Sommelier Tries a $1,500 Bottle of Red Wine | World Of Wine | Bon Appétit

Wow, you know, it's so funny. That is a dumb question, Dan. It is not a dumb question because that's what most people would say. Does it taste like an expensive wine? As my mama used to say, you eat ---- long enough, it tastes good. Sorry, cut that. Don't put that in the air. I'm just kidding. Hey, I'm Samuel A. Andre Houston Mack, and today I'm tasting a $1,500 bottle of wine. There's lots of time and effort that go into this bottle that brings it to this price, but is it worth it? We're about to find out. In a past life, many of these bottles were opened by me or members of the staff. It was a sommelier at Per Se, restaurant here in New York, and before that at the French Laundry. Generally speaking, whatever retail is, you double it, and that's what it is in the restaurant. So this bottle of wine could be $3,000-plus in a restaurant. We paid $1,550 for this particular bottle at retail. That's a lot of money, right? Like, if you have a roommate, that might be your portion of the rent. I think for some people, you know, it just doesn't make sense. Well, just right off the bat, like, there are definitely signs of quality. First, I'm gonna take a look at the label and point out some more details that represent what we're drinking. So this is Harlan Estate, 2017, Napa Valley. This is their proprietary blend, so this is their red wine blend made from Bordeaux Varietals. You know, so looking at the bottle, just straight up, there's no real signs that say that it's a premium bottle of wine. Most of the time, you wouldn't be able to encounter it in a wine store that would have it and be able to touch it, right? Like, it's locked behind glass. Like, those are the things that would probably tell you that it's special. I think when they're talking about, on succession, how everybody's wearing no logos, right? This is simply about the wine that's inside of it and about it being an ultimate luxury good, to say the least. It has, like, this pinpoint drawing. The illustration on the front is actually the same illustrator who does the illustrations on currency, on money. So you'd have to think that that would make this wine expensive, right? It would definitely make it rare in that way. Those seem to be all added things. So when we talk about why it would be expensive or why it would be special, you know, packaging is one of them. One key thing that you have here, the bottles are numbered. That's starting to hint at you, like, okay, hold on, this is not an everyday bottle from Napa Valley. This is like a security code. This is the authenticity of this particular bottle. People really don't counterfeit $1 bills, right? You know, they counterfeit one, the most expensive, the $100 bill. And so when you start to look at something like this, you start to say, well, this wine has some pedigree. It must be rare enough that it has these security codes on it. Even on the back, it, you know, doesn't give you much, doesn't even give you the breakdown of the grapes. It just says Napa Valley red wine. It's a combination of different grapes. You know, if it said Cabernet, it would have to be at least 75% Cabernet or any type of grape that was listed on there. You don't know anything about this bottle of wine. You're just looking at it and you're trying to say, why does it cost that much? But you have to peel back layers of the onion, you know, do some research to understand. So it's a state grown and bottled at Harlan Estates and it says Oakville, California. You have to know a little bit about Harlan Estates to understand why it is special. You know, Harlan is an estate that was founded back in 1984 by Bill Harlan. It's about 240 acres, pretty large, but only 40 acres of it is planted to vines. 40 is very small. So, I mean, how that impacts is that you're not making a lot of wine and that's how you, you know, you get quality fruit. They're trying to make the best wine that they can make from the fruit that they have. It all sits in the Oakville region of Napa Valley and wine is much like real estate. It's about location, location, location. The fact that this wine is not only just in California, more specifically, it's in a place called Napa Valley, more specifically, it's in a place called Oakville where all of this is estate grown. You can have your own vineyards that are on the estate that's considered estate grown, that you basically grow the grapes, harvest the grapes and make the wine. So if you're not growing the fruit, then you're at the whims of someone else's, you know, the way that they pick or the way that they want to farm. Estate grown fruit basically translates to quality in a lot of cases. All of the fruit is controlled by the Chateau, by the winery. One hand gets to touch it and that's a sign of quality. You know, Napa Valley was discovered as being like this great wine region for growing grapes here in America due to microclimate soil. When it's a coveted place, prices for land are expensive. It could be a million dollars per acre. And then, you know, it's somewhere between 35 to 45,000 an acre to farm. Generally, you don't make wine to what they call on the third or fourth leaf. And then it might spend, you know, 18 months to 24 months in oak. So you're looking at five or six years before you even produce any type of bottle for a