 Welcome back to Exotic Wine Travel. I am your host, Matthew Harkie. And I'm Sharon Todd. Welcome to the show today. We have three humongous wines from Santa Barbara County to taste Bordeaux blend. So this should shape up to be an interesting episode. All three highly scored. You excited? You love big wines. It's just fitting because we are going to Napa Valley tomorrow for the Wine Writers Symposium. So let's we'll be able to go back. Just warming So guys, before we get started, I want to let you know that this video has not been paid for any way, shape or form. But if you do like these videos, if they do add value to your life, check out our guide to the wines of Santa Barbara called Sipping Santa Barbara. Recommended Wines and Producers. On Amazon, EPUB and PDF. I will put it up on the screen. We let these wines breathe just for a few minutes here because we've used our Corovin model to elite to pour them. I want to thank Corovin for sending us a test model to use. It's been fantastic. And we poured them into these beautiful Gabriel glass gold edition hand blown glasses. These are wonderful, wonderful glasses. I will put a discount code up for these glasses up at the end of the video. These these wine glasses have performed with Pinot Noir with Chardonnay with Bordeaux blends. I'm excited. Let's go for it. Okay, so Napa is not the only place and Napa is not the only places with great Bordeaux blends in California. You know, obviously Montabello is made in Monterey, Lake County, Alexander Valley have some good wines as well. But Santa Barbara County known for Chardonnay, Pinot Noir is bringing some heat with the Bordeaux blends. So what do you think? That's why we add exotic wine travel we can't go to Santa Barbara. Because you know, more inland, you know, it's a little bit cooler on the coast, Santa Maria Valley, Santa Rita Hills. But if you go inland, Los Alivos, Ballard Canyon and Happy Canyon, especially, you're going to get fantastic Cabernet 7 y'all Merlot Petit Verdeau, Cabernet Hall. Okay, let's get ready. Let's get into some of the wine stay. First, we have a new boy on the block, fairly young producer. This is the Boehner 40A vineyards, a state grown 2014 B3 from the brand new Los Alivos district, new Los Alivos American viticulture area. Yeah, it was established in January 2016. So it's quite difficult to find wines from Los Alivos at this time. Yes. This V3 is a blend of, it says right here, 60% Cabernet 70 on 20% Merlot, 20% Petit Verdeau, Dr. Bob and Vicki are the owners, nice, really nice people. This, these vineyards are actually the highest, I believe, in Santa Barbara County. They're pretty high. They have some of you on Blanc as well. And legendary producer Steve Clifton of Palmena makes the wines. You ready to get started? I believe this is 22 months in oak. Excuse me. Now with these Bordeaux blends, you're going to get color. They're not pitch black and super jammy, but you do get some beautiful color, kind of like this ruby with a garnet on the edges. Let's give this a, let's give this a little bit of a smell. It smells pretty warm weather to me. I wasn't expecting this. Beautiful nose. So red berry, black berry. Very Mediterranean style on the nose for me. Yeah, I get Mediterranean dry oats on the nose. Graphite to me. But to me, it smells in it. And even in the glass, it's not thick and heavy like a Mediterranean jammy ones can be. I was just looking at the smell. Beautiful aromatics, right? Are you digging that? Interesting. Very interesting. Are you not? Is it something bothering you in the wine? Let's taste it first. I don't really want to judge the wine just by the smell. Okay. Let's give this a go. A bit of gooseberry. Very interesting aroma. Mm. Medium to full body. Develop tannins. You can drink this now. For Bordeaux blend. Very tart. I love the palate. It's wonderful, right? Medium to full body, tannins. Tannins are not ripping my face off there, but they're just, it's juicy and nice, right? I like the tart finish on the palate. Yeah. It's juicy, but slightly creepy as creepy tannins at the same time. This is pretty not delicious. This is the type of wine that has complexities, has the bright fruits. I think easily going to score 90 something points by major critics. For me, I'm a 4.3 out of 5 on this. I'm a vino. That's why I would give this score. I think it's pretty darn good. What do you think? Yeah. Okay. 42 US dollars. Very small production. Only 225 cases of this wine were made. This is his reserve wine. So let's get, let's move on. I really like this a lot. I think I like this more than you do. I like the palate a lot. Let's move on here. We have the pairing red from 2014. All these three wines are 2014. The pairing is the second label of Honata, which is owned by the owner of Screaming Ego and Napa. Matt Dees is the wine maker. The pairing is the second label. Young vines that the fruit that doesn't make it up to Honata. You love Honata. You love the Bordeaux blend Phoenix, right? Love that line. This is 50% Cabernet with Petit Verdot, Cabernet Franc and Merlot in it. 22 months in French oak. Almost 10,000 cases made. 25 US dollars. These wines always deliver for the price. We tasted the Sauvignon Blanc on an episode earlier. I really enjoyed it. I've had most of the pairing wines, although I have not had the red. I have to admit I have not had the red. We've had Pinot Noir, we've had Sauvignon but not the red. Pinot Noir, Rose, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc. Let's give this a smell here. 25 US dollars. I sandwiched it in between some more expensive wines to see how it would perform. Do you know what's the predominant blend? 