Reviewing 3 Wines You Can't End August Without

In this episode of the GaryVee Audio Experience, I sit down with Matthew from Wine Library for the August Wine of the Month Club and break down three wines that feel like a throwback to 1970s winemaking. I share why sparkling is my favorite category of wine, why this Big Basin Pinot is more Katharine Hepburn than plastic surgery, and why this 2019 Boca Salvo Brunello reminds me of the '85s and '88s I was tasting in 1994. I also discuss why people pick sides in wine and why loving one style doesn't mean being anti the other. Sign up for winetext.com 🍷 You'll learn about: • Domestic Sparkling Vs. Champagne • Old School Vs. Modern Winemaking • Big Basin Old Corral Pinot 2021 • Boca Salvo Brunello 2019 • Different Wines For Different Occasions

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hey, podcast. I thought this would be fun. I'm gonna show you, well, not show you, I'm gonna give you the audio of something I just did with Matthew Toro over at Wine Library. Normally, I do this with Brandon Warnick, my best friend, so I think it's funny that on the rare occasion, he's not doing the show with me, I've decided to put this on my podcast, but listen to is Matt and I doing the Wine of the Month Club. Please go to winetext.com, winetext.com, sign up for that. We'll be promoting the Wine Club here shortly, so you'll just be able to reply to that text, but you're about to listen to the monthly Wine Club breakdown of us talking about three different wines. And I hope you enjoyed something a little different, something new, original for the podcast. And hit me up on Twitter, or email, or somewhere on social,

• 0:44Speaker 00

  and let me know if this was enjoyable and you want a little bit more wine content on my podcast. And definitely go to winetext, that's W-I-N-E-text, T-E-X-T, dot com, and sign up for the best wine service. This is the Wine Club that's part of this service, and we will have ways for you to sign up for that soon. Hope you enjoy this, hope you learn something, and here's the episode. This is the Gary Vee Audio Experience.

• 1:15Speaker 00

  Hey, everybody, and welcome to, this is the August one, right? We're a little late on this one. August Wine of the Month Club. Pretty excited about this. Have three wonderful wines here, as I'm sure you all know, and let's just get right into it. Matty, what have you got here with the bubbles?

• 1:30Speaker 01

  Started off, private property, property, rather, Santa Lucia Highlands 2022 Brut Sparkling Rosé Wine. Now, this is 58% Chardonnay, 42% Pinot Noir, giving it that beautiful rosé color. This is traditional method, so this wine is gonna have a little bit of that champagne yeastiness to it. It is classic style, you know, the fermentation's done in the bottle. 93 points, Wine Enthusiast here, bright, fresh, elegant sort of style.

• 1:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, really, if any OGs here from my Wine Library TV days, no, sparkling is my favorite category of wine. And I've just been really impressed with what's going on domestically. I think we continue to close the gap on champagne, which is obviously the end-all, be-all of sparkling wine. And this private property really blew me away, which is why I wanted to make sure it was here for a couple of reasons. One, you know, Labor Day parties, I think some bubbles to cheer off the summer is always a good idea. Also, this is a weird one, but I wanted in the case because I'm a big fan of sparkling wine for tailgate season. And so

• 2:40Speaker 01

  It's a fun one.

• 2:41Speaker 00

  I drink bubbles at my tailgate. So football's here any day now, and I can't believe that, and I'm excited about that. And you'll definitely feel this being a great sparkler. And then, you know, just we get into the fall, and there's a lot of, you know, birthdays and anniversaries and things of that nature in September. A lot of people get married in that month, and so highly recommend this as an anniversary wine, but you can feel it, the complexity is amazing, the fruit's beautiful, and I hope everybody enjoys this.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, sparklers are definitely very food-friendly as well. So no matter what you're eating, no matter what time of the year it is, you can, normally rosé is reserved for the summertime, springtime for a lot of people. Sparkler like this can go all year rounds, you know, pair with any meal, really.

• 3:23Speaker 00

  It's actually a really good point. Like, you know, friends, if you go, you know, especially New York restaurants in September are amazing. Just the produce season's incredible here in the city, so alive in September, and one of my favorite months, if not my favorite month with Manhattan culture. And getting sparkling with your, you know, crudo, or salad, or shellfish, like, it's just, it's so fun. And so, start that in your repertoire. If you have, if you're a red wine drinker and you haven't started your journey on sparkling wine, come join the sommeliers and the masters of wine and us wine nerds on this journey, because it's a great addition to your game.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  Agreed.

• 4:05Speaker 00

  All right, let's move it on. This Pinot should be a lot of fun.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  Big Basin Vineyards, the Old Corral Pinot. This is a 2021 from Santa Cruz Mountains, as you see right here. 13.2% ABV. This is not a big 14 and 1/2, 15% California Fruit Bomb, big Pinot. They do a more Reserve style here at Big Basin. Estate vineyard site in Santa Cruz Mountains here. You know, you got a lot of whole cluster fermentation, not neutral vessels, so it's not something that's gonna have heavy oak influence, it's gonna be very natural, kind of hands-off style of winemaking. Double 93s from Enthusiast, and Venice, also 92 from Robert Parker's Wine Advocate. Let's give it a taste here. It should be like an earthy savory sort of style.

