Sommelier Tries 14 More Celebrity Wines

The fact that this is $24,

you can get this at $12 retail

and get the same attributes that you get in this wine.

You're getting robbed.

Hey, I'm sommelier Andre Hueston Mack,

and today I'm gonna be tasting wines by these celebrities.

I'm excited.

We have musicians, we have actors, and we have athletes,

and we're tasting them all today.

[upbeat music]

After our first episode of celebrity wines,

we got a lot of feedback and a lot of comments

about the wines and the selections.

A lot of these wines today were requested by you.

So first up we have Gordon Ramsay.

You might know him from Hell's Kitchen,

Kitchen Nightmare, all his various shows.

But this is a guy who's very serious in the kitchen.

I think he has the most Michelin stars in England.

We'll see what he knows about wine.

So here we have sauvignon blanc from Monterey County,

Gordon Ramsay, 2019.

A little lemon lime.

Funny enough, I get a little bit of gooseberry,

something that I would normally find

in a New Zealand sauvignon blanc.

There's some acid to it.

I'd like it to be a little bit leaner.

I want it to have more of an edge.

This is pretty decent sauvignon blanc.

For me, I think this is well made

from the regions that it's from.

Once you add the element of food to it,

it becomes a more delightful experience.

Monterey's an interesting wine growing region.

You know, it reminds me a lot of Chateauneuf-du-Pape.

You know, it's a dried out river bed

and has lots of stones so it's really great for drainage.

So the water can creep down all the way down to the roots,

which makes for healthy grape vines.

Now the question leads me,

would Gordon Ramsay serve this wine in his restaurant?

I believe that he would.

This is a caliber of wine that could be served

at any one of his restaurants here in this country.

Emoji, emoji. Smiley face with sunglasses on.

This is a cool wine. Maybe put a chef hat on top.

So next up, we have Leonardo DiCaprio.

This is Champagne Telmont,

and this is the Reserve de la Terre.

You know, when I look at this label,

it looks pretty modern for a Champagne house.

Generally, it's got script lettering on it.

And then I think the biggest thing that kind of stands out

is the closure.

Normally what you would look at in Champagne,

it would have a metal cage, and this has rope.

You always wanna put your thumb on the top of the cork

to make sure that it doesn't jump out or explode.

I'm gonna use this cork screw

to kind of get underneath there.

This is a little tricky.

Hey, Leo, help me out here.

Show us how to open this on the website or something here.

See, you see, I took my thumb off for one second

and you see that it's starting to release here.

All right. There we go.

All right, this pressure is on, and we made it.

Awesome. We got it open.

So that was an old closure method.

They used string before they use metal cages.

And that was very difficult to open.

When it foams up, that's called the mousse.

The bubbles are really tiny, so you can see that.

They're still going.

So that's a sign of quality.

This is elegant. This is Champagne.

You know, I get a little bit

of butter scotch and honeysuckle.

You know, I feel like it's lacking a little bit.

It's not a lot of acidity.

It just feels like it doesn't have the zip or zing

that I would expect.

And at this price point, $90, I would be looking

for something a little bit more expressive.

So the goal of this winery is to produce organic fruit

and also be 100% sustainable.

And I think that's a really big reason why Leonardo

is a part of this particular project.

Does it being sustainable, does that affect the price point?

Yeah, it does.

But there's also people who are making great wines

at 28 bucks that kind of really set the standard

for sustainability.

I think for me, there's better examples of Champagne

at a lower cost than this particular wine.

Because I really want this wine,

I really wanna like this wine,

I was just expecting so much more from it,

and it just kind of fall flat.

For that reason, I'm gonna give it the straight mouth emoji.

All right, so now we have Jon Bon Jovi,

and this is Hampton Water,

and this is a rose from the south of France

from the Languedoc.

So that's a region in the southern part of France.

Lots of great wine comes from there.

So first impression is it's very clean bottle here.

I think my attention is drawn to the top.

