Hello everybody and welcome to Wine Library TV. I am your host Gary Vaynerchuk and this my friends is the Thunder Show a.k.a. the internet’s most passionate wine program and as you can see, I’m in a hotel room. Now ironically in the same hotel in LA as the hotel episode the other day so I’m not going to go into the little mini bar here and pull out another, let me just make sure. I’m sure I didn’t do this. Oh yeah, clearly they didn’t see the episode where we panned the selection. Matt, let’s link up the hotel episode for anybody who hasn’t seen it. But today, what we are going to do is I decided that I want to do another episode you know I kit myself, I’ve got a hustle and have my flip cam to there.
I went to Peters and I bought some wine which is a funny experience. Now I understand what everybody likes. I haven’t been on wine shop for a long time. It’s addicting, it’s like fun—look at this label. A lot of brands popping up a lot of California brand and you check those guys out, good retailers in LA, johnpetes.com. I said Peter is a very official kind of guy. Having a good time here in LA—just got on reading all the comments or not all of them but quite a few of the comments from yesterdays episode. Big ups to those guys, I know it went over extremely poorly. As a matter of fact, that’s why I picked up the Suxx Shiraz because that’s what 90% of the people leaving comments felt about the show, maybe 96%. I apologize because I hate the bashing they took. I could take the bashing. I’ve got the emails. I read the comments. I read all the blog post about jumping to shark.
I get it, I understand. People are passionate about this show and I appreciate that. I’m not going to say much more than this. Thank you so much for caring about this show enough to leave your comments. It hurts when you let down people but I think those guys are geniuses and maybe the format didn’t work out. I thought it did. Plenty of people did and many didn’t. So I’ll leave it at this. You try different things. I do put that in our show everyday and that’s that. But we did pick up the Suxx Shira so it did inspire the next move. Now we’ve got three wines here today. It’s a great play by the way when you’re traveling because I did ask for a corkscrew. I asked for corkscrew and they brought one up. I also asked for glasses. As you might remember last time we used a tumbler.
So probably have wine glass here today. Let’s give way into the first wine. Mollydooker, 2008 The Violinist. It’s a really pretty package. $24.00 at John and Pete’s, 90 points Jay Miller but it is a very interesting variety that makes a lot of noise in Portugal and it’s actually a big component to Madeira, a long over due subject here on the Thunder Show so I promise that we will get to that. Give me one second. So Madeira is a great play and it is something that I think is massively underrated as a dessert wine and it is something that we definitely we’ll look—that we will look to cover on Wine Library TV in the future.
Anyway, $24.00 pretty expensive Verdelho but Mollydooker, big brand, very sought after stuff, great press, has long been a darling of the wine advocate, Robert Parker. The Shiraz is a coat like thing that begets into some high level stuff. We’ve done Mollydooker in the show before. Some great color on this Verdelho. I like Verdelho very melon, great variety that I think you could a lot of damage by itself definitely in the Portugal, Spain, but I think California is a producer that I think rocks it out with this. None of these wines of Mollydooker are ever bashful. Let’s give it a sniffy-sniff.
Great nose! Very pretty nose actually—a really nice kind of like cantaloupe meat pair on the nose. Good fruit little action, let’s make a little whirl. Nice wine! Big and loaded! Just gorgeous like pear juice flavor like if you just took a pear and just squeeze the living crap out of it. I feel like that’s what’s coming across a little bit here. I do get a little heat on the back-end in room temperature. You’re going to expect it but not as much as I expected. And if you chill this wine, I think you could probably go away from that. Greatness sitting in the back-end! I get a complete like straw attack like an army of straw. They’ve picked up out of the hay and they came with their guns like an army just marched at me and went directly into my mouth with that pear juice so that you can get that pear, a little melon definitely straw action for sure which is very typical. Let me give it one more shot.
