Transcript: EP 15: Lucky Rock (Sauvignon Blanc) vs The World. Tasting of affordable SB's across the globe

- So we learned Sauvignon Blanc, can be very different,

- Very different. but accepted everywhere.

- Everybody has a chance to be. I'll put anything in my mouth. Hi and welcome to the 15th rendition of Cellar Rats into Seller Rats where we talk about wine and stuff

- And who might you be?

- I'm Jesse Inman

- And I's Aaron Inman, most of this episode. Today, we're gonna bring back a little popular segment called Lucky Rock versus the World. We're gonna taste Lucky Rock Sauvignon Blanc this time. Last time we had Pino in a war against some of the most well-known regions in the world for producing Sauvignon Blanc. So I've always been a big proponent of Sauvignon Blanc here at Lucky Rock.

- True.

- It's probably, It might be my favorite white wine varietal and it all started when I was young and dirt poor and Sauvignon Blanc was cheap. That was one of the beautiful things Sauvignon Blanc at the time. You could buy great Sauvignon Blanc for pretty cheap. There was a winery in Alexander Valley called White Oak that there's Sauvignon Blanc was, I don't know, it was around $14 a bottle. And I loved it. My girlfriend at the time, now wife also loved it. And so we split a case of the Sauvignon Blanc and that was like a major purchase.

- Sauvignon Blanc bringing people together, one bottle at a time.

- Exactly. So, to me Sauvignon Blanc has been something that I've enjoyed for a long time. Crisp, clean, drink it all year round but love it in the summertime. So Sauvignon Blanc is a lot of flavor profiles. To say that you liked Sauvignon Blanc, where you could like, Sauvignon Blanc from cool climate, warm climate. They're gonna be quite different, kind of traditionally they're crisp and clean. They have a little bit of this, if you let them go more varietally like they're in the cooler climate that they like. And maybe they're a little bit higher, a little more productions on the actual vines is a little bit higher. You're gonna get more of that kind of grassy, citrus, lemon, lime, green apple. But then you can go all the way to the other side of the spectrum where maybe you're keeping the crop down a little bit. You've got a warmer area and you're getting more of that nectarine, peach some of those tropical notes that you can get. You'll still get a little bit of grass from them, but some of those warmer climates are gonna take away some of those varietal characters that you get for cooler climate. So that's kind of the spectrum is really large though but that's kind of generically where it is. It's kind of that minerality, crisp, clean, bell pepper, cappy versus mandarin, orange, orange blossom, grapefruit those kinds of things. It's a pretty big spectrum. I've seen everywhere in between.

- So because Aaron's better at slaughtering label names, brands, et cetera, than I am. I'm gonna go ahead and allow him to introduce to wines.

- Everyone's got to have a talent, so we're to taste four Sauvignon Blancs and then one Sauvignon Blanc blend. We're gonna try the 2019 Lucky Rock County Cuvée Sauvignon Blanc. And then we're going to try, this is Domaine Mardon from Quincy. Quucey?

- Quincy

- Quo?

- Come see, comes up.

- Come see, comes up. Then we're gonna try Klein Constantia from South Africa which is one of the oldest wineries around, I believe it started in the 1600.

- Crazy.

- Which is pretty interesting, yeah. And then we're gonna try a Mt. Beautiful from New Zealand, Canterbury area. We tried their Pino. And Pino versus the Lucky rock versus the world Pino.

- Yeah.

- So full circle there.

- Yeah. And then the one hidden back here behind. This is only 25% Sauvignon Blanc and 75% Sémillon which is a classic blend in Bordeaux. This is a Château Graville-Lacoste. Like what you see here? Want to see more of it? Hit this video then like and share and subscribe to our YouTube page.

- And if you'd like, what you see and you'd like to taste what you see, you can order our wines on our website. Check it out. Do a research and shoot us any questions you might have.

- And in the words of Doc Holiday,

- You're a daisy if you do. All right. So we're gonna get into the tasting portion.

- Yeah. So basically my glasses are like this. And his and here one, two, three, four. One two, three, four.

- Yeah, so we've got New Zealand, South Africa, France, America, and that's the order.

- Sounds good.

- All right.

- This one smells slightly reductive but in a nice way, it's really rich.

- It's honestly like I've seen the descriptor canned peas. Used on a wine before, never smelled it. This smells a little bit like canned peas.

- Full of country goodness and green penis. Right, that's terrible. I quit.

- It's got a little bit of like a more of a gold color to it, which a lot of times because it's in a barrel.

- Oxydation and color from the wood.

- Whereas you go to the South African, this one looks like it's seen no oxygen whatsoever. This thing has an air tight some bitch.

- Some bitch.

- Green bell pepper?

- A little bit of green bell pepper, a lot more citrus. There's a lot of citrus on there too. Kinda like living lime soda.

- It's tutti frutti.

- And this one has much more of the mouthfeel that I expect from Sauvignon Blanc.

- This one here?

- It's bright.

- Yeah.

- It's crisp. it's a little winner.

- A little warm Herbal.

- Yeah, that's pretty classic. Classic cool climate.

- Interesting. This one's got like some, more like kinda nectarine peach.

- You have stone fruity.

- More stone fruit.

- That's some wheat too.

- A little bit of minerality.

- Viscous. It's a little bit cotton candy-ish in the mouth.

- Yeah, I agree with you. Or there's something a little bit like tutti frutti in the mouthfeel that makes it taste a little kind of fakey.