So this is a glass closure.

If you're gonna enjoy something,

a wine that's meant to be enjoyed young, fresh,

these are probably a better way to go than cork.

It's definitely more sustainable in that way,

because you're not gonna age this wine.

And then this should just pop kind of right off here.

There we go. Voila.

And then you can put it right back in the bottle.

So if you don't drink at all,

you put it right back in the bottle.

You can put it right back in the refrigerator.

Smells like cotton candy to me.

A little bit of strawberry, citrus peel.

Pretty good acid.

Has a little bit of minerality to it.

Decent acidity.

You know, if I was thinking about typically what you get

from the Languedoc, strawberry flavors,

a little bit of citrus.

Does have a slight floral note to it.

It definitely has Rome varietal heavy.

The breakdown of grapes on the back of a wine

is generally an American thing.

When you think about wines from Europe,

when you look at the bottle, they're named after a place.

So it's a sense of place, a sense of taste,

a sense of smell.

In America, we name things after the grape varietal

so you know what's in them.

And so it's just a different train of thought.

Well, this is $20.

I don't know if that's an affordable price point.

If it was more closer to 17,

I would feel like that it had more value to it.

But I'm not mad at this wine. This is a good wine.

You know, I'm gonna give this the okay emoji.

I think this is good wine.

It's okay if that's your jam, and you should enjoy it.

So next up, from Eric Wareheim,

from Tim and Eric and also from Master of None,

is Las Jaras wines.

And this is actually called Glou Glou.

So the name is supposed to be reminiscent of the sound

that you make when you're actually drinking the wine.

Maybe more like guzzling the wine.

It's a French term.

And it goes like, Glou glou.

So generally you don't see red wine in a clear bottle,

and that has to do with aging of wine.

You want to protect the wine from the sunlight.

And so the wine can actually age

and have some type of longevity to it.

This wine is meant

to be consumed right when you purchase it,

hence the name, Glou Glou.

It reminds me, just off the nose, slightly dusty,

slightly leathery, like an old antique store.

Pomegranate.

That's good.

What I'm most surprised about this particular wine,

the way that it's made doesn't outshine

of the place that it comes from.

And when I say that, I mean,

this definitely falls into that category of natural wine.

And that's not the first thing that I smell when I smell it

in the glass.

It's not this natty, bready thing.

This is great.

Due to the blends or the grapes or that they put in it,

but this is just something fun that you don't really have

to think about.

And it definitely stands up to its name

as being chuggable in a way, hence Glou Glou.

It'd be interesting

to see how the cepage grapes changed

from the previous year.

2021 was a big fire year in California.

There definitely was some frost in 2020.

People underestimate the role that mother nature plays

in making quality wine.

And it's a big factor here,

especially for low intervention wines.

We're not doing a lot of stuff in the winery

after the grapes come in.

So mother nature is really dictating what the wine

is gonna taste like.

Whether you're a fan of Eric or not,

this is a cool wine.

I would drink this wine.

I'm probably gonna say that the wine

is probably about 25 bucks, 29.

[Director] 28. 28.

At $28, I feel like this is good.

You're not getting ripped off.

You know, it's kind of the bomb for 28 bucks. This is good.

I say this wine is the bomb. Let's give it a bomb emoji.

So next up, we have Kurt Russell.

This is the GoGi Chardonnay, 2018.

And this is called Goldie, after his partner Goldie Hawn.

Yeah, I mean, besides the label,

I think the first thing that jumps out to me is the wax top.

You're starting to see it more and more.

This is just a more jazzier way to dress up the bottle.

It gets a little tricky when you open it here.

I think a lot of people try

to cut it off like you do a foil.

It's pretty simple.

You just go straight through the top.

It's very easy. Here we go.

And it just pops right off.

And you see how it just breaks pretty clean?

Looks like Chardonnay.

Smells like Chardonnay, but slightly different.

So generally when I think about California Chardonnay,

what I get, you get buttery, oaky, over-the-top,

popcorn butter, those types of things.