I like this wine. I’ve been tough on Mollydooker’s. I’ve always felt that they’ve been a little bit over the top but this one is really doing it for me. I like the acid—I like white wine in general. Are we ever going to get into a place where white wine could be respected as much as red wine? This whole notion if you’re just getting into wine, this whole notion of red wine is serious in the real stuff and white wine is an entry level stuff. It’s absurd. This is another example of why that’s true. 90 Jay Miller, I’m going to tag team you up—with Jay Miller, that’s with me tagging him into the ring. I'm with you Jay. I’m going 90 plus on this. I like it a lot. I like it with back-end acid that will go extremely well with grilled fish and salmon, things of that nature and maybe a little pigeon that my brother-in-law Alex and I have for my father-in-law Peters, happy birthday again.
We’ve got a little-oh no, not pigeon, partridge, excuse me. I think this one would go extremely well with a partridge dinner. And for $24.00, I actually think it’s a little bit of a plan. I don’t know if John and Pete’s has a discount. I don’t know where it is ranging these days but I kind of like it a lot. Kudos to Mollydooker, popping out a very good white wine for the price of like the body three to four years aging I believe. And this, with the acid in the back-end, I think you could go a little bit longer than most people think about Verdelho and that’s a very, very good start to the Thunder Show in a hotel room as we travel.
Let’s move on and let’s go right now to one of my favorite all time wine, and as soon as I saw this, I snagged it Sean H. Thackrey, one of California’s really interesting producers. I caught myself with a wine called Pleiades. This is the Pleiades blend. It’s a non-vintage wine and here you go. It’s $23.00 and it’s a 2008 because in the back it says in January 2008, the 16th edition. This is the 16th and that’s what you see right—I don’t know if you’re going to make it out right here but the XVI, so Pleiades XVI. It says in the back, the 16th edition bottled in January of ’08, so this is a newly bottled includes and this would be in order of what is most dominant in the wine. So if you have ever read this little fun pack. If you have ever read the blend at the back of the bottle, it’s going to always by law I have to tell you which one is the most of it. It’s like an ingredients play.
Syrah, Barbera, Petite Sirah, Carignane, Sangiovese and Viognier to name but a few, so to get a little frisky in there, I’m going to use different glass, why not. A little bit whiter in color by the way—it’s important that this is extremely light actually in color. And again, maybe I’ll just grab—maybe you can see the color coming through it. It’s a little bit lighter, just turned it off. I’m not good with these electronic things. They might deceive this job. Anyway, let’s give it a sniffy-sniff. It’s kind of challenging. Let me just go one more sniffy-sniff. I get a little bit of raspberry coming through. A little action, a little bubble on the nose as well. A little cranberry coming through it now a little bit. So opening up a little bit as I slowly a little bit, little grinding this wine and I’m going to grind it and then I’m going to sniff in.
A little bit of cranberry coming through, a little chocolate and let’s give it a whirl. Pleasant fruit coming through. A little bit like—almost like a radish kind of flavor coming through on the back-end and it’s like radish, almost like a radish dipped in real raspberry jam. So like a red radish dipped in raspberry jam and it got a little bit of a radish on the back-end. I kind of like it. Blackberries and cranberries are definitely defined in this wine. It is a medium body play and I would love with this wine. Let’s give it a whirl. I’m not kidding. Definitely a play. Not a bad effort. I have some good tannins on the back end extremely well for such a young wine. It’s a 2007 basically. Again, non-vintage, just remember that so that it can use—they have some ’06 Barbera in the barrel and if they wanted to blend it, they could that’s why it’s not vintage driven wine.
Again, very light in color. Almost like Pinot Noir like in color. It would last for about another three to four years in my opinion. Solid stuff! You can see it with the body language and the tone you know when I bring the thunder I get excited. This is not a complete thunder. And when you call it a drizzle, it’s like a solid rain storm. I’ll be a little 88 points for this wine. It’s serviceable again at the price that I paid which was $22.99. I would probably give it a pass. Let me call (310) 657-3080 to see if I can get my money back. I’m just kidding.
Yeah, I mean it’s okay. I kind of like it. I kind of like it but it is a little thin and lacking charisma and depth and that to me is a little bit of a problem with this wine. Let’s move on. Sucks! Suxx 2006 Shiraz, this wine folks rolls in at $20.00, it is 91 points Jay Miller. It’s also very interesting. It’s 59 listed but in the review, Jay Miller says that—Dan Philips who by the way is an absolute marketing genius from grateful palate. If you ever see this little logo Grateful Palate, you know that you’re going to get some big, big wines.