consumer. That definitely has an impact on the price of the bottle. And we haven't even talked about the cost of oak barrels and all the other special things that different wineries do to produce great wine, but it definitely has an impact on the price. So the next thing I want to talk about on the bottle is the vintage, 2017. So vintage is when the wine was harvested. According to California law, it doesn't have to be 100%, but lots of times it's 100%. In 2017, these grapes were harvested and made into wine. Generally speaking, you don't know when it was bottled. What's more important is when it was harvested. Older could be better to a certain extent, but in wine, generally speaking, great vintages command a certain price. We have great fruit that comes in, great growing conditions that allow for the wines to not only taste great, but also have longevity. Bad vintages have a lot to do with the weather patterns where, you know, maybe there's too much rain, there was a frost, there was hail. There were all these things that happened that could affect the vintage, and 2017 was a good vintage. I wouldn't say that it was a great vintage, but in great years, you can buy from everybody. In bad vintages, you still can continue to buy the blue chips because they consistently have always made great wine no matter what was happening. Something like Harlan Estate is considered a blue chip. They had this, you know, iconic status as being some of the best wines made in America. They made some of the greatest wine in 2017. You know, what's interesting, as global warming is a real thing, you know, growing conditions change. With the fires, you know, becoming more prevalent in California, even in Oregon, it makes it really hard to have great vintages. You know, Mother Nature is changing, and it's really hard to kind of make great vintages when there's a lot of stuff going on like that. All right, I think I'm ready to open it up and taste it. How about you guys? You know, I think the price point and the rarity of this wine could spook quite a few people, but you know what? I would open this the regular way I would open anything else. I've had the same approach because I've worked in restaurants, and maybe the advice I'm giving you is because I worked in restaurants. It's so funny, because I say that, and then watch, I break the cork in this thing. All right, you just got to go in and into it and just be brave with it. Let's get in here. You don't need a really expensive opener, and I find something with a lever here tends to work best. So let's see here, we get it in there. And you want to go slow or pull up. All right, we got some there. This is normally where it breaks. I should probably stop talking to you guys. Last bit. At this point, I just kind of pull and twist. Yep, so pretty clean. We're going to double check the vintage. Some of them don't have vintages on it, but check the markings on the cork. So it says Harlan Estate, it says 2017. 2017 matches the vintage that's on the front, and we might be good to go. It passed the first nose check. Normally I'd open it and just kind of stick my nose over it. I would want to decant this wine. So I want to want this wine to breathe. So decanting it, aeration, what we're really talking about is introducing oxygen into the wine, and that kind of really helps slowly kind of break it down, break down some of the tannins. But also I feel like it might have some sediment in it. And that's when just like as the wine starts to age, pigment and particles kind of fall to the bottom of the wine. It's not harmful, it's just a better wine drinking experience if you don't have like these little sea monkeys floating around in your wine. So we'll go ahead and grab a decanter. And because this is not that old, I feel like what's best decanter here is something with a wide surface to area range. So you look at like something like this that almost has a disc. This is kind of perfect. So normally what I would do is use something as my base. This is not technically old school. So I'm going to turn on the light in my phone. So I want to take it. And once you start decanting, you don't want to stop because you want to stop going back and forth and you kind of like mixing up the sediment in the wine. We want to grab the decanter. I want to put my thumb on the side here. I don't want to rest glass to glass. That's how it chips. But basically what we want to do is we want to take the bottle of wine, rest it on my thumb, and I want to start pouring. And basically I'm illuminating just right after the neck. And I can see when the sediment starts to come. And when it starts to come, I want to pour slower and trap it in the shoulder of the neck. And my hand is getting really tired because this is an awkward pose and I don't want to drop this. All right. Smells great. Just kind of stir it a little bit here just to kind of introduce a little bit more air. Smells great. Don't smell any corkiness, any wet newspaper or cardboard or anything like that. But the true test would be to taste it. How should you drink a wine like this? You know, I think where it matters is glassware. I think glassware is important. You want to have the thinnest possible lip to it if you can. But if you don't, you still want to have a wine glass. And I think you work your way back to the best option you have. And I've