This is not that at all.

In a really great way,

this reminds me a lot of white Burgundy,

so Chardonnay from France, an Old World style of Chardonnay.

Lots of minerality. Smells like rocks.

It's a little bit of honeysuckle.

The reason why we have those classifications,

New World and Old World, is because of the weather patterns.

So if you take something like Chardonnay

and plant it in California, then it tends to be bigger,

have more alcohol, more fruit

and so kind of over-the-top.

In Europe, it's a little bit more subtle. It's not as hot.

Well, I don't know what the alcohol is, but it's pretty big.

14, 3. So that's a big wine.

Long, long finish. I still feel it in my mouth.

When we talk about finish,

it's just basically how long you can taste the wine

after you swallow it and after it's been in your mouth.

Whew, my mouth is on fire.

If I'm judging the wine off it's quality of what it is,

it's a good wine.

I think the wine is well made.

I think at $50 you get what you pay for.

If I had to give this wine an emoji,

I would give it the smiley face

with the big stars in it, right?

This is a Hollywood wine.

This is flashy and great and iconic.

So next up, we have Kyle MacLachlan.

This is 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon called Pursued by Bear.

So many of you might know him from Twin Peaks,

the original Dune, and for you young folks out there,

maybe you know him as the mayor from Portlandia.

But he also makes wine.

This is from Washington, Columbia Valley,

the big growing region there.

A little bit more specifically,

within the Columbia Valley is a region called Walla Walla.

Make terrific Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz.

This is Cabernet.

I'm really excited to taste this wine.

So Pursued by Bear is a stage direction

from a Shakespeare play called A Winter's Tale.

Crazy raspberry.

Almost kind of sweet, almost confectionary.

There's some cedar, leather, graphite.

That's pretty tasty. Big finish.

It's not overly oaky.

Slight little bit of vanilla,

but a little bit more cinnamon.

You know, this wine is really expressive.

I mean, there's lots of nuance and layers to the wine,

the fruit elements, the underbrush.

It's got a lot of alcohol,

but it's pretty well balanced in that way.

You can still get the essence of the fruit.

So in general, if I'm talking about New World wines

and if we're talking about,

like say the United States in general,

a lot of times, the wines are too ripe, too overdeveloped.

In a cooler place like Walla Walla,

they're not overly ripe and over the top.

This is a great example of one of the great Cabernets

from Washington state.

$70 here is a fair price. This is serious wine.

I like this wine. I think it's a strong showing.

I'm just gonna go ahead and give it the strong arm emoji.

There you go, Kyle. Good job.

All right, so next up, it looks like Cameron Diaz.

This is called Avaline. This is a white wine blend.

Taking a look on the back here, it's actually from Spain,

but bottled here in California.

And it's a mix of grapes that you would generally find

in the northern part of Spain,

Xarel-lo, Macabeo, and Malvasia.

So that combination seems right to me.

Don't see a vintage date on it.

It's bright, it's clear.

As a white wine starts to age,

it gets darker in color.

So not knowing the vintage of when this comes from,

this wine looks light and doesn't look like it's been aged.

Pears, apple.

Kind of reminds me of apple sauce when I was a little kid.

It's actually pretty tasty.

It's got some really great acid,

a little bit of grassy notes to it.

It's refreshing.

To be honest with you,

I feel like you could get this wine for half the cost.

This wine is $24,

so which only leads me to believe

that you're paying for the name.

And the fact that it doesn't even come

with a vintage has me lost a little bit.

From this particular area in Spain,

you're gonna typically get, you know,

high acid, low wood whites

that kind of taste like the ocean with a little bit of melon

and really fresh and crisp acidity.

And I feel like you get that in this particular wine,

but I just don't think that the value is there.

You're getting robbed. You know what I mean?

There's nothing wrong with this wine at all.

It's actually really great and delicious.

And if you wanna pay $24, by all means, go ahead.

