Sommelier BRUTALLY Exposes 7 Bordeaux Wines ROBBING You Blind (And 7 Worth The Money

Seven villainous Bordeaux wines are robbing you blind. Seven are worth every dollar. And there's a 15th bottle of $50 mystery wine I reveal at the very end of this video that outdrinks almost everything I'm about to name. I'm John Aulis, I'm a certified sommelier, and here's my criteria. I'm not hunting for cheap wine. I'm hunting for the gap between the price tag and what's actually in the bottle. And in Bordeaux, that gap comes with a criminal record. Literally, stick around for villain number one as we count them down. There was actually a criminal trial, a conviction, and jail time for committing a wine crime in Bordeaux. Number seven, Mouton Cadet. The label says Rothschild, and your brain hears one of the greatest first growth estates on planet Earth. Your wallet hears it too. That's the trick to get you to open it so they can empty it. Here's what it really is. 12 million bottles a year of basic Negotiant blend sourced from hundreds of partner great growers across 1,500 plus hectares of vineyards throughout Bordeaux. It's not a single estate, or a chateau, or a second, or a third wine from Mouton Rothschild. It's just labeled to make you think it is. It ain't terrible for the price, but it's closer to Ernest and Giulio Gallo than it is to any classified Bordeaux. Crazy Eddie would be proud. The prices are insane. So are Amon and Golden Chablis. Okay, if you think a fake chateau name is bad, wait until you meet a chateau that doesn't even exist. Number six, Baron de L'Estaque. Sounds aristocratic, right? A baron, a misty estate, a dog named Napoleon, except there is no baron. What's this? L'Estaque, not to be confused with the vampire L'Estaque, is an anagram of Castel, as in Castel Ferrer, one of the biggest wine corporations in France. They invaded a fake nobleman, built the largest barrel warehouse in Europe, and scaled this thing to award 15 million bottles a year. That's not a chateau. That's a beverage factory with a monocle, and this guy ain't the man in the Hathaway shirt, nor is he the most interesting man in the world. Again, the wine isn't terrible at the price, but royalty it ain't, and implied royalty is what's on the label. A made-up baron is one thing, and it's not even original. Hey, the man in the Hathaway shirt was first. Barring a real famous name, that's next. Number five, Michel Lynch. Now, this one's sneaky because it's made by the Cazes family, who generally own Chateau Lynch Bag, classified Pouillet growth wine lovers whisper about, so it's a real name with real history, but here's the truth. The name that sits on the shelf doing an impression of a $200 wine while holding $15 juice. Even Decanter has flagged brands like this for confusing consumers into thinking they're buying a piece of the famous chateau based on the label. You notice a pattern? You're not buying Lynch Bag's little brother. You're buying Lynch Bag's second cousin who shows up for Thanksgiving dinner and tries to borrow money. Serviceable wine, but villainous shelf placement and labeling, another example of using a famous name to sell a totally unrelated wine. Crazy Eddie is going crazy with pride. So far, these villains rob you for 15 bucks, the wine equivalent of stealing your milk money in elementary school. The next one changed how all of Bordeaux tastes. Number four, this one's gonna make some collectors angry. Chateau Ballandreau, the original garage wine, Gurgista, started in 1991 in a little garage in Saint-Emilion, and by 1995, critic Robert Parker scored it higher than Petrus. A garage beat Petrus. How? Extreme extraction, 100% new oak, super ripe fruit, a wine engineered to hit one man's palate like a bowling ball. Critics at the time called it stylistic manipulation, not terroir. Hey, I don't speak French, but I do speak redneck. It worked so well, half of Bordeaux spent the next 20 years copying the formula, chasing scores instead of expressing vineyards. Ballandreau isn't robbing you with a price tag, it robbed an entire region of its personality just so they could please one man and sell one. Dollar, dollar bill, yo. And once scores drove prices, prices went insane. Enter Pomerol. Number three, Lupin. About five acres of Pomerol, a few hundred cases a year. No grand history, no 1855 pedigree, no castle. The chateau is closer to a farmhouse and bottles trade for thousands of dollars. Is it good wine? Sure. Is any wine on earth sold by Studebaker for one bottle good? No. Lupin is pure scarcity math. The publisher's clearing house of wine except you pay them the million dollars and Ed McMahon never shows up. You're not buying flavor at that price, you're