Sommelier Tries The Same Red Wine At 4 Prices ($18-$300)

These are two bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon.

This one costs $18.

This one costs $300.

And if you ever wondered why,

I'm gonna explain that to you today.

Hey, I'm sommelier Andre Hueston Mack.

And today I have four different types of Cabernet Sauvignon,

ranging in price from $18 all the way to $300.

And I'm gonna break it down to tell you

why they cost what they do.

Let's face it.

Wine can be inexpensive hobby, right?

And constantly, I think it's one

of the things that we buy that we're really kind

of budget conscious of.

Today, I have four different bottles of cabernet sauvignon.

We have one for $18, $59, $135, and also $300.

There's several different factors on why

wine is priced the way that it is.

It could be region.

It could be the grapes that they used.

It could be packaging, it could be glass.

But I'm gonna break that down for you today.

So the first factor is region.

So Cabernet Sauvignon is the king of grape varietals.

And it does really well in California

and flourishes because of the weather and the climate.

All these wines are from California.

And what you notice as we go from least expensive

to the most expensive, there's more detail

on the label about where these wines come from.

The more detailed you get, the more essence

of the place of which it came from you would get.

The French actually called this terroir

Terroir is interesting.

There's no direct translation in English

but it means pretty much sense of place.

You're gonna pay more money for the grapes

and that specific vineyard to get that taste

or that micro climate from where the grapes are grown.

So we're gonna go ahead and open these now.

We're gonna start with the California wine,

the $18 wine, and then kind of move our way up.

If you look at the back label, that's generally

where you'll find that information,

but here it just also just says California.

So Cabernet is actually the offspring

of Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc.

So you get like some of this freshness

from like Sauvignon Blanc.

Cabernet Franc has a little bit of greenness

to it as well.

But you get red berries.

Little currant.

Little bit of red fruit, a little bit of black fruit.

There is a little bit of vanilla, hint of vanilla.

I would attributed that to maybe the oak.

That's pretty good.

This is actually a really great

and well made California wine.

I think what we don't get here is some of the nuances

and the more detailed notes that you would get

as we start to move further in and get more specific

about the location that the wine comes from.

So now we're moving on to Napa Valley and now you're paying

for Napa Valley fruit, Napa Valley wine,

which is more specific than say, California.

There's a price attached to Napa Valley.

So Napa Valley is one

of the most famous and renowned wine regions in the world,

not just here in America.

What makes it really special is its micro climates

and it's different types of soil.

So before we talked about the previous wine herbs here,

you also get herbs, but more specifically, you get rosemary.

You get a little bit of sage.

You get more, you know, lavender

Cassis is a big one.

A little bit of, you know, I smell a little lead.

This really kind of helps explain the price you're paying

for Napa Valley fruit.

You're paying for these subtle nuances that you get

that you don't really pick up in something

that maybe is for $18.

So our next lineup is Mayacamas Vineyard.

This is $135.

This is also from California, also from Napa Valley,

but more specifically from Mount Veeder.

Oh man.

So like, I mean, here you get, like,

it's just really intense currant.

You know here there's definitely graphite or lead,

but like, you know, more like pencil shavings.

It reminds me of going up to sharpen my pencil as a kid.

That's pretty amazing.

The cool part about all of this is that

as we started to get more detailed about where

the wines come from, and we kind of went up in price,

the wines have come really more expressive, right?

So I think when we started with the first wine,

it was just like red and black fruit.

It was herbs.

And as we started to progress,

it becomes more apparent and more detailed.

Rosemary, sage, graphite, pencil, currant, cassis.

And that's really what you get

as you start to get more of a sense of place in the wine.

So this is Diamond Creek Winery.

This is from Red Rock Terrace.

This is Cabernet Sauvignon and this costs $300.

I know, 300 bucks.

We're gonna open this up and we're gonna taste this.

So this is Cabernet Sauvignon from California,

also Napa Valley, also from a specific AVA

called Diamond Mountain.

And then also from a specific vineyard located

in that AVA called Red Rock Terrace.

Just to kind of give you a scope of what's happening here,

the first wine we tasted was from all over California.

It could be from anywhere in California

and now we've kind of narrowed it all the way

down to just seven acres.

And so when you think about from $18

all the way to $300, that's what you're paying for.

For lack of a better term, it smells polished.

It's so funny.

Like I'm gonna get killed for that.

That's not a real wine term

but that's kind of the way that I explain it.

This smells like Cabernet.

It has all of those notes, cassis.

There's a little bit of cinnamon.

There is a little bit of manure.

You know how I like my manure.

You have vanilla, tobacco, truffle,

damp earth like wet dirt.

You know, it talks about the microclimate

of just these seven acres that you won't get anywhere else

in the world.

The largest jump was from wine number three at $135 to $300.

And why is that?