All I'm saying is that there's not enough value in that

when I know that you can get the wine for half the price.

So the emoji for this wine,

I'm gonna give it the imposter emoji.

I feel like this wine is fake in the funk.

It's not authentic in that way that you can get a better

for half the price.

All right, so next up, we have Graham Norton

of The Graham Norton Show.

And this is his sauvignon blanc from New Zealand.

Actually, if you guys didn't know who Graham Norton was,

there's a picture of him on the back.

So you can see him there.

New Zealand sauvignon blanc. This is 2021.

This smells like New Zealand sauvignon blanc.

Gooseberries, citrus, lots of grapefruit.

Very herbaceous.

It reminds me a lot of canned green beans.

I get that a lot in New Zealand sauvignon blanc,

so it's not a bad thing.

New Zealand's an island, right?

So you definitely get the influence of the ocean.

So what we always talk about is those kind of hot days

and cool nights,

and you get pretty high altitude,

which give the wine a little bit more lift and acidity.

This is New Zealand sauvignon blanc.

This is what they do, straight up, exactly what they do.

Kind of going through my thought process

of how I'm evaluating any of these.

Is it classic? Is it well made?

Is it indicative of the place that it comes from?

And I think it checks all of those boxes.

And then I start to look at price point.

$18.99, I mean, you can get good examples of this

on the shelf for 14.

18 is not a stretch. This is a feel good wine, right?

You drink this wine, how could you not be happy?

It's just great.

You know, I'm thinking an island emoji.

It's gotta be an island emoji.

And not that this is a desert island wine,

it's just where I'd like to drink this wine,

hanging out with friends on an island.

So next up, we have Kevin Love and Channing Frye.

This is Chosen Family winery.

This is 2019 Willamette Valley pinot noir.

I'm really excited because I love pinot noir,

and Willamette Valley pinot noir is really good.

I'm just gonna pull this off here. I just couldn't wait.

I'm just gonna pull it off,

and we're just gonna go right in.

Okay. That's looking great.

It's got that P funk.

So P funk is like that pinot funk. Barnyard, mousey.

Those are all good things. Good things.

Yeah, I'm getting tart cherries, raspberries.

Little bit of allspice.

This wine is delicious.

The Willamette Valley is about 150 miles long,

about 50 miles wide.

And to me, it's one of the greatest examples

of pinot noir made in the United States.

The Willamette Valley climate is very similar

to a great region in France called Burgundy.

It rains quite a bit.

Pinot noir is a really thin skinned grape, very fickle.

And you kind of have to have perfect conditions

to kind of get it right.

You wanna have hot days

so the grapes can ripen phenolic-ly,

cool nights so the grapes can retain some type of acidity.

It's kind of the best of both worlds.

It has that fruit that you associate

with California meets that terroir taste of the land

that you get from the Old World.

I like this wine. I think this wine is great.

$35 Willamette Valley pinot noir.

That's expensive considering that the average bottle,

I think, is $15 or $10, but the quality is here.

I think this wine kind of over-delivers at $35.

For emoji here, I'm gonna do the money with wings.

I feel like this wine over-delivers.

You get a little something extra than what you paid for,

and who doesn't like that?

All right, so next up, we have Ricky Rose, Rick Ross.

This is Belaire rose from France.

I don't believe that it is Champagne,

but it is sparkling wine from France.

If this was Champagne, it would probably be more expensive,

and it would definitely say it on the bottle.

This is just a little marketing tag here.

It said, Experience real French rose.

That doesn't mean [beep] to me.

It is from France.

The whole idea of real, I don't know what that means.

This looks cool.

I mean, it's clear bottle,

so you can see the color of rose on it.

This is a typical cage that you have here.

So it's about six half-turns.

You always wanna keep your thumb

on the top of the cork here.

And then we just wanna kind of slowly twist.

And you don't wanna make the big loud pop.

You just want to just barely make it come out. There we go.

So this is definitely easier than opening Leo's Champagne.

