 Welcome back to Exotic Wine Travel. I am your host, Matthew Horkey. Hi, I'm Shereen Tan. Welcome back to the show today. We are going to be tasting some wines from Arizona today. Really cool. You know wine is actually made in all 50 states and there are a lot of states like Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, starting to obviously gain ground. The biggest producers in America obviously are California, Washington State, Oregon, then New York. Virginia is up there. We did a Virginia trip, but I'm excited about tasting these wines. You two? Yeah, it's the first time I'm tasting our wines from Arizona. Yeah, me too. We watched, or at least I know I watched a documentary called Blood Into Wine. It was all about James Maynard Keenan. He's the lead singer tool. He has a winery actually in Arizona making wines, getting some decent press. But this winery is called Aridus. Aridus. Arid means from arid, dry from desert. They sent us this pack of wine. I am excited to taste them. We're tasting out of Gabrielle Glass Gold Editions and we used our Coravan Model 2 Elite to extract the wines. Let's get into the wines. Are you excited? Let's go for it. We first opened it. We weren't going to taste this on camera. We didn't have enough glasses. We tasted the Aridus Tank 22. This is their Rose. This is made of San Giovese 2017 Off Dry, $12 USD. What did you have to... I didn't want to taste this on camera, but we did taste this. My parents tasted it. My sister tasted it. What did you think of this? I'd appreciate the aroma, the watermelon, strawberry and all that. But it had a little bit much with the juice sugar for my personal liking. So we paired it with meatballs and it went quite well. It's Off Dry, 16 grams a liter. It smelled really good. So it gave me confidence that these wines are going to be very good. It's just... I'm not a huge Off Dry Rose guy, but I think they're very accessible. 12 bucks. It's two balanced wines. Check it out. Okay, let's get into the wines we're going to taste. The first one. I am very excited to taste this Aridus 2016 Malvasa Bianca. Cool little label, sorry. It looks like a mug cake. It almost looked tactile. It is. It's not exactly tactile. Anyways, I am excited to taste this just a few days ago. One of our friends, Steve McConnell, he writes for a blog called SOIFNose.com. He wrote that he liked this wine so much he felt bad for the white wines he drank the last six months. Malvasa Bianca, you probably will know it as Malvasa Tuscana used to have to be blended into Chianti. We bump into the Malvasa strains a lot because we spend a lot of time in the Mediterranean, especially Croatia where Malvasa Istriana is popular. There is Malvasa Bianca in Croatia. They call it Rukotatsa Marashtina. Let's give this a go. Malvasa usually has a problem with acidity. This is made entirely of stainless steel. Very, very floral yellow flower Malvasa-esque. Kind of muska-y for people. A little bit mango. There's a hint of nuttiness as well. Yup. When the people think of Arizona, they think of desert, but you gotta remember, too, in Arizona, they're pretty high up. I know Aridus has vineyards up 5,000 feet, so like 2,300 meters or so. So you're going to alpine conditions, Mediterranean-like conditions. What do you think from this? More pineapple, a little bit spicy finish. Very good acidity. Huh, bad acidity might be corrected. Not in a bad way, though. No, it probably happens. For me, this is really nice Malvasa. I'm not a huge fan of floral white wine. Shirin is more of a fan. I get a lot of ripe tropical fruits, a lot of yellow flower. Nice crispy acidity, right? It has a lot going on. You get a tropical fruit, the floral-ness, good acidity, spicy finish, round in the mouth, quite a big wine. Extremely well made, too. Nobody's going to say it's from, you know, you're going to fool a lot of people blind, thinking this might be from California, bright fruit. Very well made. I'm going to say 3.8 out of 5. That's what I think I would put on Vavino, maybe even a little bit higher. What do you think? It's very well made wine. It's just, I don't like floral whites that much. I'm quite fond of it. I like the spiciness on the finish. You think it deserves a higher score from me? That's about the ballpoint. I respect that. So very nice white wine. Good job. Good job by Eredus. The good way to start the show. The next one we have is the Eredus 2015 Sira and I love Sira. This is aged in oak for eight months. I think only a couple hundred cases are of this made. 37 US dollars and 45 cents. We got really excited when we bought this because it's a very light Sira. I was wondering if it's going to be carbonic maceration, kind of like the old high vineyard that we had a little while ago. Light color. I don't know if you can see that. Almost Pinot Noir color, right? What do you say? Maybe there's stem inclusion. Let's give this a smell. Sure. If you tell me it's Pinot Noir color. Very fruity fresh Sira to me. Quite a lot of oak on the nose. The oak doesn't bother me. It's so weird because I'm usually really bothered by oak. A lot of chocolateyness. Chocolate, cherry, white pepper. It smells. It really reminds me of the Sira style like we had from Ohio Vineyard. I haven't tasted it yet. You know, lighter style, very elegant. Very nice nose on this. Let's give this a go. What do you think? The mouth is very pretty. A little cherry flavor. I think the oak imparts a very nice chestnut. Chocolate. It's woody. I have to say, if I was going to complain, it's woody. But in this, for some reason the wood adds a dimension of flavor to the fruit. The fruit's not big, rich, concentrated. I don't see what the alcohol is. 14-4. Definitely don't feel that kind of alcohol. More lighter, elegant style Sira. This is drinking very nice for me. 3.9 out of 5 very easily. What do you think? Fair enough. I think it's pretty darn good wine. Not the greatest Sira I've had in the world, but it's pretty darn nice. Pretty nice start so far. Let's move on. This is one of their top lines. They sent us the Eredus Tempranillo from 2015. 39 US dollars and 90 cents. So this was also eight months in oak. For some reason, I feel like Tempranillo would do very well out there in Arizona. Tempranillo and rodent grapes are doing well in Texas. So let's give this a go here. I think it would like this aroma. It smells robbery. I do get, maybe some like, oh, I almost knocked over the spit bucket. I almost get this on Rioja Creanta thing going on. There's definitely wood going on there. Let me smell yours. It's the same. Nice. Chocolate, red fruit. Let's give this a go. What do you think? Oh, I quite enjoy this. I like the palate a lot. The finish is a little bit spicy and has a little bit of tarry earthiness to it. I like this wine. I'm not loving it. I have to admit, the finish has the tarry and earthiness. I want a little bit more fruit on the finish. Mouth feels good. I think, for instance, for these two wines, they're kind of too young. They need some more time to melt together, in my opinion. Sure, sure. I can see where you're coming from. But I think 3.8 out of 5, I think these are all very good wines. I didn't actually know what to expect from Arizona, the wine making quality, the fruit. I think the wine's still good. These are the types of wines I think easily going to score somewhere in the 87, 89 point range from most critics. Good stuff. Anything you want to say about Eru? So these wines? Out of these three, this might be my favorite. But I do agree with you with that. It might be a bit young and it needs time to come together. In any case, I might have this for dinner. Oh, really? You like it that much? I am actually more of a fan of Sera. So actually, nice job by Erundus. Thank you for sending us these wines we're sent to us to sample. And yeah, anything else? You're going to have this tonight with some sausages, it sounds like? Perhaps. It's really easy drinking and goes well with food. Well, I'm going to put the link for Erundus winery, you know, down in the description box. You can check them out. I think they shipped directly. Their production will be expanding as they move forward. So guys, if you like this video, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. It's out of quite a shuffle. I will see you at the next episode.