We went just from a single AVA to a single vineyard,

but the whole idea behind that is just it's about soil.

And it's about a sense of place.

You can really tell it in Europe

when you walk through the vineyards in Burgundy, you know,

you walk to one place and you can see where the soil change

and you step on that line and that's considered one

of the most premium areas,

which they call a grand cru vineyard.

And this here is called a premier cru.

So it's really that close.

It could be that close

and it can jump in price extremely.

Next time you're in a wine shop, you know,

look at the details on the label.

The more specific about that particular wine

is probably what you're paying for.

So factor number two is storing and aging.

So there's a couple of different types of aging.

There's an aging where you age it

in an oak vat or oak barrel,

and then there's also aging it in the bottle.

Generally the barrel comes first and then it's put

into bottle and then that's where the storing part comes.

So oak does several different things. It imparts flavor.

It also helps set the color during the wine making process.

And it also imparts tannin,

wood tannin into the wine to give the wine longevity.

Is oak and that aging discernible in palette? Yes, it is.

I mean, if we look at something like this

when we talked about before more nuanced, right?

So when I start to smell,

you know, I smell cedar, right?

I smell a little bit of vanilla.

You know, those things come from brand new French Oak.

And if we look at like something like Sidekick

not to like pick on Sidekick,

but like something here, there is a woody element to it,

but it's not expressive

of like the way that oak is is present here.

This is more concentrated jumps outta the glass,

it screams, I've spent some time in oak

where here it's a little bit more subtle.

You know, something like Diamond Creek at $300

a bottle is aged for 12 months.

So one year and 100% brand new French Oak barrels.

So each year they're buying barrels

to make this particular wine.

So this is reflected in the price

because we're talking about brand new barrels, you know,

at $1,200 a pop here every single year.

So once you toast a barrel

and actually use it from one year

they basically lose half their value.

As we move on to Mayacamas,

what's interesting about this winery

is that they don't use any brand new oak at all.

There's no barrel cost here.

They've bought the barrels once and they've been using them.

I believe some of the barrels might be, you know,

50, 60, 70 years old.

It's a combination of barrel and large wooden vats.

So this wine actually spends 32 months in barrel

before it's even bottled and released to the consumer.

Also, I believe that it spends another 12 months

in bottle before it's released.

So you're talking about almost four years

that you don't receive any return on this wine.

And then so something like Steady State,

here they're using 40% of the wine is aged in oak,

brand new French Oak barrels.

And the rest is to be done in neutral barrel.

So it's a little bit more cost effective

than say something like using a 100%

brand new French Oak like they do at Diamond Creek.

Now we're gonna move on to vineyard costs.

I guess the easiest place to start would be land costs.

Vineyards required land where the grapes are grown,

and that is a huge cost.

If we're starting at a million dollars here

per acre for our $59 bottle of wine, as we start to progress

and get to our $300 bottle of wine, the costs just go up.

Napa Valley is the premier growing region

in the United States.

That's why you're paying a million dollars.

That's just for the raw land.

Generally it costs anywhere from $35,000

to $42,000 to put a vineyard on that raw land.

So if you look at something like this, that's seven acres.

So that's seven times 35,000 that's to plant the vineyard.

If it's seven acres, it's $7 million, if not more.

And so all of those inherent costs

of the land are passed on to you, the consumer.

if you look at Old Word Wines,

the lands in the vineyards have already been paid

for 10 times over.

They've owned that property or that land for over 400 years.

So that's not really passed on to the consumer.

If you, you know, bought a wine, a $50 bottle

of wine from the United States and a $50 bottle

of wine from France and kind of felt like, wow,

you've got more value for your money out

of the European wine, inherent land costs is probably one

of those factors in that.

Most vineyards don't produce any fruit

that you can actually make

into wine until what we call third or fourth leaf.

So that's three or four years that you have to wait

that you can't make any wine in yet.

You don't get any profit from.

So now that we're on our third or fourth leaf,

now it's time to harvest the fruit so we can make wine.

If you use a machine, generally you're using it to

harvest a large vineyard, right?

And so it's definitely economical that way

and costs less money.

If you're hand harvesting it's in areas

that you really can't get into,

you know, hillsides all of those different kinds of things

you get a better selection

but it takes a team of people which is more labor intensive.

And that is also passed on to you, the consumer.

So another factor when you plant

and harvest your vineyard is how many tons

per acre you're gonna produce.

So if you produce a lot of tons per acre,

seven eight, nine, 10,

you're gonna get more fruit, but less quality fruit

with less concentration.

Not a lot of nuance.

If you're doing one and a half acre

you're gonna get a better developed wine

with also a lot more flavor and depth.

Definitely if we're looking at California Cabernet,

you know, under $20, generally, it's probably harvested

at a pretty large ton per acre.