His partnered with Chris Ringland, the producer of this wine really isn’t Suxx. It is something that’s called RWines right there. They make a lot of different wines and it’s a partnership between Chris Ringland, a world famous wine maker and Dan Philips as an amazing importer or marketer of Australian wines, $20.00, 91 points. This wine is 59 alcohol but Dan Philips submits to Jay Miller it’s close with a 16/17 and I’m going to push in dessert wine alcohol levels, they really want to bust balls with this. They just want to crush it over the top just completely like gold plated you know like gold plated spoons audacity over the top. Forget thunder like atomic bomb level fruit. I’ve always been a proponent of ‘relax’ but there is time and place, do you know what I mean? I mean who am I that sets this for my palate? It gets a little too much but 1998 and 1999, 2000 and 2001 vintage, I was all about it.
So for my own palate, I got too much. That being said as I’ve been off of it for five or six years, maybe you Vaniacs know, I’ve been getting a little bit more seduced by the fruit bomb lately. Let’s see if that trend continuous a little sniffy-sniff. You know, considering that that’s a monster, I’m not smelling that much like insanity. I’ve got blueberries and black berries for sure. One more sniffy-sniff. Good fruit like good ripeness and nothing that really scares me yet. Let’s give it a whirl.
Good fruit, nice black handling, it’s not as obnoxious as I expected it to be. One more shot. Very viscous on the palate, I almost took like a paint brush and painted up the palate to that thick. I almost feel like I’m biting the wine. It’s chewy, this wine is extremely chewy and I don’t mean like what was that? Those are awful impression. I’m sorry. I’m pretty excited about that but almost you know very chewy, I feel like I’m biting a shoe for a couple of reasons. One, because it’s a little chocolatey and two because its chewy. It’s just you want to bite this wine and it is very viscous big wine. Very popular I think with a certain drinking memo and that’s kind of intriguing to me. This is definitely a controversial wine, one way of the other. You're either in or you’re out. That was again another awful impression. I’m sorry. If you got that one, you're watching. Bravo!
Anyway, good wine—anyway, good wine, solid length, big finish, big, bright, blackberry really interesting almost like black raspberry flavors which is very different than red raspberries and episode 148 and not as hot as I expected. I expected this to be a monster heat bomb. It is not I think Mr. Ringland who is an amazing wine maker once again has able to control the audacity of the fruit and alcohol. I’m kind of liking this wine. It’s not totally my style. Not my normal style but for $20.00 on a—what the heck! Let’s just drink some wine until we like pass out kind of thing that you and your girlfriend or wife can do, just chilling, you’ve got no where to go, no driving intent. You want to drink a bottle. This is going to be a lot of fun, this is like a fun, fun friend that you invite let’s say once a month to your house or let’s say on the internet and watch a wine show everyday.
So I like this wine. It’s won me over. I’ve been trending towards bigger fruit. Your palate is allowed to evolve and change and go up and down. It’s okay just because you’re an old world Pinot guy, it doesn’t mean that you can enjoy different style once in a while. Break out of a mold people. I like this wine and I’m proud to say that I love this Suxx. And the reason we brought it because you thought yesterday’s episode suck but this wine doesn’t sucks. I’m going 90 points, one point lower to Miller. I think it’s a very fond fruit bomb. You need to know what you’re getting yourself into and about a year ago, I probably scored this wine 85 points on Wine Library TV. But your palate changes and I kind of like this wine.
Let me give it a one more shot. Okay, 89. The candy just gets me a little—question of the day! In today’s episode, in the comments, on the road—you know what, leave a comment. You know what, if you ever wanted to leave a comment, do it tonight, I’m gong to read it. Thank you so much. You, with a little bit of me—good show by the way. 90, 89, 88—good points for like $75.00 hopefully, right? You, with a little bit of me, we are changing the wine world.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services