seen, you know, riding on a bus, like in wine communities, going to one venue to the next and drinking it from the bottle. Like the idea of just being able to enjoy it, I think is what it really comes down to. If you want to drink it out of a paper cup, then you drink it out of a paper cup. Lots of iron ore, red currant. This is actually really beautiful. On the nose when you smell it, you know, it doesn't smell like jammy or like over the top fruit, but it has this fruit element to it that's just like intriguing and alluring. But also when you taste it on the palate, it's not like that. You still get the same elements, but like it smells like it could be overwhelming and thick and luscious. It's not, it's really kind of really refined. You know, it's graphite, right? It reminds me of like shaving my pencil, like in second grade. You know, a lot of that comes from the minerality in the soil. Wow, this also has smells faintly, you know, this like mint or eucalyptus. There's a herbaceousness to it that's not overwhelming. I don't think that you have to try a lot of quality wine to know the difference. I think you taste it and you can automatically see the different levels of quality in it. You know, I think the biggest difference that jumps out to me is that like, it tastes like real wine. And I know that might even seem elitist and like feel like, well, what is real wine? You know, a lot of wines in a certain price point, definitely 15 and under. There's so much other things added to it that it doesn't taste like a real product. It's like different things added for color and flavoring and all those kinds of things. This tastes real. You know, it tastes like real branches. It just has like this natural realness to it where the other thing feels like it's man-made in a way. When I talk about this wine being balanced, you know, what we're really talking about is there's not an element of it that sticks out like a sore thumb. It's not overalcoholic. It's not too ripe and fruity. There's not acid as elements. It's not sharp in that way. It's not overly oaked. All of these things feel really complete and feel like they're working together, which to me produces, you know, what we talk about being a balanced wine. If we talk about like, you know, terroir, does it shine through in this wine? I believe that it does, right? It does have some of the hallmarks when you think about Oakville, when you're talking about iron ore, you can taste that in the wine. I think for a lot of people, the hump to get over is the price. They were like, well, nothing could taste that good. There's lots of different factors on why this wine costs so much, but the idea is being able to taste them for yourself and understanding that, you know, so would I say it's worth it? I would say yes, but I generally don't spend this kind of money on wine. Actually, I don't spend this kind of money on wine, actually. Does it taste like an expensive wine? I want to be very careful of the way that I answer that. Like, it does, it actually does, right? I'm sure there's a lot of people out there, blah, blah, blah, blah, but like, but it does. It tasted like somebody really cared about it. And you know, it gets dangerous at this price point. You can see why people and those kinds of restaurants are nervous. I think, to be honest with you, only you get to decide what you like. If you're looking for, you know, a bottle of wine of this stature or this type, considering that like, if you have the means and the desire to buy a wine like this, it can be purchased. Go to your local wine shop. The second place and probably maybe the best place to get to a wine shop is to look online. There are some pitfalls in that thing. You know, in the wine industry, we talk about provenance, like where did this bottle come from? Who bought it? Where it was stored? All those things matter. If you had a rare bottle of wine and it was stored on top of somebody's refrigerator for eight years, that's probably not good. You want to make sure that the wine came from a reputable place and was treated well. And I think that also kind of removes you somewhat from the counterfeit market. The wine industry is coming, you know, a lot closer in understanding, you know, having counterfeit proof measures that are put on from chips in the cork to holograms. I think it's more important to buy from reputable places, you know, people who have a reputation for selling, you know, rare wine. That eliminates, you know, a lot of the risk. There is a reason why this wine is considered one of the best wines made in America and included in one of the best wines in the world. You know, my relationship with wine is all exploratory. For me, it's not to find a favorite that I want to drink for the rest of my life. That feels kind of boring. Now, maybe drinking to find the wine that I want to drink the last 48 hours of my life, like that might be different. Taste as many wines as you can, whether they're expensive or not. I don't play in that realm of buying these kinds of wines. It's just not my thing, but I do get to taste them a lot. I feel like because I don't pay for them, you can really discern whether or not it's worth it. Right? You know what I mean? It's like, you watch the bootleg copy, you're like, I wouldn't pay $14 for that movie anyway. Right? You know what I mean? It was like, that was crap.