Let's get the party started.

So this is mainly Shiraz,

which is a thick skinned grape that gives off a deep color,

even when you use it for rose.

Oh. Little raspberry, strawberry.

It's a little bit of grapefruit,

a little bit of white pepper.

To me it feels like the wine is super carbonated.

I'm not sure that it was made in the traditional method.

Can't say that it's trash. But you know what I mean?

You're overpaying for this particular wine.

I'm sure for some of it, you're paying for Rick Ross.

And I would definitely use this wine

if I was gonna pair it with cheese.

People get caught in this mindset,

Oh, you have to have red wine with cheese.

But a slightly sweet wine with cheese is complementary,

but on its own, it's not pleasurable to me at all.

Emoji time. I gotta give it a tear drop.

I'm gonna give a sad face. Just one tear.

I thought it was gonna be better, and that makes me sad.

All right, so we have the 2018 Napa Valley

Cabernet Sauvignon from Yao Ming of basketball fame.

Actually, he's probably more a blocker.

He's really tall.

That's what I remember.

Let's see if it's good.

Color looks amazing.

It's bright. It's pretty clear.

Just looks kind of resilient in a way.

Straight off the bat what I get is Cassis.

Raspberry, a little bit of pencil shavings, plum, vanilla.

Pretty decent tannin structure.

Starting to suck the moisture out of my mouth.

It's aged in oak.

It's expressive through the vanilla that you get.

This is California Cabernet, a good one.

So this is Yao Family Wines.

They range from 40 bucks to well over $500.

What those price points tell me, it's pretty serious.

The oak that they're using,

the techniques that they're using,

the vineyards that they're purchasing fruit from.

So this is $98. That's quality.

I think you're getting what you pay for.

And I don't know too much about it.

If I just look at the label,

it just says it's from Napa Valley.

It doesn't give me any more detail.

I think at $98, I should kind of know it should come

from a single vineyard or, you know,

maybe it's a blend of several different single vineyards.

I don't know any of that information.

It's a great Cabernet, but I think at that price point,

I need to know a little bit more about it.

I would give this wine the steak emoji.

This wine is perfect for grilling, big meat. Perfect.

So next up, we have Ayesha Curry's Domaine Curry,

and this is her Napa Valley sauvignon blanc, 2021.

All right, so this is 100% sauvignon blanc.

This is from Napa Valley.

This is from the Calistoga region, so up north.

I kind of don't really know what to expect.

Very grassy.

Smells just like when you open a bag of Skittles.

You open the bag of Skittles, you smell them all.

So it's like, it's just burst of kind of fruit.

Makes me smile.

Definitely tropical fruit and maybe a little mango.

The most prevalent thing is mangoes.

And apparently Ayesha Curry used to be on the Mango Board.

Obviously she likes mangoes.

It tastes pretty amazing, really great acid.

It's less minerality, which you would find in, say,

in a place like Bordeaux

and probably a little bit more alcohol.

So it definitely has some weight and body to it,

but this is great sauvignon blanc from Napa.

This is good.

[Director] $65.

Oh, [beep]

All right, so this is $65.

So it's really interesting

because at that price point, $65,

I feel like maybe it excludes a lot of people

from wanting to be able to try the wine.

But even at $65, I think the wine is solid.

I still feel like this is worth it in that category.

So as far as emoji goes,

I would have to give this the surprise emoji.

I was just pleasantly surprised

and maybe slightly caught off guard

because I thought this was gonna be inundated with oak,

and it's not.

And it's actually pretty delicious.

All right, so next up, we have Jim Nantz.

He's a sports broadcaster, football, basketball, and golf.

This is called The Calling.

This is a Russian River pinot noir,

and this comes from a single vineyard called

the Fox Den vineyard.

This one's pretty interesting.

It's a pretty heavy bottle.

I think the label here is kind of the most distinctive.

It looks like it's a metal thing

that's glued on here or attached.

I wonder how much this bottle costs.

