Sommelier Tries a $1,500 Bottle of Red Wine

[Dan] Does it taste expensive?

Wow, you know, it's so funny.

That is a dumb question [laughs], Dan.

It is not a dumb question,

because that's what most people would say.

Does it taste like an expensive wine?

As my mama used to say, you eat [beep] long enough,

[beep] tastes good.

Sorry, cut that.

Don't put that in there, I'm just kidding. [laughs]

Hey, I'm sommelier Andre Hueston Mack,

and today, I'm tasting a $1,500 bottle of wine.

There's lots of time and effort that go into this bottle

that brings it to this price, but is it worth it?

We're about to find out.

[funky music]

In a past life, many of these bottles were opened

by me or members of the staff.

I was a sommelier at Per Se, restaurant here in New York,

and before that, at the French Laundry.

Generally speaking, whatever retail is,

you double it, and that's what it is in the restaurant,

so this bottle of wine could be $3,000 plus in a restaurant.

We paid $1,550 for this particular bottle at retail.

That's a lot of money, right?

Like, if you have a roommate,

that might be your portion of the rent.

I think for some people, you know,

it just doesn't make sense.

Well, just right off the bat,

like, there are definitely signs of quality.

First, I'm gonna take a look at the label

and point out some more details

that represent what we're drinking.

[mellow music]

So, this is Harlan Estate, 2017, Napa Valley.

This is their proprietary blend,

so this is their red wine blend

made from Bordeaux varietals.

You know, so looking at the bottle,

just straight up, there's no real signs

that say that it's a premium bottle of wine.

Most of the time, you wouldn't be able to encounter it

in a wine store that would have it

and be able to touch it, right?

Like, it's locked behind glass.

Like, those are the things

that would probably tell you that it's special.

I think when they're talking about, on Succession,

how everybody's wearing no logos, right?

This is simply about the wine that's inside of it

and about it being an ultimate luxury good,

to say the least.

It has like this pinpoint drawing.

The illustration on the front

is actually the same illustrator

who does the illustrations on currency, on money,

so you'd have to think

that that would make this wine expensive, right?

It would definitely make it rare in that way.

Those seem to be all added things,

so when we talk about why it would be expensive

or why it would be special, you know,

packaging is one of them.

One key thing that you have here,

the bottles are numbered.

That's starting to hint at you like, okay, hold on,

this is not an everyday bottle from Napa Valley.

This is like a security code,

this is the authenticity of this particular bottle.

People really don't counterfeit $1 bills, [laughs] right?

You know, they counterfeit

the most expensive, the $100 bill,

and so when you start to look at something like this,

you start to say, well, this wine has some pedigree.

It must be rare enough

that it has these security codes on it.

Even on the back, it, you know, doesn't give you much.

Doesn't even give you the breakdown of the grapes,

it just says Napa Valley red wine.

It's a combination of different grapes.

You know, if it said Cabernet,

it would have to be at least 75% Cabernet

or any type of grape that was listed on there.

You don't know anything about this bottle of wine.

You're just looking at it and you're trying to say,

why does it cost that much?

But you have to peel back layers of the onion,

you know, do some research to understand.

So it's estate grown and bottled at Harlan Estates,

and it says Oakville, California.

You have to know a little bit about Harlan Estates

to understand why it is special.

Harlan is an estate that was founded

back in 1984 by Bill Harlan.

It's about 240 acres, pretty large,

but only 40 acres of it is planted as vines.

40 is very small, so I mean, how that impacts is

that you're not making a lot of wine,

and that's how you get quality fruit.

They're trying to make the best wine

that they can make from the fruit that they have.

It all sits in the Oakville region of Napa Valley,

and wine is much like real estate,

it's about location, location, location.

The fact that this wine is not only just in California,

more specifically it's in a place called Napa Valley,

more specifically it's in a place called Oakville

where all of this is estate grown.

You can have your own vineyards that are on the estate,

that's considered estate grown,

that you basically grow the grapes,

harvest the grapes, and make the wine.

So if you're not growing the fruit,

then you're at the whims of someone else's,

you know, the way that they pick

or the way that they want to farm.

Estate-grown fruit basically translates

to quality in a lot of cases.

All of the fruit is controlled

by the chateau, by the winery.

One hand gets to touch it, and that's a sign of quality.

You know, Napa Valley was discovered

as being this great wine region

for growing grapes here in America due to microclimate soil.

When it's a coveted place, prices for land are expensive.

It could be a million dollars per acre,

and then, you know, it's somewhere

between 35 to 45,000 an acre to farm.

