Ep. 1937 Get to know Right Bank Bordeaux | wine2wine Business Forum 2023

The Italian wine podcast is the community driven platform for Italian winegeeks around the world. Support the show by donating at italian wine podcast dot com. Donate five or more Euros, and we'll send you a copy of our latest book, my Italian Great Geek journal. Absolutely free. To get your free copy of my Italian GreatGeek journal, click support us at Italian One podcast dot com, or wherever you get your pods. Official media partner, the Italian One podcast is delighted to present a series of interviews and highlights from the twenty twenty three one to one business form, featuring Italian wine producers and bringing together some of the most influential voices in the sector to discuss the hottest topics facing the industry today. Don't forget to tune in every Thursday at three pm or visit the Italian wine podcast dot com for more information. Okay. If you guys wanna settle down, we're going to start. It is my great pleasure to invite one friend, one new friend, one old friend. So my old friend is the blonde. Okay? This is Claire Dawson. She is based in Bordeaux. Squillions of experience in the trade. From Bordeaux. By the way, just, you know, for your blind tasting, I'm going to give you a big hint. This is not going to be barolo. Okay? Just just one hint. And of course, Georgie Hintill, who I've met recently, she is actually what is your title exactly? It's DeKanta's premium editor and boarder. Oh, premium. It sounds so sexy. She is the premium editor. Of Decantar Bordeaux. So I thought it would be an interesting I invited her today because I thought it would be really an interesting experience also to have a bird's eye view as to how Georgie, behalf of De Contortates and evaluates corduro wines. Okay. So clear, it's going to, I've asked her to moderate. And if you guys have any questions, It'll be very similar to the tastings we've done the past three times, but of course, this will be one from a deconta reviewer, and two, it will be hordelez wines. Okay? Alright. Take it away. Thank you, Steve. Thanks, Stev. So, yes, as Stevie was saying, Georgie is going to be talking you through today, Georgie, as the Bordeaux correspondent and premier editor of Decantor, we'll be talking you through her process of how she scores wine within Decantor. Specifically for border wines. We've changed the theme a bit, as you can see on your brochure, it said something else. So if anyone wants to leave right now, but you know, it's not all right bank border. It's not. But there'll be three different wines, blind, different vintages, and different a And Georgie will taste as if she were tasting the wines to score so you can have an inside view, which we thought could be fun. Yeah. So over to you. Okay. Hello everyone. A little bit nervous, but anyway, we'll get through that. So, yes, I am DeCanto's premium editor, so I'm in charge of all the fine wine content that goes behind the paywall for subscribers. So anything over twenty pounds, we consider kind of fine wine. And also, I'm the Bordeau correspondence. So I've been living in Bordeaux City for about three years now, and I've had the Bordeaux job specifically for about two and a half. So I've done a few on premiere campaigns, a few in bottle campaigns, and kind of cut my teeth with very large tastings very early on. But Decanta's great, you know Bordeaux's heartland content for Decanta. It's the wines that people pay for, pay to read the reviews and scores, and at least fifty percent of our traffic comes from Bordeaux content. So it's really, really important. It always has been the links between Bordeaux and UK have always been very strong. But because of the the amount of wine that's produced there, the caliber of wines, the investment potential, all those things kind of add to why it's so important for tecanteritas. So firstly, I guess, and also we cover everything from the value level, so supermarket, you know, under twenty pounds, borders, right up to the kind of high end, very fine wine, pomerols, poi ex first growth, which is nice because you really we don't miss out the coats or the smaller appylations, like La secque where we're tasting on today. So you really get to cover all the styles, red, white, sweet, from all the price categories, and I think that's that's really that's really great. So firstly, I guess how to taste. I learned with the WST kind of system, which is very formulaic. You you have a set of criteria that you follow from the nose, the appearance, the palette, the acidity, and it is quite systematic. You know, that's what they use. I did do a presentation, but all the slides are just on my computer. Because there's no projector. So you do kind of learn how to describe a wine very technically, and I think that's great because it does allow you to assess a wine very objectively. In my opinion, you you can taste it and you can highlight all the good points and at the end, you will come to whether it is faulty, fair, good, very good outstanding, regardless of your personal preference. I sometimes think it's a little bit have a narrow system. You you kind of maybe lose some fun and some creativity in your tasting notes perhaps when you you go this way and you can always not always, but you can usually tell an MW's tasting note by the way the way it's written. Whereas, I quite like people who, you know, describe