Is this $500 Wine Any Good? Tasting Opus One

The cooler climate of Bordeaux and great terroirs that top chateaus have delivers that finesse and the balance that is really hard to match, and not quite matched perfectly here, I would say. But, what I really like about Opus One is how I think I might have made a mistake. Today, I spent $500 on a bottle of wine, so you don't have to. I want to find out if the cult California winery Opus One is really worth the hype, or if you should spend your $500 on something else. I'm Julien Miquel, Bordeaux-trained winemaker. I spent the past 25 years or so making and tasting fine wines all around the world, after making my debuts as a winemaker at Chateau Margaux, one of the top first-growers of Bordeaux, so I know a thing or two about top cult wines, especially the French ones, so I am very curious to find out if Opus One is better than top Bordeaux, for example, or if it's just over-hyped American stuff. Let's go and pour this little baby wine... Hello and welcome to your new Bonheur Private Wines video, where we learn about wine together, weekly. I want to give you my opinion on this wine, and describe it with some precision, give you my impressions, but I'd also like to hear your thoughts in the comments. If you've ever had a chance to taste Opus One, what do you think of it? Do you have the same opinion as me? Or even if you have never tried it, would you spend $500 to buy an Opus One? Let me know. But first, let me take a minute or two to refresh your memory on why Opus One has become a cult winery of California, and an iconic wine. Opus One is one of the world's most famous wines, among the most expensive produced in Napa Valley as well. The winery was initially established as a joint venture between two of the biggest names in Bordeaux and Napa Valley, Baron Philippe de Rothschild of Chateau Mouton-Rothschild, the illustrious first growth of Pauillac. You can by the way learn more about Pauillac and why it's so special in my dedicated video here. Baron Philippe de Rothschild partnered with Robert Mondavi, the biggest California producer at the time. Opus One was the first premium California wine to break into the European market and to be sold in Europe. It is one of the original cult Cabernets, like those of Harlan Estate or Screaming Eagle, etc. The idea of Opus One was conceived some 50 years ago, in the 1970s, and the first vintage was produced just a couple of months before I was born in 1979 and released in 1984. So the hype around Opus One has been going on for about 40 years. It's time to put an end to it, or not? Let's find out. Opus One's global reputation continued to expand substantially through the 1990s, and it survived the sale from Robert Mondavi to Constellation Brands, a big large global wine group in 2004. This is one of the most iconic New World wines, full stop. So, let's go and taste it. And this vintage 2018 is a 6 year old wine now. It looks really gorgeous, dark to the core, nice vibrant red to the rim, looking like a dark cherry, essentially, and it looks pretty young still. No signs of orange hues that would indicate that the wine has evolved and matured already. No signs of aging whatsoever. It looks super useful, which is to be expected. A 6 year old for such a wine is nothing. But let's sniff. Mmm. Yum, yum, yum. Ah, it smells so delicious. Two main things come to my mind when I smell this wine, before I describe what it smells like, all the aromas. First of all, when you smell a fine wine like this, you instantly know that you have something special. It just smells really, really subtle. Yeah, there's no huge explosion of aromas. It's very delicate, very soothing, calming in a way, because it's very soft aromas, discreet and delicate, and that's a big part of how you can tell the difference between an everyday wine that just explodes with tons of aromas, and fine wines. Secondly, this particular Opus 1 smells pretty oaky to me, especially at first, you really smell the oak barrel, the smoke, the toast, the wood smoke, the vanilla, the roasted hazelnut, the caramel is quite dominant. Then, when you agitate the wine thoroughly like this, then the fruit comes through, subtle aromas of Cassis or Black Currant, which is the signature of Cabernet Sauvignon. You've got some dark cherry as well, which is I think more from the Merlot. By the way, Opus 1 is what we call a Bordeaux blend, a blend of grapes originally from Bordeaux, but with certainly an emphasis on Cabernet Sauvignon, 84% for this particular vintage, and then 4-5% of each Petit Verdot, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc, with a 1% Marbec. Not sure what that does, but it's there. It's aged for 17 months in new oak barrels, 100% new, which is probably why it smells so oaky. So the smell is really excellent, very refined, oaky and dark, plenty of dark chocolate as well, and coffee, which I love. Beautiful! But let's taste. Oh wow! It's good! It's very good. This is an extremely mellowed wine. It's extremely soft on the palate. It's essentially like silk, very smooth, so the texture is really creamy, with a nice oily body, and this makes it extremely palatable. Now, flavor-wise, it's pretty potent, however. Big burst of cassis flavors, underlined by a nice acidity. It's a little warming, comforting, I would say, from the alcohol, and you get a big explosion of berry flavors, augmented by a wealth of oaky note as well. Very marked by oak at this point, not so well integrated, I would say, but oak is a bit of a trademark of American wine, oakier generally than most French wines, which is probably why I notice it quite a bit, personally. But the density of the wine is good, quite solid, but not hugely concentrated. It's not that chewy, it just feels nice, explosive, but super soft. So overall, this to me is a 96 out of 100 points. It's up there above the 95 points, which is where you get into the super high end, but it's not approaching the 100 points. The overall density is not that extreme, or at that 100 point level, or 98, no. Would I buy this over a similarly priced Bordeaux wine is the question. Let me tell you why not, and why, maybe under some circumstances, I would. I think in Bordeaux, with a $500 wine, you'd really get something quite exceptional. You'd get a top classified Chateaus from Pauillac or Margaux, or an extremely good Saint-Emilion or Pomerol, which to me would be denser wines, more serious wines as well, probably with a bit of a longer aging potential too. So really, collector wines you would get from Bordeaux, which to me would be a bit more interesting to taste, with a bit of a greater nuance and complexity of flavors, a little finer tannins as well, and more harmonious overall, I would say. The cooler climate of Bordeaux and great terroirs that top Chateaus have delivers that finesse and the balance that is really hard to match, and not quite matched perfectly here, I would say. But, what I really like about Opus 1 is how approachable it is, how a vintage 2018 is already extremely satisfying to taste. It's fruity, it's oaky, it's chocolatey, it's smoky, it's swarming, it's comforting, it's smooth. So it tastes like pure pleasure. The fact that it's not overly complicated makes it more easy, in fact, to enjoy very simply without having to think too hard, which in itself is a huge merit. So if you're in a restaurant and you just want something very fine and pleasing, but not complicated, just to appreciate simply some fruit and oak, well, this is what it is, and it's probably more enjoyable than a Bordeaux wine in that regard. Less complex, but also less complicated, and there's pros and cons to that. In any case, given its explosive finesse, and given this is a wine that would easily age for another 15 years and still be exceptionally good, I'd say it is certainly worth the $500 price tag, if any wine is worth that. That was it for me today. Like the video to support if you enjoyed it, subscribe to continue learning more with us. Here are a few videos that I suggest you watch next. And I will see you soon in the wonderful world of wine. Cheers!