- Yeah. I get that from Sauvignon Blanc sometimes. I'm still to this day not quite sure what the component or what the treatment is that makes it candy. Maybe it's just the vineyard. But it sometimes taste like

- I'm gonna let

- grapefruit. in here It's the cornea, they slipped the cotton candy at it.

- The cornea.

- That toothless wonder. He knows what he's doing. We just lost our cornea. So now we're gonna go to some Lucky Rock. Nice segue there.

- Mmm hmm.

- See, that to me has a lot of like that more of the orange blossom, citrus blossom, nectarine.

- Yeah. But this one was produced with more oxygen. So the aromatics are not as big but the mouthfeel a little bit more rich. So just this person was like just overflowing with aromatics that the Lucky Rock's a little bit more subdued.

- The South African is the style that I really liked the most when I'm looking for Sauvignon Blanc.

- South African?

- Yeah. Like of these, I really liked the South African. And then the Lucky Rock is kind of a hybrid of the two which I really liked.

- See, this is a little bit too much, green bell pepper, a little too much for me. This one's too candy for me. This one. I didn't like their Pino when we did it. It was, I think we even referred to it as Mt. Not so beautiful. But I think that this one is kinda up my alley.

- It's a little too reductive for me.

- See, I usually am very sensitive to reduction and I kinda like it in here.

- Yeah.

- I'm not sure why.

- It's a little rubbery for me. I don't dislike any of these. I will say that I have proclivities towards some of them,

- I don't know proclivities means.

- I looked it up earlier and you're welcome. So yeah. Fun lines. I mean, these are all what? These are all sub 20. So these are some good Sauvignon Blancs when you're talking about like, I think the Mt. Beautiful might be the least expensive at like $12.99.

- Yeah.

- Up to maybe the Quincy at like 20 bucks.

- In any way people don't can Sauvignon Blanc more.

- Well, people that are on the cutting edge will do wow. Look at that.

- [Jesse] We've gone and done it.

- [Aaron] We've gone and done it. Canned Sauvignon Blanc y'all.

- Anyway, shameless plug

- For the Corneas.

- Okay,so as a little bonus treat was growing,

- to ourselves.

- 'Cause you care, we're gonna do this for you.

- And this is actually the most expensive of the lab too. This is more like a $25 bottle.

- That was it.

- Yeah. Château Graville-Lacoste.

- Pretty good idea.

- Yeah, pretty good. So this wine is clean, minerality, citrus.

- The Sémillon adds a little bit of viscosity to the mouthfell.

- Yes, definitely dominant

- It's almost got more of that like Kiwi fruit and kind of almost like a little bit of leaf tea fruit with the citrus. It's nice. It's it's really nice actually, I like it quite a bit.

- With Sauvignon Blanc does as a blender adds those components but doesn't dominate the party.

- Yeah, so this was interesting. I think Lucky Rock held up really well against the rest of the world. No surprise there right. But totally different styles. You know these wines were all super solid, but very different. I mean, you could say that you like Sauvignon Blanc here and not necessarily like, so I'm gonna walk over here. Which is kind of an interesting varietal characteristic. Yeah. The Pino is known for being much more consistent throughout but even Pino can change. Sauvignon Blanc is known for being distinctly different and it' shows here it's vary different from place to place.

- Wide range, super wide range. So I say, get your Indiana Jones on get into your local wine store. Not BevMo! Though. Unless they're gonna pick us up soon. Indiana Jones? What the hell you're talking about? International. He's always flying around, I'm sharing. Go follow him. You're on your own idol.

- Okay. So just a little rundown on how will we like all the ones? Go ahead Aaron.

- The wrap up? So we differed a little bit but for me I actually liked the Domaine or the Chateau or it's, you know, it's that one.

- He like this one.

- That one I enjoyed. I actually liked that the most. The Klein Costantia and the Lucky Rock, I kind of have is a nice tie. They're

- Distinctly different.

- They're different, but I liked them both. And then for me probably next would be the Quincy. This one. And then for me coming in last was the Mt. Beautiful. But again, not a bad wine just for me. My palette a little bit different.

- Yeah. And so that just goes to show like normally I would because I am very opposed to reduction. I would normally probably hate this one but something in it I really like. I think is the kind of reasoning characteristics.

- Sure

- I didn't know what it is.

- That is there, for sure.

- So I think I appreciate this one and I liked this one and this one, the South African and the Lucky Rock. Again, like them both, but for different reasons. And then this one fell a little short for me. It's this one here.

- Yeah. And what did you think of a Chateau, Domaine?

- It was good. I don't know if I'd pay more for it than I would bring you these for save.

- So basically to sum it up, Sauvignon Blanc has a lot of different styles. It's at a pretty fair pricing.

- It's dictated both by wine-making and by environment. And then yeah, price point is diverse but it doesn't need to be. I think you can get a really good selling a bump for a good price.

- And you're also learned that lucky rock basically holds its own against the rest of the world.

- Yup. We're we're right in there. And one the first person to say that.

- No there was another guy.

- We met him. We gave him a bottle. He was like pretty good.

- Oh, now we're going to lose the homeless audience. We're losing so many audiences today. Ah, should we go for another one? No, we got to get out of here.

- Let's get out of here.

- So I'm gonna go with a little Lucky Rock for my glass.

- Sweet.

- See ya.

- Chao

- on the next episode.