buying the ability to tell people you bought it. That's not a wine purchase. That's a good old fashioned show off and it ain't the fun smoking in the bandit kind. But hey, at least Lupin is real and rare. The next bottle is the single most counterfeited luxury in wine. Number two, Corona de Lafitte. This is Lafitte Rothschild's second wine. The barrels that didn't make the first team. And during the great Lafitte media in China from 2008 to 2011, cases of this junior varsity juice hit $16,000 because the label said Lafitte and newly wealthy buyers with a little wine knowledge mistook it for the Grand Vin. They happily played first growth prices for a second wine label because it said Lafitte. Wow, the French sure are good at making money with labels, aren't they? Hey, it gets better. Analysts estimated that 50 to 70% of all Lafitte sold in China was counterfeit. Empty bottles of the 82 who were selling for $1,500 a bottle, empty. So someone could refill them with who knows what. When the empty bottle is a business bottle, the full bottle is a scam with better packaging. Crazy idiot, he just moved to China. And that brings us to number one. Everything so far has been legal robbery. This one required lawyers. Number one, the final villain. And it's not a wine you can buy. It's the robbery that proves the whole point of this video. Once again, we are back to labeling for dollars and this time they got caught breaking the law. 1973, the House of Cruz, one of the oldest, proudest merchant families in Bordeaux. Inspectors show up on a tip and the Cruzes literally throw them out. Oh, bad mood. Because what investigators eventually found was roughly 2 million bottles of cheap Languedoc wine, table wine, doctored with chemicals and relabeled as genuine AOC Bordeaux. Remember those old Folgers commercials? We secretly replaced their fine coffee with crystals. That, except nobody asked France for permission and it wasn't a commercial. It was a felony. The press called it Winegate. 18 defendants. Lionel Cruz actually told reporters, real quote, I can't make this up. You'll see, I'll be the Richard Nixon of Bordeaux believing that Nixon was the victim of false accusations. That is not the comparison you want at the time, but it sure was accurate. He got convicted and the wine doctor at the center of it all shrugged it off in court and claimed most of the trade was doing exactly the same thing and that his wine was actually really good. But you can't blend red and white and pass it off as Bordeaux so you can make a few extra bucks and that's what Lionel Cruz was doing. The wine doctor spent a year in jail and showed no remorse at all upon his release. Nobody complained about the taste. 2 million bottles and the customers never noticed. That is a brutal truth under every villain on this list. The label was doing all the work. Crazy Eddie didn't actually move to China. He was in Bordeaux all along, baiting and switching. Hey, if you're having fun and love the brutal truth when it comes to wine, then subscribe to my channel right now. Hit that button because I have a lot more brutal truths coming, a lot more Somali secrets to share, a lot more Bordeaux secrets. And if you know how to use Hype Ports, hey, send a few my way. Back to the show. Okay, deep breath because here's the beautiful part. The same region hiding these villains is also hiding the best value wine on earth. And here's my claim. Argue with me in the comments. Half the classified growths in the Medoc could not beat the next six wines in a blind tasting. The classification is a list from 1855. That's over 170 years ago. There might just have been a few technological advances in winemaking since then. And remember, the $50 mystery bottle is still coming at the end. It's the wine those 2 million fake bottles wish they were. Seven heroes, let's count them down. Number seven, Chateau du Gosseck, Au Médoc, about 39 bucks. Start with the visual. A genuine 13th century castle with an actual moat. Baron de Lestac invented a fake nobleman. Au Gosseck has drawbridge adjacent receipts going back to 1172. And here's a plot twist after everything I just told you. The classification system got this one right, twice. Top tier of the original 1932 Cru Bourgeois ranking. And when they revived the classification, Wine Spectator once put it in the 100 best wines in the world. Dense, balanced, black, current, Medoc, the ages. For the price of a large pizza order. I recently drank the 2001 and it was fantastic. Welcome to the good half. Number six, Chateau de Pest, Saint-Esteve, one of the oldest estates in the Appalachian. 