wines in different ways to be more, understood by consumers. But essentially Dekanta is a consumer publication. We are writing for consumers and essentially, we want to recommend wines that they are going to buy and to drink. You know, it's not, that's that's what we're doing it for. And hopefully all of our tasting notes kind of get that across, that they aren't just lists of flavors and you know, this fruit, and and this, it's actually something that people can read and go, okay. Well, I I kind of understand what that wine might be like. But anyway, so so from a tasting point, it's I generally think of WSTT and try to get those kind of markers and then you add some context to it. So do you know the estate? Do you know the vintage? Has the winemaking had any effect on the the particular flavor or style that's come out? How much do I really like it or not like it? And so a tasting note for me I tend to write quite long tasting notes, which may be a bit boring for some people, but because I haven't been doing the job very long, it helps me to differentiate between the wines when you're tasting a hundred or, let's say, forty centimeter on Grandcout class a. They're all going to be much of a muchness. Let's be honest, but they all equally are very different. So you have to use the descriptors and the exact kind of way the the wine feels, I guess. That's how I kind of describe it in order to kind of differentiate between each one. So scoring as well as, you know, scoring is a necessary evil. Some might say, and we at the counter use the hundred point score. I know some UK publications still use the twenty point score, but I never learned that. And so it confuses the hell out of me what a seventeen point five plus or a sixteen plus plus is, and I I don't really know. But certainly, for me, the hundred point scale seems to work, albeit it's really a fifteen point scale from eighty five to a hundred. I personally don't feel that below eighty five points is a a recommendable wine. I I I wouldn't feel comfortable saying to my friend or my family, no, go out and buy this wine. So for me, it kind of starts around eighty five points. And that kind of correlates to the Decant World wine awards, which is done in brackets of medals. So we all see bottles with score, labels on stickers on them, bronze, silver, gold, and then they have an additional platinum award, ninety seven and above, and then you have kind of the best in show. So some judges go from an awards kind of point of view and think, okay, well, is this a bronze wine? Is it a gold wine? And then within that, where does it sit? So for a bronze is between eighty six and eighty nine? So I guess, in my opinion, that would be an okay wine recommended could be good for everyday drinking. It's going to be fine. Silver is from ninety to ninety three. So that is a good wine. Good encompasses all those things. That it's going to be nice, you know, nicely balanced, some complexity, some length, then you've got nine the silver category is sorry, the gold category is then ninety five to ninety Well, actually it's ninety five to ninety nine, but for me personally, kind of ninety four to ninety seven, I would put in the kind of great category, and then ninety seven and above I put in the exceptional. Are you enjoying this podcast? There's so much more high quality wine content available from mama jumbo shrimp. Check out our new wine study maps. Our books on Italian wine including Italian wine unplugged, the jumbo shrimp guy to Italian wine, sangiovese Lambrusco, and other stories, and much much more. On our website, mama jumbo shrimp dot com. Now back to the show. But that's a kind of way some people consider scoring essentially. But, you know, scoring has become specifically for Bordeaux. I'm I'm not sure if everyone finds this for every region. They're so scrutinized, and I think Bordeaux is one of the most widely tasted regions in the world. You know, seven thousand people come to Bordeaux to taste on Premier. Has seven thousand opinions of wines of people tasting different dates, different kinds, the same wines. And so as a critic for Bordeaux, you're you're competing with all those opinions and everyone has different tastes and everyone, you know, you take on different days as well. So the wines may actually and they do change. They're specifically for primers. They're very young and they're changing all the time. So scoring itself is not an exact science, but also you know, eighty eight points is not a bad wine. I think some people nowadays maybe just for Bordeaux think less than ninety, it's not a good wine. I'm not gonna buy it or a a US importer perhaps may not even look to wines that don't score ninety points because for markets that love scores, they're not interested in those wines. And it can go all the way to the top, you know, some producers aren't happy with a ninety eight point wine these days. And you just think, okay, well, you know, where are we setting the standards here? And so for me, I think an eighteen point one is great, and equally, you know, what does a hundred points mean as well? Those wines, maybe increasing in terms of what critics are awarding them, certainly ninety eight, ninety nine, a hundred, and I think winemaking has definitely improved to the extent that arguably you could say Bordeaux has maybe never been making as good wines, and so it might naturally correlate that