia that this is coming from. So you're basically going from Yolumba family, Eden Valley, triangle block vineyard, and then the two varietals that I talked about, the Shiraz and the Viognier. Now every wine label is going to be different, but I just thought I would start by pointing that out because I think some people look at this label, they don't recognize anything on it, and they don't know what any of it means. It's just basically a different language. And I think that was one of the hardest things for me to learn when I was starting to learn about wine was understanding how to read a label because every label is different. It doesn't matter if it's from North America, South America, France, Italy, Chile, South Australia, anywhere, they all will be a little bit different. So I just wanted to go through that. Anyway, let's move on to the tasting portion of this $15 Friday video. I am such a sucker for Shiraz Viognier blend. I love Cote Rotis, and this smells really kind of dark and plummy, cherry, but it has a bit of a floral element to it, so it's very pretty. It's really ripe and generous, but it's very pretty underneath as well. This is great for somebody who loves more of that California style. You like a little bit more richness, a little bit more ripeness. You are somebody that likes meats that have like a blackberry sauce on it. This is going to be right up your alley. The fruit is really intense, but there's also sort of a saltiness to it, and there's a lot of richness. The alcohol is integrated. It's definitely there. So this is a wine that you like more rich style wines. If you like big wines, you like them to have lots of body. This is a great wine. Now the tannic structure on this, meaning the thing that like dries out your mouth and makes it kind of rough and a little bit, gives it a little bit more structure. The tannic structure is actually a little bit softer. So it's got more of that soft, velvety, kind of rounded out quality to it. It's not going to feel like your mouth is getting sucked dry. So it makes it for a very palatable wine if you're drinking it just on a Wednesday night, you're watching your favorite show, you're watching The Voice or This Is Us, you're just trying to sit down with a nice glass of wine. This is a great wine for that. Is it a wine that I would necessarily pair with like a huge dinner? Probably not. It doesn't really have the tannic structure to support a big hearty roasted dinner, but you could certainly enjoy it. It's a little bit more dark. There's a little bit more of that like anise, black licorice, definitely more on the savory side of things, but the fruit is there. The Vionier is coming through. It's not super, super strong. It's not super florally. It's not crazy perfumed like Vionier sometimes is, but it definitely gives this wine a little bit of a lift. If you are someone that typically loves Syrahs or Shiraz, fruitier style wines like Rinoche, this is a really great step in the right direction, and for $15.99, I think it's quite the steal. I hope you guys enjoyed this $15 Friday. We're also heading out of town next week. We're doing a little Palm Springs, Newport Beach adventure, so if you have been dying to see what it's like down there just like I have, I've never been before, make sure you tune in for that. Thank you all for watching. I hope to see you again very, very soon, and until then, make sure you're liking this video and you hit subscribe. See you all soon.