 inexpensive food-friendly red Italian wines. We're gonna talk about it in this video. Hello, hello, hello. Welcome back to Exotic Wine Travel. I am your host, Matthew Horky. We're here in Istria, Croatia, our last few days at the beautiful Villa Familia in Salina. We've been spending a month of our lockdown here in Croatia, here at the Villa cooking, tasting through samples, producing content. We're about to leave. I'm gonna cry because I absolutely love this place. It's beautiful. That's why you saw the beginning clip in the video. But that's not what this video is about. This video is about inexpensive food-friendly red Italian wines, a category I love. You know why? Not all of us are ballers. Can throw out 30, 40, 50, 100, even $1,000 a bottle. Not everybody can do that. In fact, a small portion of the population can. But the cool thing about wine is wine is not just for snobs. Wine is for everybody, and there's wines at every price point to accommodate that. So we're gonna talk about three here today. I know that this one's widely available in the U.S. These ones might be what I do know. I know this one is for sure. What I do know for sure is all these wines come in at below $20, actually below $17 U.S. with one coming in at under $10, which I'm excited to taste. So let's get started. I just love Italy. I'm there about eight to 10 times per year. I had a couple scheduled trips already this year. Then all of a sudden the whole coronavirus thing came and knocked off some of my plans. I can't wait to get back there as soon as possible because I love it. Italy is a fabulous country for food and wine. Maybe the most exciting country overall if I put together scenery, landscape, nature, food, wine. I think Italy takes the cake for me, and that's why I like the wine so much. It's so cool because when producers make the wine, I feel like they think about what dish they want to pair it with. So that's really cool. Well, further ado, we got a fairly young wine all the way down to an older red. Let's get started, shall we? First of all, we're going to Tuscany. This wine is a fairly new wine. This is the prettiest Cabernet Sauvignon 2018 from Morema in Tuscany. The deep south of Tuscany, the southwest corner, actually used to be an ancient lake, then a marsh. Now there's actually a lot of vineyards growing there. This estate is owned by the famous Volpaya in Chianti Classico. So this wine is widely distributed. I think you can find it in the U.S. for under 17 bucks. Yeah, Cabernet Sauvignon 2018. Let's give this a go here. Let's see how it smells. For some reason, if you watch the show, you know that myself and Cherine, we gravitate towards Tuscan Reds. I always think that Tuscany offers tremendous value for money. Of course, you have your bombs. You can be balling, spend a lot of money on mesetto, soleia, ornelia, sasakaya. But there's also a lot of wines that deliver a lot of value. This estate focuses on value, although we tasted a brilliant super Tuscan from that last night called the Prilet. That's a Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot blend, but that was about 38 bucks. This is less than half the price. Let's give this a go. It's a warmer part of Tuscany, so let's see if it reflects and makes an easy drinking Cabernet Sauvignon. You don't give them any quality cabs for under 17 bucks. I thought expected this to be a big ridiculous fruit bomb. It is not. It's leafy actually. Has some greens in a good way. I thought it would be more Tuscan. I was thinking more red cherry, red berry fruits. This actually has some dark berry, some casus notes. A lot of earth, kind of like a mud note. Fairly complex for a wine. This is inexpensive. Let's see if the palette delivers. Wow. Very good Tuscan Red at this price point for a Cabernet Sauvignon. It's so young, but it's so drinkable. You have just a slight grip of tan. It's not overly stringent, not drying. You can take this to a number of wine drinkers. What's awesome in this wine is the acidity, which Italians love in their wines. I'm actually very surprised by this wine. Very surprised. I don't expect any of these to be rich, deep, profound, complex wines, but I would highly recommend this, especially for somebody that likes Cabernet Sauvignon. This is inexpensive. You can get around the world. I think for value for money play, I will go somewhere in the 89-point range off to retaste it for my final score. Just know that it really impressed me. Let's move on. This is the Famiglia Berta Barbera d'Asti. This is the Belmont. The winery is Berta Paolo, or the brand is Famiglia Berta. This is Barbera d'Asti. Besides San Giovesi, Barbera actually might be the most food-friendly wine grape in Tuscany. In Italy, this is from Piemonte, from the village of Nizza