you have lots of a hundreds per vintage And so maybe there's some kind of element of calibration of coming down and saying, okay. Well, here's, you know, where the top layer is, and I I don't want to extend it above a hundred. I think that's potentially just too complicated, but there are some people now considering maybe bringing it down the scores and and making that lower level under ninety. That's actually it's really fine. You're you're doing a good job, you're making a good wine. And that leaving that kind of top tier of scores to be just those for investment or ones that are going to have that really long life or whatever it is. It's sometimes confusing as a producer when you sample your wines to different critics in the same vintage and you come back with different scores. I mean, what are we supposed to do with that? Yeah. I mean the good ones? Well, there is an element that producers will obviously want to keep the highest scores and the best notes and Certainly it does help merchants sell wines, you know, a ninety eight point or a ninety five point wine, whatever is going to sell better than ninety one point wine, but I think it's worth following the critic or the kind of opinions that you most naturally fit with the wines. You know, winemakers obviously have their opinions. They have big teams. They're tasting their own wines all the time. So and they taste, you know, the other people in the region too. So they're going to know roughly where they fit even really egotistical ones. I still think, yeah, it wasn't as good as the neighbor. So I think you have to if you really think that you've done a great job and then you see a note reflecting that, then maybe go towards that critic. And again, if you see if you think, oh, my wine actually this year wasn't so good, or maybe we picked a bit late, picked a bit early, and they recognize that, then it's worth following those people, but critics, you know, we don't always get it right all the time. And I think with Bordeaux, particularly I've found, you need to have some kind of experience and some kind of base level of knowledge and understanding and that's why tasting a lot of wines is great. Tasting out the properties is great. Understanding terroir, understanding the vintages, understanding what they're trying to do will help you do that. And I guess the critics who have been doing that a long time and are really dedicated, you know, they know their stuff. But equally, I would say this, you know, I'm I'm fresh to kind of the scene, I guess, and I come with a fresh eyes and a new palette, and I think that's always nice as well to get a different perspective. I think sometimes if you've been chasing for a very, very long time, you can get a bit blase about wines, or maybe you haven't appreciation of wines that you think haven't changed. You know, you have this idea of a chateau or an estate that make a certain style, and actually they're moving beyond that that it might not register so much. So go with who you think is maybe most connected to you. So do you taste by yourself? I mean, or how how where and when do you taste also ask questions at any point during this whole talk. Don't leave them to the end if you wanna know something or just really just shout them out. So it really, really varies with decanter. We have things called panel tastings, which go in the magazine, and they're done completely blind. Three people, you talk about you each give an individual tasting note and score, then you talk about the wines, you can champion them if you want to, you can pull them down if you want to. But the idea is to give a fair assessment and three experts who know, usually one is a journalist. So I do the Bordeaux ones. Usually one is a buyer or a merchant, and usually one is a semelier. So you get those three angles with that. Than, you know, other things it's mostly done by myself. We don't have the team or the resources to have two people, and I it would be nice to have someone else to can calibrate with. And sometimes I do that with other critics. You know, some of us are friends. And we you can say, oh, did did you like that one or that one wasn't showing so well? And that's really nice too because at the end of the day, you're just one person and you can be tasting a hundred wines in one day. And it gets a lot and then you you can maybe doubt yourself or you know what you really like, but it's not it's not always the best. But generally blind tasting doesn't happen so often in Bordeaux. I think a lot of the time especially for preemas, people don't send samples. You have to go to certain estates to taste the wines, and they're obviously very open, and that's the way they do it. You can request certain tastings let's say, if you go to a consultant pasting, you can ask that they're all blind, or as in Santimani on Grand Creek class, you can ask. But for a lot of the time, and for me, I think it's nice to know what the wine is. And it's nice to know where it's from and what they're trying to do, and the more states I visit, the more I understand, oh, that's why that wine tastes that way, and that's what they're trying to do. And so I think with Bordeaux, maybe with lots of other regions. Briancasting isn't always the best. I I think it's great for some occasions and to calibrate and to take out the idea of that, oh, you know, it's the first growth. Therefore, it's got to get a certain