1452, before Columbus got lost. Sitting directly across the road from Cailin-sur-Gour, a famous classified grove. I love Cailin-sur-Gour too. Since 1995, it's been owned by Louis Raiderer. Yes, a champagne house. So you're getting Raiderer money, Raiderer farming, and Raiderer perfectionism put into a $54 Saint-Esteve with a decades-long reputation for one thing, being good and fairly priced year after year. What a concept. It's the Columbo of Bordeaux. Rumpled Appalachian, no flashy rank, and it quietly outsmarts wines that thought they were the star of the show. Just the wine, ma'am. Labels? We don't need no stinking labels. Number five, Chateau Chaspline for Mouly. The name literally means chase away the blues. Legend says Lord Byron inspired it, and then it says battle there. Either way, a wine named by poets and priced by accountants who apparently didn't get the memo. It's officially unclassified, and it's widely considered flat-out cru classé quality, report regularly beating famous classified names blind. 60% Cabernet-structured classic, ages like it's holding a grudge. Buy it, sell it, and let it embarrass somebody's trophy bottle in about eight years if you're a wine snoop. Or just drink it by yourself, and don't worry, be happy. Now, remember the man whose scores beat all of Bordeaux back in the villain half? His own wine is next, and it's a hero. Number four, Chateau Fontenelle Francais. This was a home estate of Michel Roland, the most influential wine consultant who ever lived, Robert Parker's right-hand man, the guy whose fingerprints are on 200 estates from Palmyra to Napa. We lost him earlier this year, and his wife, Dani, who built Fontenelle with him since 1986, carries it on. Here's the point. When the guy who consulted for the most expensive wines on Earth made wine for himself, he did it in a humble little front sack and priced it around 40 bucks. Plush, velvety, right-bank Merlot that one retailer said embarrasses wines at three to five times the price. The insider's insider bottle. Drink what the mechanic drives. Hey, since you've watched this far, I've got a gift for you, my Magical Wines Guide, a list of wines that have been magical for me and others, constantly updated. All you have to do to claim your copy is go to wholebottlereviews.com forward slash email. The link is in the description and the pinned comment below. Back to the show. Number three, Roque de Combes, Cote d'Ivoire, an Appalachian most wine shops file under miscellaneous, which is exactly why Francois Mitsuriel, the genius behind cult Saint-Emilion icon Tertreux-Robuff, brought in there in 1988. Same obsessive winemaking, same limestone, unfashionable zip code. The result gets mistaken in blind tasting for Premier Grand Cru Classé Saint-Emilion. Let that sink in. Tasters can't tell the miscellaneous wines from the top of the pyramid. Villa number two sold you a famous label with junior juice. This is famous juice wearing a nobody label. Same trick, run in reverse. For 65 bucks, it's the anti-hero wine. Number two, Chateau Félon-Ségur, Saint-Esteve. It's wines are physically tangled between Montrose, we love Ronnie Montrose, and Ceylon-Ségur, classified growth dirt with an unclassified name. And I love this detail. They had top Cru Bourgeois status and resigned from the classification in 2010. They just walked out. We're above this list. Hey, De Snider attitude, we're rock stars, treat us as such. The market agreed. The estate sold in 2017 for 90 million euros. In a comparative of tastings, it keeps landing among the top wines of the whole appellation. $50 for a wine that competes with $150 classified neighbors. Be careful with that stuff. At that price, you can afford a lot, and with how good it is, you can drink a lot. And you don't want to get arrested for driving while blind, which leaves one bottle, the mystery wine, the one I promised at the click of that light. Here it is. Chateau Sociano Malay, Eau Medoc, 50 bucks. The late owner, Jean Gautreau, refused to enter in any classification. Not out of spite, just out of confidence. He believed no rank or offer was worthy of the wine, and the market proved him right. The Bordeaux trade itself priced Sociano Malay at fourth and fifth growth levels. Deep, structured, mineral Cabernet from a gravel rise staring at the Zeron. It ages for decades. It beats classified gross blind, and it costs 1 20th of a first growth. Every villain today sold you a label with nothing behind it. This is everything behind no label at all. That's the bottle. If you've had it, let me know. If you haven't, find yourself one. And if Bordeaux's villains and heroes shocked and thrilled you, I did this exact same thing to Napa Valley, including a $90 bottle that beats hell out of $2,000 plus cult bottle. Tap or click to watch now.