 Wow! Matthew, you want to eat pizza? I want to eat pizza! Oh, welcome back to Exotic Wine Travel. I am your host, Matthew Warke. Hello, I'm Sharon Tan. Welcome back to the show. We are going to do a tasting video. It's been a while since we did a tasting video together. We are excited. Sorry about my hair. Still crazy. We're still in lockdown, but salon's open in a week. So I'm excited. Congratulations. We're tasting through a wine club that we actually love. So an Italian wine club called Roscioli. It's a wine club that deals with only small Italian producers, mom and pop type shops. They work with vineyards that are only farming organically, biodynamically. We really love the club, right? Exactly. Because it comes with an educative aspect as well. Because once in a while, they introduce grapes and producers that we never heard of, never even read about. So that's very exciting. At the same time, they also have some classic producers that we are more or less familiar with and it's nice to revisit some of their portfolio. I really love them because they're small producers. I love Italian wines. Italian wines can be intimidating if you want to try new things. Because of all the producers, all the different grape varieties, but they hand select some good stuff. And they give a lot of education on it, right? That's what you like about them. They also have a lot of videos on their website as well where they show the farming process or they show the people behind the wine. So there's a very intimate aspect to it as well. They have videos too where the semeliers tasting the wines like we're doing. Just so you guys know, we are affiliates of this wine club. But we get approached all the time by wine clubs. I have to turn almost all of them down. Last year, though, they sent me a box of six wines. And I was just completely shocked by the quantity and the diversity and the quality. They sent me six wines last time. I like five a lot. One I thought was interesting. I didn't enjoy as much. So we're going to taste through some today. This is the only wine club that we work with right now. Yeah, this is the only one. And like I said, this is the wine club we wish we would start. I love Italian wines. This box was so exciting when it got sent to me because there's some producers that I know. And then there's some producers I don't know, some grapes I know, some just real interesting stuff. You ready to get started? What do you want to taste? Sparkling? Which one? There's two sparklings. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. This one, OK. So we have the French. This is actually very cool. This is the Sola Uva French Accorta Dosagia Zero, which is a Brut Natour. This is a Blanc de Blancs Chardonnay. This is very cool. I'm glad that you chose this because you love champagne. You're hard on Blanc de Blancs and you're hard on Brut Natour. You don't think that people do it very well, right? Why do you think that people don't do Brut Natour very well? Lack of balance, generally. It's just lack of balance. I know having a Brut Natour is very charming, right? You don't add anything else to it. Whatever RS that's left from fermentation, you use it to balance the wine. But it's not always the case, darling. A lot of time, the acidity is too striking. It's just it's just not a good idea. The cool thing for those of you that don't know how classical method sparkling is made, what they do is they make a still wine, just like you would have a normal dry wine. Then what they have to do is add some sugar and yeast to start a second fermentation in the bottle. And then once the fermentation is done, they pop off the top. They sometimes put a little bit of sugar back in and then cork it and then it's ready to go to the market. The cool thing is Brut Natour means the second time they don't add any sugar. And what's cool is in champagne method wines, they usually add cane sugar. This producer only adds its own grape must, only grape sugar from the grapes that he grows. So I'm ready to get started on this. There we go. Okay, let's get into the shall we. 100% Chardonnay. I did a little research on all these bottles before I opened them. This spent a whopping 36 months on the lead. So let's get into, well, after the bubbles die. They're gonna see the pressure is quite. Shareen love champagne. So I'm excited that she's gonna be very critical about this. We're gonna be very honest about these wines. What's cool is in Rusholi, there's three tiers. There's kind of a basic tier, which as you're gonna see right here, these are lower priced wines, even though they're still great. The second tier, then they have an expensive collector tier, but all the wines are good. So this is from the mid-range tier, basically. What do we got here? Lemony, Parry, nice on the nose, very nice on the nose. Still, you know, Italy's the number one market for sparkling wine in the world, actually, by volume. This doesn't have a bunch of yeasty champagne-y notes. It's quite ortholytic, but it's not too much. Yeah, but it's got this nice, I guess, the age notes. When you have champagne, they have all the cuvées from different vintages that can blend at the age notes. Really clear, precise fruit, pear, lemon, white peach. Let's give this a go. It's slightly floral as well, very slightly. Nice, small beater bubbles. Doesn't have the richness and the complexity of like a champagne to blonks, but very enjoyable, what do you think? I like the balance here. It's really, really refreshing, very good level of acidity, and it's got sweetness from the fruit as well. The texture is not as soft as I would like, but in terms of the taste, I really like it. Sharp. What you're gonna get from blonk to blonks, which means basically a white wine from white grapes. This is from Chardonnay. Lots of acidity, sharpness. This is a delicious bottle of bubbles. Really delicious. It's not a super complex, profound bottle of champagne, but in the French Accord style, and this kind of methodical classical, I think it's pretty well done. Anything else that you wanna add on this? No, I agree 100% with it, I'm gonna taste a lot. I mean, I'm pretty much, I'm saying this is not champagne, so don't expect champagne, but a good, very good sparkler. I'm in the 90-point range of this. Do you think it's the quality is that good? I'm with you. Oh, and you're tough too, so. It's linear, it's very linear, but at the same time, again, for blonk natural is very balanced. Nice. Let's move on, shall we? Good job. Good job on the first selection of bubbles. They also sent us a Reisling Method Ancestral Sparkler, so I'm excited to try that. Let's try a red, what do you wanna try for red? Oh. Let's