amount of points and I'm sure there is some of that to that extent, but, quite often, it's just logistically impossible to do blind tastings in Bordeaux. But, yeah, but we do get sent samples, and if we get sent samples, and we accept to receive samples, then we'll score them, and we'll write the tasting notes online. And if I go to a chateau for a vertical or whatever, then I will eventually write up the tasting notes and scores. You know, admittedly, I haven't written up everything that I've tasted over the last two years. Be partly maybe for imposter syndrome that I don't want to just go out there with a score and a tasting note from vintages that I haven't tasted. So you know, very old one, seventies, eighties, nineties. I don't have massive experience with those, and for me to just come out and say, well, I think that is that way just because I pasted it once from one estate. So I've been trying to build my repertoire of those, and I will publish them eventually, and I I'm proud of the work that I've done so far, but, so it's a bit of a mixture in terms of take how I taste when I taste it and and the scores, but everything will be tasted and scored, and and it will go up onto the website at some point. With Bordeaux, I think it's really important to have context. Like I just said, I think knowing your vintages is really important as in other wine regions around the world, you do have five star vintages, three star vintages, and and below and everything in between And I think that's important to consider. So today, we're tasting sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen. So and feel free to to taste ahead and choose your own system of tasting. For me, obviously, seventeen is a a week of vintage, and I guess you you describe it that way because of the weather. It just wasn't very good. They had hail. They had frost. The sun wasn't out as as much as in eighteen, and the wines are considered less good as a whole, and it's a massive generalization because, you know, the the rainfall could be markedly different in Poyais to Margot for instance. And then one could get ninety mils of rain. This is quite technical and maybe a bit boring. And the other one can get ten, but that will affect the taste of wine. So it's really hard to just generally sweepingly say, oh, it's about vintage and bordeaux, write it off because it it it's not. However, for instance, seventeen, we may want to try this one first, even though when I say so the first one is two thousand and sixteen. It's, Luzak Santemilian. The middle one is a seventeen. It's from Pec leonion. The last one is an eighteen, and it's a generic border. So from my perspective, I think, oh, okay. Well, generic eighteen richest ripest, ripest, most opulent vintage of the the three. It's a generic bordeaux. It might be not tough, but a little bit like muscular, a little bit kind of, fruity and ripe. Then I think, okay, sixteen is the oldest. It's gonna be a little bit more elegant, a little bit more fine. Still gonna have some structure. It's from kind of that Sancommun region. It's gonna have a bit of minerality, but Pecylianyan, in my mind, I'm thinking, okay. It's probably gonna be the nicest of the wines. But from seventeen from the weakest vintage. So I may end up actually tasting these two, one, three out of vintage order just because ending on the kind of the the most rich and ripe vintage rather than what I think might be the best. But it's up to you. You guys can taste all three and then rearrange all your order and you can tell me what you would have done. So what information do you have when you're tasting blind within within decanter? So if we were doing a panel tasting or if I was blind, chasing them blind, I would know the Appalachian down to the region, down to the classification. Sometimes we did we're going to do a Medock Broncou class a pasting in January at the office, and I'm gonna say I don't want to know the classification because I think once you know, you've got a second growth in the list, maybe it might change your mind. So we'll remove that and we'll just know Poyak Margot, whatever. So but we would generally know the the appylation of the wines. We'd know the vintage, obviously. We'd know the alcohol, we'd know the blend of the wines. So again, I can tell you that the eighteen is sixty percent merlot and forty percent cabernet sauvignon. For number three nine number three. It's been aged in tanks and in barrels. So we'd we'd know that and VINification in tanks. So we'd know kind of and we'd know the price bracket also. So this one is under twenty pounds. So that's the kind of basic information. Then the middle one, I'll well, actually the first one. Sorry. I'll tell you. It's a Lussac Santemilian. It's two thousand sixteen. It's thirteen point five. It's minification in in stainless steel, aging for twelve months in Oak, fifty percent new. Mer eighty percent merlot, twenty percent cabinet franc, and it's UK price bracket twenty to thirty pounds. And the middle one number two is Pecylianyan two thousand and seventeen. It's thirteen percent alcohol. It's aging twelve months in oak barrels, forty to fifty percent new. It's cabernet seventy on seventy percent, thirty percent merlot, and a price bracket thirty to forty pounds. So we've got an amazing spread of different dominant grape varieties, different Tewar, different finishes, different prices. So I think, you