Generally, you don't make wine

til what they call the third or fourth leaf,

and then it might spend, you know, 18 months

to 24 months in oak,

so you're looking at five or six years

before you even produce any type of bottle for a consumer.

That definitely has an impact on the price of the bottle,

and we haven't even talked about the cost of oak barrels

and all the other special things

that different wineries do to produce great wine,

but it definitely has an impact on the price.

So the next thing I want to talk about

on the bottle is the vintage, 2017.

So a vintage is when the wine was harvested.

According to California law,

it doesn't have to be a hundred percent,

but lots of times, it's a hundred percent.

In 2017, these grapes were harvested and made into wine.

Generally speaking, you don't know when it was bottled.

What's more important is when it was harvested.

Older could be better to a certain extent,

but in wine, generally speaking,

great vintages command a certain price.

We have great fruit that comes in great growing conditions

that allow for the wines to not only taste great,

but also have longevity.

Bad vintages have a lot to do with the weather patterns

where, you know, maybe there's too much rain,

there was a frost, there was hail,

there were all these things that happened

that could affect the vintage, and 2017 was a good vintage.

I wouldn't say that it was a great vintage,

but in great years, you can buy from everybody.

In bad vintages, you still can continue

to buy the blue chips,

because they consistently have always made great wine

no matter what was happening.

Something like Harlan Estate is considered a blue chip.

They had this, you know, iconic status

as being some of the best wines made in America.

They made some of their greatest wine in 2017.

You know, what's interesting,

as global warming is a real thing,

you know, growing conditions change.

With the fires, you know, becoming more prevalent

in California, even in Oregon,

it makes it really hard to have great vintages.

You know, mother nature is changing,

and it's really hard to kind of make great vintages

when there's a lot of stuff going on like that.

All right, I think I'm ready to open it up and taste it.

How about you guys?

[mellow music]

You know, I think the price point

and the rarity of this wine could spook quite a few people.

But you know what, I would open this

the regular way I would open anything else.

I've had the same approach

because I've worked in restaurants,

and maybe the advice I'm giving you is

because I worked in restaurants.

It's so funny, 'cause I say that,

and then watch, I break the cork in this thing.

All right, you just gotta go into it

and just be brave with it.

Let's get in here.

You don't need a really expensive opener,

and I find something with a lever here tends to work best.

So let's see here, we get in there.

And you wanna go slow, we'll pull up.

Right, we got some there.

Get our lever here, keep going, keep going.

This is normally where it breaks.

I should probably stop talking to you guys.

Last bit.

At this point, I just kind of pull and twist.

Yep.

So pretty clean.

I'm gonna double check the vintage.

Some of them don't have vintages on it,

but check the markings on the cork.

So it says Harlan Estate, it says 2017,

2017 matches the vintage that's on the front,

and we might be good to go.

It passed the first nose check.

Normally, I'd open it

and just kind of stick my nose over it.

I would want to decant this wine,

so I want this wine to breathe.

So decanting it, aeration, what we're really talking about

is introducing oxygen into the wine,

and that kind of really helps slowly kind of break it down,

break down some of the tannins.

But also, I feel like it might have some sediment in it,

and that's when, just like, as the wine starts to age,

pigment and particles kind of fall

to the bottom of the wine.

It's not harmful,

it's just a better wine drinking experience

if you don't have these little sea monkeys

floating around in your wine.

So, we'll go ahead and grab a decanter,

and because this is not that old,

I feel like what's best decanter here is something

with a wide surface to area range.

So you look at something like this

that almost has a disc, this is kind of perfect.

So normally, what I would do is use something as my base.

This is not technically old school.

So I'm gonna turn on the light in my phone.

So I want to take it,

and once you start decanting, you don't wanna stop,

'cause you don't wanna stop going back and forth

and you're kind of like mixing up the sediment and the wine.

We wanna grab the decanter.

I wanna put my thumb on the side here.

I don't wanna rest glass to glass; that's how it chips.

But basically, what we wanna do is

we wanna take the bottle of wine, rest it on my thumb,

and I wanna start pouring.

And basically, I'm illuminating just right after the neck,

and I can see when the sediment starts to come out.

When it starts to come, I wanna pour slower

and trap it in the shoulder of the neck.

And my hand is getting really tired,

'cause this is an awkward pose,

and I don't want to drop this.

All right.

Smells great.

Just kind of stir a little bit here,

just to kind of introduce a little bit more air.

Smells great, don't smell any corkiness,

any wet newspaper or cardboard or anything like that,

but the true test would be to taste it.

How should you drink a wine like this?

You know, I think where it matters is glassware.

I think glassware is important.