50% Cabernet. I get lots of Cabernet in it. You? Cassis? Quite a lot of Merlot too. Tar? Quite a savvy or plum? Like plum? The oak is very well integrated and all these wines so far. Is it huge? Much bigger. Fuller in the mouth. Tends slightly creepy and has some tobacco and chocolate flavors for me. This is going to be typical Cabernet drinkers are going to enjoy this. This has more red fruit which I'm attracted to Cabernet 7 Yon Merlot when it has more red fruit as opposed to dark. So I like this. This is still bringing a lot of weight on the mouth. This is fuller body complexity. I think this is quite good. What do you think? For this price, yeah. It's got quite a bit of aging potential. I like that it's simple label. Sometimes you just got to think about why people who don't really know wine that well or people who don't usually drink wine, how are they going to choose wine? And I think this is one bottle that stands out. It's easy. Just red wine. It always delivers. I'm 4.1 out of 5. That's why I would put it on my Arvivino account. I think this is very good. Very, very nice. This is rich. This has aging potential like you were talking about, right? This would shed some baby fat after a few more years. Nice extract. Ready? Okay. Good job. Anything else you want to add on this bad boy? No, I actually want to go back to this and later. I like this wine a lot actually. I like this wine a lot. The next is a producer that I am a huge fan of. All three of these wines are made from a state fruit, which means these wineries own their own vineyards, which I like a lot. This is the Grasini Family Vineyards Articando Proprietary Red Wine Blend 2014. This, if I remember right, is 40% Cabernet Sauvignon. The rest, Marlowe Petit Verdeau, Cabernet Franc, and 45 US dollars. We liked the 2013 vintage of this in the past. We like the Cabernet Sauvignon. I am ready to give this a go. This is from the Happy Canyon, furthest inland off the coast in Santa Barbara County, so it's a little bit hotter. Wish I had more couples. More graphite-y. This has more color, I think. This is a little pair. Just wait a little bit more. This is more floral on the nose. Do you get the graphite? A little bit, yeah. But I think this is more flower driven. I get more violet. Plum? It's more plummy and black fruity to me. Which one's heavier in the glass? Yeah, this one's a little bit heavier. This one's a little bit lighter in color. I'm liking this. This has some complexities. This has quite a bit of stuff going on that's not fruity. Quite peppery as well on the nose. Let's give this a go. I'm sorry, not pepper. More like a rich, licorice smell. Sometimes when you get out of these Bordeaux blends, people that like Coca-Cola, they have to get a Coca-Cola finish on this. I do, I do. What do you like us? I do. I agree with you. Coca-Cola, Cherry-Cola. This is the biggest in body, surprisingly, at 25 dollars. This is the quote-unquote lightest in body, still medium to full body, full full body, full body too. What do you think? I think this is more flower and fruit driven. This is a fuller body, like you said. I think a lot of people are going to like it. I think people who like dark beer, it's got nice, a little bit of that bitter tenons on the finish. Personal preference again. This was, it took me a while, but I thought it was interesting. A lot of Mediterranean herbs on the nose. This is really dark, dark fruit. It feels weighty on the mouth. I think this is more drinkable now. This is still very, very, very good wine, but I'm surprised how well the pairing is shaping up to this. I mean, to me, I like the Cabernet Sauvignon a lot more. To me, this is still very good Bordeaux blend at 4.1 out of 5 easily for me. What else do you think? And great aging potential. These two both are so dense. You just want some baby fat to shed off after a few years. I want a big steak with this too as well. So, good job by Bordeaux blends. I mean, you know, the cool thing about, if you want the California bright fruit, but you don't want to pay those Napa prices, these wines, I mean, look at $25, $45, $42. I know it's not cheap, but for premium wine with that California flavor, you're getting relatively more value. Is it entry level price fall? Yeah. So, these, I mean, just beautiful wines. Anything else you want to add on these things? Go for it. Just drink it. So guys, I'm going to put the discount code for the Gabriel glass up on the screen right now. You get 15% off the standard glass or the alpha decanter. We are not affiliates, so just buy it with confidence. We don't get anything out of it. If you do like our videos, it would help us out if you checked out our guide to the wines of Santa Barbara sipping Santa Barbara recommended wine. Check out these producers. I will put the links in the description box. You can get on some of the mailing lists. Luckily, I think the winner for me today was the new boy on the blog. What? So, and you know what? He's not very popular yet, so you can get these. This has made large production easy to get fairly easily get from their website. This too smaller production, but not super well known, but consistent wine. Yeah, guys, so if you like this video, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. As I'll take one travel and I will see you at the next episode.