Transcript: EP 11: Review the Reviews #1

- Wait, are you giving us a better review cause your wife works for Kendall Jackson?

- Oh no.

- Oh, wait. Do I like it because one of my friends is a chef for Kendall Jackson?

- when I saw that the wines were both in the Jackson family portfolio. Oh, no. No. Pick another brand.

- I have go to holiday dinners with these people.

- Oh man, I sure hope I like 'em.

- Well, hello ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the 11th episode of Cellar Rats into Seller Rats. Your favo, second fav--- One of the shows you watch on YouTube or whatever.

- In the double digits now. It's nice. Feels good.

- I'm Jesse Inman.

- I'll be Aaron Inman, all episodes. So today is the inaugural installment of the review of the reviews.

- But what exactly does that mean?

- Well, if you'd shut the up maybe I will tell you.

- I was literally just being nice in asking. I don't care.

- I overstep my boundaries and apologize.

- Excepted.

- So wine critics, third-party reviews, websites, opinions, butt holes. Everyone's got 'em. So.

- True. I have two.

- But do they always line up? Do they mean anything? We're gonna tell you what we think. We're gonna do two wines today and we're gonna review them versus the reviews that they've already received more critically and publicly.

- And I would imagine you'll be able to find out reviews on the back of an adult magazine, if those still exist.

- So we've been in the wine business for awhile now. Our entire adult lives. I mean we're only 23 and 24 years old but it feels like longer than that.

- I am a man-child.

- And over that time, we know that wine reviews, critic reviews help your wine brand succeed. It's an unfortunate truth or maybe a fortunate truth. It just depends, I guess, on how they've treated you.

- Yeah. And depending on who's reviewing us, what score will we get, what mood we're in. We're like, "Is this full of or is this legit? Who do you trust? Who don't you trust? And so is it a pay to play? You know, I've heard all the above. And so we figured we'd just, we're gonna review your review. We're gonna review your review.

- Up in here.

- Yeah.

- In that time we've been in the wine business, we've worked at August Briggs Winery in Calistoga. We had our own brand Roma Lily for 10 plus years. We had Lucky Rock first, what, since 2013 now. And we've gotten our host of scores. Some good, some not so good, some super inconsistent and confusing.

- Sometimes we're going to the store and I'll think, like I've never had this wine and maybe it's a newer variety. So I'm like, "Can I trust this score or something? But other---

- You're looking for a third party endorsement.

- Yeah. But, can you trust what they say?

- It just depends on your philosophy of how you look at one and two. It is an aesthetics thing. So putting a number and a rating on an aesthetic thing is hard.

- Well, for example, you think rating a wine's color? Who gives a about color? As long as it tastes good and smells good. Right?

- I didn't, until you told me I should. There was actually a woman from a winery in Washington that sent the same. She bottled the same wine under two labels but stated that the winemaker was male on one of them. And she was the winemaker on the other one. And the one that was reviewed by the the label that stating the man as the wine maker, actually scored a like six or seven points higher.

- So, can get kind of crazy. We're not conspiracy theorists but it is a little bit of a situation sometimes. So we're gonna talk about it. We're gonna taste a couple of wines today and have our own context to it. Yeah. You judge me. I'll judge.

- You judge me. Well, I'm gonna blog about it and I'm gonna put it on the internet where you can never punch me in the face.

- I hope you have a budget to sue me for defamation.

- So almost every critic uses some version of like a 10 point scale or a hundred point scale. It was really Robert Parker in the mid seventies that power housed the a hundred point scale. There's the five puffs, the five magic star. The crazy thing about the hundred point scale though is that if you get an 80 on the hundred point scale, that's all people focus on. But if you get four out of five stars, people are like, "That's pretty good."

- I mean, but that's basically an 80%. But you're less likely to drink an 80% wine or 80 point wine. But, Yeah. You'll drink a four to five wine. It's all psychological.

- It's psychological. It's really trippy. And at the end of the day, a lot of this, I think is not so much about like, overly criticizing the critics. I mean, we're gonna do some of that cause it's fun. Right? And it's gonna get tons of subscribes and likes and shares. But at the end of the day, it's really more about getting you, the people, the audience, the common folks to try more wines. You know, don't be afraid of that wine that scored 88 points that you're buying for 19.99 at a local store called Oliver's.

- What are we doing with these?

- So today we're gonna taste two wines that are on both sides of the spectrum.

- So a higher scoring and lower scoring.

- Higher scoring, lower scoring. We don't know which one's, which one is which. But we're gonna--- taste 'em.

- Oh, we'll know. Oh, we'll know.

- We're gonna taste 'em. If you've seen our wine hacks episode---

- We're betting a thousand.

- We are super good at tasting stuff. Alright. So for wine number one, we're gonna try La Crema Pinot Noir Willamette Valley 2018. Can find this wine a lot of places. It's pretty widespread.

- Pretty good.

- Around $30 is the price point. I can tell you right off the bat, we talked a little bit of on color on Pinot Noir earlier, but this color is beautiful. It's like Garnett. Nice nose.