You want to have the thinnest possible lip to it if you can,

but if you don't, you still wanna have a wine glass,

and I think you work your way back

to the best option you have.

And I've seen, you know,

riding on a bus in wine communities,

going to one vineyard and the next

and drinking it from the bottle.

Like, the idea of just being able to enjoy it, I think,

is what it really comes down to.

If you want to drink it out of a paper cup,

then you drink it out of a paper cup.

Lots of iron ore, redcurrant.

[mellow music]

This is actually really beautiful.

On the nose when you smell it,

you know, it doesn't smell like jammy

or like over the top fruit,

but it has this fruit element to it

that's just like intriguing and alluring,

but also when you taste it on the palate,

it's not like that.

You still get the same elements,

but like, it smells like it could be overwhelming

and thick and luscious,

it's not, it's really, kind of, really refined.

You know, it's graphite, right?

It reminds me of like shaving my pencil in second grade.

You know, a lot of that comes

from the minerality in the soil.

Wow, this is, this also smells faintly,

you know, this like mint or eucalyptus.

There's a herbaceousness to it that's not overwhelming.

I don't think that you have to try a lot

of quality wine to know the difference.

I think you taste it and you can automatically see

the different levels of quality in it.

You know, I think the biggest difference

that jumps out to me is that like, it tastes like real wine,

and I know that might even seem elitist

and feel like, well, what is real wine?

You know, a lot of wines in a certain price point,

definitely 15 and under,

there's so much other things added to it

that it doesn't taste like a real product.

It's like different things added for color

and flavoring and all those kind of things.

This tastes real, you know, it tastes like real branches.

It just has like this natural realness to it,

where the other thing feels like it's manmade in a way.

When I talk about this wine being balanced,

you know, what we're really talking about is,

there's not an element of it

that sticks out like a sore thumb.

It's not over alcoholic, it's not too ripe and fruity,

acid isn't out of balance, it's not sharp in that way,

it's not overly oaked.

All of these things feel really complete

and feel like they're working together,

which, to me, produces, you know,

what we talk about being a balanced wine.

If we talk about, you know, terroir,

does it shine through in this wine?

I believe that it does, right,

it does have some of the hallmarks

when you think about Oakville

and when you're talking about iron ore.

You can taste that in the wine.

I think, for a lot of people,

the hump to get over is the price.

They'll be like, well, nothing could taste that good.

There's lots of different factors

on why his wine costs so much,

but the idea is being able to taste them for yourself

and understanding that, you know.

So would I say it's worth it?

I would say yes, but I generally don't

spend this kind of money on wine.

Actually, I don't spend this kind of money

on wine, actually.

Does it taste like an expensive wine?

I wanna be very careful of the way that I answer that.

Like, it does.

It actually does, right?

I'm sure there's a lot of people out there,

blah, blah, blah, blah, but it does.

It tasted like somebody really cared about it.

And you know, it gets dangerous at this price point.

You can see why people

in those kind of restaurants are nervous.

I think, to be honest with you,

only you get to decide what you like.

If you're looking for a bottle of wine

of this stature or this type,

considering that, like, if you have the means

and the desire to buy a wine like this, it can be purchased.

Go to your local wine shop.

The second place, probably maybe the best place

to get to a wine shop is to look online.

There are some pitfalls in that thing.

In the wine industry, we talk about provenance,

like, where did this bottle come from,

who bought it, where it was stored, all those things matter.

If you had a rare bottle of wine and it was stored

on top of somebody's refrigerator for eight years,

it's probably not good.

You wanna make sure that the wine came

from a reputable place and was treated well,

and I think that also kind of removes you somewhat

from the counterfeit market.

The wine industry is coming a lot closer in understanding,

having counterfeit proof measures that are put on

from chips in the cork to holograms.

I think it's more important to buy from reputable places,

you know, people who have a reputation

for selling rare wine.

That eliminates, you know, a lot of the risk.

There is a reason why this wine is considered one

of the best wines made in America

and included in one of the best wines in the world.

You know, my relationship with wine is all exploratory.

For me, it's not to find a favorite

that I want to drink for the rest of my life.

That feels kind of boring.

Now, maybe drinking to find the wine

that I wanna drink the last 48 hours of my life,

that might be different.

Taste as many wines as you can,

whether they're expensive or not.

I don't play in that realm of buying these kind of wines,

it's just not my thing, but I do get to taste them a lot.

I feel like because I don't pay for them,

you can really discern whether or not it's worth it.

Right, you know what I mean?

It's like you watched a bootleg copy,

you're like, [beep] I wasn't paying $14

for that movie anyway.

Right, [laughs] you know what I mean?

It's like, that was crap.