Manferrato. For those of you who don't know, in this area, you have the Nizza crew, which is a fantastic crew for Barbera. It just rinds that really outperform their price point and the age. This wine from the winery rolls in eight euros. So, let's see. I love Barbera. Barbera can be inexpensive. You know, this part of Piemonte looks exactly like Barolo. We were just there last summer in the region. It looks exactly like Barolo. Rolling hills, vineyards covering, except they focus more on Barbera versus Nebbiolo. Nice, really nice light red color. Let's give this a sniff. A little bit darker, denser Barbera. What is this? 14% alcohol. So you're going to get, for Barbera, a typical note. You're going to think dried cranberry. I used to eat a lot of dried cranberry when I was a kid. Dried cranberry, strawberry, hazelnut. Actually, it has a little bit of saltiness going on, which is kind of weird. I don't usually see that in Barberas. Pretty complex and nice nose. Let's give this a go. Once again, you get the tingly, juicy acidity in this wine. Really nice. Not overly huge, complex, but you know what? Just really nice, nice drinking wine. I love to drink Barbera. I love it, actually. In the past, you know, I was thinking of, it's kind of a crappy grape because it can be pretty rustic and have high acidity. I just want a little more length in this, but overall, for under 10 bucks, this is a wine I also recommend. When you're in Pima, you're going to have some tagliano, you're going to have some braised meats. I think this wine hits it on the head. I'm around the 88, 88 point range on this. I still think it's very good to end their 10 bucks. Really can't go wrong. These two wines so far are crowd pleasers. There's no mistakes in them whatsoever. They're just going to be really enjoyable wines to drink. Let's move on. A wine that you might be able to find around the world, Montemagil. This is the Chianti Classico 2014. This is the current release. I just had the 2013 Chianti Classico Reserva just a few days ago from them, which is great. It just took some time to open up. This is mostly San Giovesi, just to touch them or low. You know, Chianti kind of gets a bad rep, a bad name. I personally love Chianti Classico. I love the sour cherry notes you get in San Giovesi. This is from the village of Radda. It's actually quite high. I've been to Radda before. We're talking about 400 to 600 meters above sea level. If we're trying to let me convert that into feet like 1200 to 1600 feet, it's high. It's not typical Tuscan terroir. It's almost like mini alpine terroir. 2014 actually was not a good vintage in this part of the world, especially in Italy. Why? Because it rained before the harvest for a long time. Grape swelled up. There was mildew. I'm sorry, there was rot. Producers really struggled. But that doesn't mean you can't find great wines in poor vintages. Just so you know, a lot of times in poor vintages, producers, they have to make wine. They have to make money, right? So some of the top wines, the fruit that they use for the top wines, it gets declassified and into the standard bottling. So maybe this is pretty good. Let's give this a go. Got some nice browning on the edge. Let's give this a smell here. Classic sour cherry cedar kind of notes that you get in San Giovesi. A little bit of pine, which is interesting. It smells pretty darn good. Let's give this a go here. Considering the vintage, this is very good. This is like classic chianti classical. It's very good. Don't expect big plush, fruity, oaky chianti classical. Expect a leaner chianti classical with a little bit more linear on the palate, a little more austere. But I like this type of chianti classical a lot. I am not even thinking about it. I'm a hardcore. I'm going, I think, straight to 90 points on this bad boy. I think it's really good, especially for this price. And on the websites, should get around Italy for 16 euros. It's about 17 bucks. All three wines. Actually, I didn't know. I know that these two wines would be clean. This one, some of the Barberas from that area can tend to be a little rustic or a little bit oaky, can be a little off. But all three wines showed really, really well. San Giovesi, Barbera, Cabernet, Sauvignon, all from Italy, all under about 17 bucks. Worth going out, especially during these odd times, so you can drink them every single day. These are the types of wines that I enjoy drinking on a daily basis. I don't always need big, profound, complex wines. These are simple, food-friendly and delicious. So let me know, guys, are you drinking any Italian wines? Are you having any favorite varieties? Let me know. Guys, if you like this video, please subscribe to our YouTube channel, Exotic Wine Travel. I will see you at the next episode.