- And color is attached to pH. So if you gotta a higher pH in the wine, which means there's a little bit less acid, you get more purples. And if you have a lower pH, which is more stronger acid, then you get more heavy, like intense reds. It smells pretty dang good.

- It's good. It's got some earthiness, some spiciness and fruitiness. It's a little richer than sometimes I associate with Willamette Valley. I think that I would give this wine a probably a solid 90. I'm gonna go with the 90.

- I'd give it a point break more than, I'd give it a point break more than a tombstone. You know what I mean?

- You know, I have no clue.

- Neither do I.

- No, but it's good. Like I said, it's got Pinot characteristics. It smells like Oregon. It's a richer version of Oregon than I'm used to, but it's nice. And especially if---

- It's nice. It's a nice wine.

- For 30 bucks, it's a pretty tasty wine.

- Good weight.

- And we all have things. We all have things that we weigh higher when we're tasting something. For me, I really liked the mouthfeel, the texture of wines. And this really has a kind of a velvety nice texture. And I'm giving that a 90 versus like maybe 89, 88 because it has this texture that I really find enjoyable.

- And I'm gonna give it, it's pretty good.

- Qualitative. Nice.

- Yeah. This is a 2017 Carmel Road Monterey Pinot Noir. Again its made by the same family as the La Crema. So they're in this kind of the same umbrella. This is dubbed as a green wine and I think it's a---

- Vegan possibly.

- Vegan wine is what they tout. And so again, it's a little bit lower price point so that might have some influence on ratings.

- You're gonna find it somewhere between 15 and $25 depending on the retailer.

- So---

- And it's in a screw cap.

- It's a screw cap. Yep. Right off the bat, we were talking on color. Color should not necessarily dictate the score, but at the same time, if something looks like it might be wrong with the wine because it's a little oxidized.

- Yeah. It's not that this wine, it looks a little beat up in the glass. It's a 2017, So it's got one more year on the La Crema. But at the end of the day I think it's showing a little premature oxidation possibly.

- But if this was a Nebbiolo that color would be perfectly fine. Right?

- When we were saying earlier that like, it's that color doesn't matter. It just the score should be aligned with a weak. If this wine is got a palette and it knows it's amazing and the color is a little bit off, So be it. At the end of the day this color is showing some stuff in the nose too.

- Yeah. Color is correlated to quality in some form of fashion.

- This has a little bit of like it's kinda got that strawberry rhubarb kind of nose to it but then it's got a little bit of those kinda dirty earthy.

- I would guess this is less wood barrels and more wood products like staves.

- The wood product seems a little disjointed from the wine itself.

- Yeah. And you know, sometimes screw caps can make things a little bit disjointed tasting at first too if they open up a little bit. I can kinda mellow out.

- And how I really loved the texture of the first wine. This one's got a little bit more of a watery mouthfeel and it's a little bit more like prickly.

- Yeah. I wonder if the alcohol--- This one's 13 five alcohol. Do you have a alcohol in that one?

- 14 five. So what percent?

- Oh, this is sip certified also. So that's sustainability.

- Right.

- So that's why you might get a little bit more of a watery characteristic. 'Cause there's a little bit lighter alcohol which means there's less glycerol content in the wine. So you'll have a softer, lighter mouthfeel, typical. Well maybe not softer, but a lighter, less sweet mouthfeel from a lower alcohol wine.

- So overall this wine, it's not flawed, maybe a little bit of premature oxidation on it.

- But it doesn't really---

- But it's a little underwhelming.

- It doesn't blow my socks off. So to speak.

- Yeah. And for me, if I'm gonna stick with my scoring I would probably give this wine. You know, I like to use the true hundred point score where like if I hate this damn thing, it's failing. I'm gonna give this a 79.

- Yeah. I'm gonna give it, it's all right.

- There was good and bad here. Right? This wine had a texture that we really liked. The romatics. It reminded us of the area it was from. The other wine. It wasn't bad. It just was a little lean, a little washed out. Not that, you know memorable. Well, turns out we were actually more aligned with the critics on this one than, not that we didn't think we would be but we just discovered that we are. The La Crema was scoring between 90 and 93 points with most critics. Whereas the Carmel Road was scoring more like between 83 and 87 with the critics.

- Solid wine but I wouldn't, or decent wine, but I wouldn't rush out and grab it if I didn't have a necessity for it. It's okay.

- And the Willamette Valley Pinot Noir, I would say go get yourself some of this. It's pretty tasty for 30 bucks.

- Yeah.

- So at the end of the day our review of the reviews, decent job reviews. So thank you for joining us on episode number 11. The first installment of Cellar Rats into Seller Rats review of the reviews.

- And if you have any wines that you would like us to review shoot it in the comments and we will pull 'em, taste them and then we'll see what other people said about 'em. And see if they agree with you and see if they agree with us.

- Thank you for joining us on this episode number 11.

- Cheers. Bye-bye.

- See yah on the next episode.