do this. Oh, okay, wow. This is a very, very well-known producer, the Le Ragne. This is the Trancone Toscana Rosa 2016. This is 100% San Giovese, this producer knows Brunello, does Brunello very well. This is a great example. I think what you need to do is you pick wines from great producers, you pick great producers and you kind of buy their base-level wines, right? Now, while I open this, you wanna talk about a wine that we opened last night, actually? Yeah, so I've never heard of this producers, have you? No. Yeah, so we tasted this last night, again. We thought, oh, it's just gonna be a nice simple Barbera de Elba to go with our fried chicken dinner and stuff, but this was stunning. This bottle exemplifies what Barbera can be. It's very fruity, it's very generous on the palate, very good texture, but yeah, at the same time, Barbera, what do you expect, just amazing, crispy, really fresh acidity. Let's retaste this again, because we tasted last night. I love it. I picked it last night because I thought it was gonna be, kind of, it was in there basic, I thought it was gonna be simple, just a touch, just a touch, kind of basic entry-level wine, and it turned out to be really good. Ritzy is the producer, Barbera de Elba 2017. The producer is actually in the, I think, Trezzo, which is actually one of the talents allowed in Barberesco. I don't see, oh no, you're right. Trezzo, okay, so let's give this, let's give this a go again, we already tasted this, but I loved it. And I think I like about Barbera, it takes a little bit of shriveled grapes really well, and it also takes on open really well, so over here you smell this really nice toastiness from the Olga, a little bit more like hazelnut, chestnut just sort of nose, do you get that? For me, it's got all the Piedmontese flair, like it's, you got blackberries, dried cranberries, hazelnuts, a little bit of earthiness. I think you love Barbera, right? I love it. The way I would summarize Barbera is generous, without excess weight and very bright acidity. Barbera, Barbera, right? Go on, I'm just gonna drink this. So anyways, I thought this was excellent. I have this written down on my notes as 90 plus. I think Barbera is just a fantastic food-friendly grape. It's like the San Giovese of Piedmontese basically. This is the type of wines that most of the locals are drinking, not the Barolos, not the Barberescos. This is, Sorry. If you like it that much, huh? I love it, I love it. Really soft, nice handling. I know I'm the scorer, but what kind of? For me? Yes. Definitely more than 90, I would say 91. 91 plus, even. Oh, you're higher than me. I think there is aging potential in this wine. I mean, you're not expecting a lot more from Barbera. I like it fresh, I like the fruitiness, but okay, I'd better stop off now. Anyway, so here we go. We have the Le Ranier, the Troncone. Tuscana Russo 2016 was an extraordinary vintage in Tuscany. I am, you know, from past episodes, I love San Giovese. So I'm, oh, sorry about that. So I am really looking forward to tasting this. Anything else that you wanna add on this? I do, I find the label interesting and even for me as well, knowing wine, right? As a typical consumer, if I go into a shop and I don't know anything about this wine, it's quite difficult for me to pick up a wine that looks like this because of the label. It tells me that it's probably a small producer, could be a little bit rustic, yada yada. So I think that's the virtual of Wine Club as well. It gives you the opportunity to get out of your comfort zone and show you wines with a certain level of, or trust, because you already trust a wine club, so you would taste the wine. This is true San Giovese color. Some of the wines in the South Tuskegee Cantee Classical have more low Cabernet blended into light color. You've got already kind of a brownish rim. You can see through it, almost peanut water, like in color, right? Like an old rule. What do you think on the nose? Are you like, are you like? No, I'm sorry. Oh, you don't like it? I don't. Are you like, are you like it? No, I'm sorry. Oh, you don't like it? I don't. I actually like it a lot more right now. You like it? You didn't like it at first. Well, that's the thing, right? It's always difficult when you just open a pop, open a bottle and then just taste it and smell it immediately. And I appreciate this oxidative style during fermentation. It's giving a lot more complexity. So what's with these wines? I happened last time in the Wine Club. I didn't like some of the two at first, but then after time I liked them a lot. That's why every time you have the opportunity, it's always nice to really enjoy and discuss and drink through the bottle of wine. For me, although I have to say, I'm about 89 out of 100 on this point. I think it's really good. Step one, I want with food. Doesn't have the oath to kind of push past 90, but I still think it's very good. So I think a nice, interesting little selection, right? Yes, and I think this is what's interesting as well. It creates dialogue between the both of us. I'm looking forward to it. This is cool. We're not gonna taste these now. We're gonna have to look for our article. They said, I didn't want to pick wines. I knew that I was glad that we were disagreed on this because there's a couple wines here. I know I'm gonna like like the Domino and Neck Eye. This is 100% Friulano. This is macerated for 60 to 90 days. I love this wine. I know this producer, Friulio Venizia Giulia. I'm super excited to taste it. They also said it's a Piero Busso, Mondino Barbaresco from 2016. 16 is also an extraordinary vintage in Piamante. I know I'd love this, but this kind of wine needs a lot of time to sit there and evolve. Do you know this producer? No, but it's supposed to be very good. So if you know them, put the link in the description box. Plus this Riesling from Umbria. I'm so excited. Methodist as well. So I don't know, guys, if you want, you can check out our link. You can get one cool thing too, by the way. These are not inexpensive wines. I was so shocked when I saw French Accortes usually roll in. I don't know what this wine is. Roll in the 30, 40 euro range. The Damien, I know this is a 40 to 50 euro wine. Barbaresco these days, at least a kind of 40 euro wine. So these are really high quality wines. I'll put our affiliate link in the description box in the discount code. You can get 10% off if you want to pick these wines. They kind of ship all over the world, which is kind of cool. Ah, Italian wines. So guys, if you like this video, check out the wine club, and please subscribe to our YouTube channel, Exotic Wine Travel. We will see you in the next episode. Ah!