It's gotta be like-

it's a big part of the cost of the wine.

Bottle's really heavy.

I don't know anything about Fox Den Vineyard. [laughs]

I do not. And that's the great part about wine.

There's no possible way that you can know everything.

And that's kind of the cool part

of being in this business

is that because you never stop learning.

All right, dried cranberry, cherries,

little bit of tea, like black tea.

That smells slightly spicy.

Nutmeg is what I'm getting.

That's Russian River Valley pinot noir. That's pretty tasty.

So this wine weighs in at about 14-and-a-half percent.

And so that's big.

You know, anything over 13-and-a-half percent

is considered a big wine,

but the alcohol doesn't really show.

It's not disruptive in this wine.

It's pretty well ingrained in the wine. It's not overly hot.

It seems like it's a classic example of where it's from,

and this wine is delicious.

Yeah, the Russian River Valley is located in Sonoma,

and it's definitely got this really, kind of,

great micro climate for pinot noir.

So it's a pretty cool space.

It has a little bit of fog that kind of rolls in

in the early mornings that kind of keep it cool.

And pinot noir thrives there.

And this is pretty tasty.

I love pinot noir from all different parts of the world.

One of my favorite places to drink pinot noir

is from the Russian River Valley.

And this wine is delicious,

and I'm gonna give it the yum emoji.

So next up, our wine is from Maynard James Keenan,

the lead singer of Tool.

And this is called Caduceus Le Cortigiane Oneste 2017.

So for all you guys that hit me up

and left comments in the comments section, this is for you.

This was a highly requested wine,

and I felt like if we were gonna do it again,

we had to have this wine.

Yeah, Maynard James is a pretty big wine guy.

There's a documentary about him

about the wines that he makes.

All right, we're gonna open this up here.

Well, 2017, so definitely have some bottle maturity to it.

You can see the color looks a little brickish here.

Smell a little leather. It's a tad bit of smoke.

It's like dried plum, cranberry.

Really good acid.

I'm salivating right now.

I think that's due to the Barbera.

So it's about 90% Barbera and 10% Merlot.

So Merlot's gonna give it this kind of plummy,

ripe flavor to it.

And then Barbera lends a little bit of acid

and also a little bit of fruit, as well.

Wow, this wine is pretty balanced

and pretty tasty, actually.

Smells Old World.

If I was tasting this wine in a blind tasting,

to me, smelling the wine automatically,

it's not a lot of fruit that jumps out of the glass,

which to me is a pleasant surprise,

especially coming from someplace like Arizona.

What you think about is desert,

but there's definitely different micro regions

that are better and different grapes that are suited

to a warmer climate.

So the closer you are to the equator, the warmer it is,

which means that you get riper fruit.

Riper fruit means more sugars.

Sugars are translated into alcohol.

And alcohol is perceived as body weight on the palate.

So this wine is $50,

and I'm not conflicted by that in any way.

This wine is really good,

and I think it's worth 50 bucks, actually.

Emojis, emojis.

When you kind of peel back the layers of the onion

and understand this wine completely,

your mind is kind of blown by that it's from Arizona.

I think in the industry, we would call this a ringer.

So we would put this wine in a blind tasting.

And so we would put it in with other Barberas.

And I think a lot of people would call this

Barbera from Italy.

And so for that, I would give it a mind blown emoji.

[upbeat music]

There were quite a few standouts,

actually more than I anticipated.

My overall favorite wine today

was probably the Eric Wareheim.

Yao Ming was great. Pursued by Bear was great.

I mean, there's so many ones.

They were just fun to taste and interesting.

A really great overall showing of quality wine today,

whether or not a celebrity was involved or not.

Ultimately, I always preach that you're an expert

in your own taste.

You should drink what you like, not what Kurt Russell likes,

not what Pursued by Bear likes.

I'm gonna go back. His name is Kyle MacLachlan. Sorry.

Got it. His name is not Pursued by Bear.