• 4:43Speaker 00

  It really is, and it's really, it's really elegant, and very balanced. You know, I always love this beef jerky kind of meat strawberry thing that I get in Pinot on my palate. And there is a little bit of that soy sauce element, the salt that I tend to like so much that I feel in beef jerky as well. And, but the red strawberries, and the kind of red fruit, the cherries, the raspberries, the red cassis, it really, it really comes across here. And then you get that kind of like charcoal, smoky kind of rendition on the finish.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, the wine is very elegant, soft, the fruit is so supple, but very real on the palate. It's not super candy, super massive. It's very real, it's very subtle. And also, the color of the wine, sometimes these Cali Pinots, you look at them, they look like cabs almost, especially at an app.

• 5:35Speaker 00

  It's a real good call-out. Like, this is not sea smoke, this is not

• 5:38Speaker 01

  No.

• 5:39Speaker 00

  You know, this is not

• 5:41Speaker 01

  Red colors, for instance, like something like that.

• 5:42Speaker 00

  This is not Costa Brown, this is not extracted, this is not to blow you away with its velocity and viscosity and voluptuousness. This is kind of like, a lot of Pinots have gone the way of like, plastic surgery and like, fake lips.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:58Speaker 00

  This is more like Katherine Hepburn, right? This is more classic beauty, more subtle, and you really feel it.

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• 7:03Speaker 00

  Let's move on.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  All right.

• 7:07Speaker 00

  I love this.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  Stand us out. And I'm pretty sure that this Brunello is actually gonna have probably a fairly similar color to the Pinot, just that sort of light, almost the sort of bric-ous sort of color to it.

• 7:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, a little darker.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  A little bit darker. This is a 2019 from Boca Selva, comes from Sensi Winery, Brunel di Montalcino 2019. This has 94 points from Wine Enthusiast. 2019's a fabulous vintage in Brunello. This is 100% Sensi Vase, as always with Brunello. Traditional aging process here. You have, you know, 36 months in large oak barrels, nothing imparting too much flavor, and then one to two years in concrete slash steel after that. So it's a five-year total aging process before this guy is released here.

• 7:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's really good. Really sour red cherries, really complex fruit overall, and just really well done, like, just smooth.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is not the style of Brunello. It's gonna be the more modern, bombastic sort of, you know, oak-influenced Fuller-style Brunellos. This is an old-school kind of classic-style Brunello. Still has good fruit, though, at the age. It's not like it's too tannic, and, you know, the fruit is hiding behind the tannin and the structure. It's still drinking really well right now, even though it's a 2019. Still has room to go, but then a wine that's definitely drinking well if you pop it and open right now.

• 8:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a light old Brunello, like, which has been the flavor that I've been gravitating towards. This is not a Portimali, this is not like, you know, Argiano. Like, this is definitely, you know, very honestly, you know what I'm gonna say about this August Wine Club for everybody's watching? This is just a good throwback to 1970s wine, right? We have a California sparkler that tastes like an actual champagne.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:55Speaker 00

  We have a Pinot Noir that is much more similar to the great Burgundies of the 70s and 80s, when like, we weren't fooling around with all the steroids and peptides and all the other, you know.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  Whatever's popular at the day, it's an

• 9:07Speaker 00

  slang for all the modern winemaking, which is great. And by the way, I'm a fan. Like, sometimes I want triple chocolate cake, but other times I just want a steak.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:16Speaker 00

  And I would say this Brunello and Pinot are much, much, this is the Brunello, brother, that I was tasting in 1994, that I was tasting from the 85s and the 88s. I'm like, oh, this is Brunello. And then, we went through the Robert Parker-ification of wine for 30 years, and now we're in this beautiful place where we can have both.

• 9:38Speaker 01

  Absolutely, yeah. You kind of appeal to both palates, depending on what sort of winemaker you are. There's a lot of winemakers who have stuck to their guns since then, since the 70s, have just been making it the whole time. They let their wines fall out of fashion, and now the wines are back into fashion.

• 9:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  And some winemakers sort of adapted with the trends, and now we're back in this sort of style as well.

• 9:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, I would say, I would say for me, I hate or, I like and. There's a time and a place, me and my buddies, pre-gaming before a huge Knicks game at a steakhouse in New York City, like, give me Harlan.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, give you the Harlan, give you the Bev and Sellers, give you the big bombastic cab.

• 10:17Speaker 00

  But, me, over a business dinner, that's gonna last three hours, where I'm gonna catch up with a good business friend, you know, I'm gonna look for, you know, a more moderate Puyac Cabernet-based wine that doesn't overpower my food, because I'm having something a little lighter, and I wanna like, lock in and not like, celebrate. So like, there's, sometimes you're in New York, and sometimes you're in Vegas, and sometimes you're in your backyard in the suburbs with your family, and they all require different styles of wine.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's great winemaking styles for all different occasions, and just because you like one style does not mean that you have to be anti the other style.

• 10:54Speaker 00

  And that's the big problem in wine, Matt.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:56Speaker 00

  People pick sides, and I think that's crazy.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Right. Or they're a, you know, they're a Bordeaux Piedmont Burgundy drinker, and they don't want to try anything from California, even though, as you've seen today, we had two wines from United States, which are both very, very good, and

• 11:10Speaker 00

  And very, and very, and to your point, very European.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  Very European, very elegant style.

• 11:15Speaker 00

  We'll see you in September, everyone. Matty, thanks for coming in for Brandon today.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  No problem at all. Thanks, everyone.