One and a half is kind of the standard

when you're looking at like some

of the top vineyards that you're gonna pay the price for.

So we're gonna move on to vintage.

Vintage is just the year that the grapes were harvested.

There's non vintage wines, but these are vintage wines.

So these are vintage stated.

We've kind of already moved a step up.

These are vintage stated wines, which is a sign of quality.

A good vintage simply means

that they were the prime growing conditions

to produce ripe fruit, to make grape wine.

You were up against mother nature

and it's constantly throwing curve balls at you.

Weather, rain.

I think one year that we had a harvest in 2010

we actually referred to that

as the Albert Hitchcock Vintage.

30% of the crop was lost

due to the birds coming in and eating a lot of the fruit.

You know, and vintage is important,

but I think for your everyday drinking wines

that becomes less important.

You know, so if you're looking

at something like these two wines here,

you're gonna consume these wines, have fun with them.

As we start to move up in price point, we look at, you know,

these couple of wines here

a lot of people use these as investments.

They're gonna appreciate value.

If you're really into wine and collecting wine,

then vintage matters, right?

And especially as you start to make more money,

a lot of the more details is the same thing.

The nuances and detail, you pay more attention

to when you start to spend a lot more money.

2018 is considered a good vintage in California.

When we talk about a good vintage,

it's not only the growing conditions,

it's also about longevity.

Perfect growing conditions for someplace

like California means

that we are gonna make these long live wines

that actually don't start giving

until 20 or 30 years after they've been made.

Especially when you're starting to listen

to wine critics.

At an everyday drinking level,

it's more about pleasure and consuming those wines.

And you need to pay less attention to vintage.

I always have a rule of thumb,

and great vintages you wanna buy from everybody

because it was hard to make bad wine that year.

And bad vintages you wanna buy

from the best because they show a track record

of making great wine consistently throughout the years.

How do you know if it's a good vintage or not?

By reading periodicals and what other people say,

talking to the winery and those things you can figure out

whether it's a good year or not at a certain price

point every year is the best year to drink to wine.

So now we're gonna move on to marketing and packaging.

So we're actually gonna look at the raw materials.

So glass, foil, labels and all those things

and the designs and stuff like that.

I would have to say

that this is probably not a major factor on the pricing.

As we're kind of looking at like all the marketing

for these four bottles here, you know,

there's a vast difference in price, but from looking

at everything collectively, there's not a vast difference

in the amount that was spent on packaging.

The consumer would never know,

but the idea from a winery side, if you're spending more

than $8 on packaging, that's considered expensive.

So that would encompass everything.

The glass is probably your major cost here.

We truly live in a day

and age now where you can't really judge a wine

by its label.

You know, they have really great labels

and fun labels and kitschy labels that actually

really have great wine inside.

I think a lot of times when we use that term marketing,

we feel like we're being duped or tricked.

Everything that you do is marketing,

even if you're anti-marketing.

As we look at something like this, you know

this could be the $300 bottle of wine

in the day and age that we live in now.

I think, you know,

maybe 20 years ago, this would just be unheard of.

And most people would bypass that

and look at something a little bit more serious

but those days are over.

You know, there's a lot

of great wine in interesting packaging.

So the last factor we're gonna talk about is reputation,

which I think for most people doesn't really come to mind

but it definitely plays a role in the price.

You look at some of these higher end wines, you know,

Mayacamas at 135, Diamond Creek, you know,

they've been making wine for years.

They've kind of set the standard for American wine making.

They are at the very tip top

of what the best we have to offer from the United States.

You know what you're gonna get, you know

what type of quality you're gonna get.

And thus that's incorporated in the price as well.

Versus some of the newer guys starting out,

they can't demand the same kind of prices

even if they were doing the same quality of stuff

because there's not that reputation there.

So they're still developing trust.

Whereas here they have over 50 years experience,

if not more,

of making some of the great wines in America.

Here, you can go right on their website.

These are allocated, you sign up for the mailing list

and they assign how much wine they wanna sell you.

So no matter what kind of vintage it is

a lot of people are still lined up and they still

wanna buy these wines based upon that trust and reputation.

Yeah, so if we're looking at these four particular wines

I think the biggest factors, if I was gonna rate

them would be region.

That's a big one.

Vineyard.

Then we'd move on to the aging and barrel storage.

And then from there reputation and then marketing.

I'm sure there's cynics out there,

people out there to say, Oh, this is $18.

And this is $300.

And you know,

the reason why that is that is because it's marketing.

That's just not the case in this particular instance.

There's definitely things that they do

that make this cost more.

There's a reason why these wines are priced the way

that they are.

And the biggest factor

in that is that you can taste the difference.

It's crystal clear that the wines are made differently.

They taste differently

and what it takes to make this wine versus to

make this wine is definitely reflected in the price.