know, for me, all that information is really, really is great, and I would want to know, I get a bit geeky sometimes and ask for pH levels because I want to know acidity and IPT levels because I want to know canons, and it's maybe not every consumer actually cares. Maybe they don't even care about the terroir. Like maybe they don't know that Santameleon plateau is limestone, and that's why it's so brilliant, or Primerole has blue clay, and that's why it's so brilliant. But for me, I love having that information the same with pH to know Well, what is the acidity? You know, if it's three point nine, how long is it going to age for? You know, that at some point might pose a problem. If it's three point two, wow, that's gonna be really sharp and tangy. So for me, I'd like to know that. Same with Ipts. This year. Apparently, they have Ipts off the charts for twenty twenty three. Never seen before Ipt levels. So going into Prima's next year, I'm already gonna think, wow, these are gonna be Tannic wines, and I'm gonna need a break every ten wines. So for me, you know, the more information, the better, blind or not blind, but that's what we would get. Okay. So the question was talking about tasting viral samples on Puma. And then we we're actually talking about this this morning. So Primas is a very, very specific beast. I'm not sure how many of you have tasted bordeaux primas in the room. Maybe explain what it is. Yeah. Essentially you're tasting the wines when they're very young. So most of the blends will have been completed by January, but some but not all of them. Some people like to keep their lot separate and blend, you know, the next year. So you're tasting baby baby wines that have been more more recently bottled in little half bottles. They used to be big bottles. Now they're smaller bottles, and you're assessing them at that kind of formative stage where it's a historic process based on people buying wine as futures before they were bottled, and it's still continuing to this day. And I guess it's still to do with cash flow for the business and particularly ordering different size bottles. So at that point, you can specify you want magnums, double magnums, joe bones. And I think today, that's actually still kind of a reason to buy preemas if you're in particular, if you like large formats. But anyway, so we don't know, necessarily by and large, ninety nine point five percent where the wine is coming from, whether we will be told whether it's the blend has been finished and what the particular blend is, what the alcohol at the time is. But quite often, they're drawing samples from different barrel. They could be the same barrels. Could be different barrels. They could have been open a day. They could have been open two days. They might have been sent across town. You might be tasting in situ. There are a couple of estates, Chateau Angelo for instance, Chateau Razon Segler, that let you go and pick your own barrel to taste from, and they're quite open about that. They're very happy and they say, you've got the whole room, and they're different coopers also, which minutely might change the taste of the wine, different coasting of the barrels, but you can go and say, okay. Well, I want to try that one, and I want to try that one, I want to try that one, and it's great. You know, and others will let you taste the individual components, so the merlot, the company from the company serving you on, and then the blend afterwards. But by and large, you don't know, and you don't there are, I don't know, old wives stories that may be different critics get different samples. Some more for the American palette, some more for the UK palette. I don't know. I it is rare to taste alongside other critics, certainly, for those kind of top wines. So I don't know, but quite there are more and more estates who want you to visit the estate for primers that they won't send their samples and they like to control the conditions down to the glass, you know, some glasses are better than others, fair enough, but some decant their wines, some don't. And some are happy to send the samples and let you sit with the bottle for a few days. So again, it's really different experiences at different places, and I try where possible to say the date I tasted, the location I tasted, just so it's very transparent. And sometimes you taste the same wine four or five times if they're part of a consultant tasting, an appletian tasting, a merchant tasting. So sometimes you can taste four or five times, but others, certainly the first gross, if I want to taste, Lafayette or Margaux, I have to drive up the d two and and go and make an appointment. So sometimes it's logistically impossible to taste, more than once. So if if let's stop the tasting. Which wine are we starting with? What do you all think? Should we start with the invented order? So at number three, the eighteen? Yeah. That's good. Alright. Let's start. This is the most generic. So if I was looking at this one, as I am completely blind, I'm thinking, okay, it's gonna be quite juicy, fruity, charming. It's under twenty pounds. I'm not expecting massive complexity, massive length. Okay. So I'm getting quite ripe, quite ripe fruit. Maybe a touch of alcohol. I'm a bit sensitive to alcohol even at fourteen percent, but kind of really ripe, cherries, dark chocolate, kind of a mocha. It smells like it's from a warm vintage. So even if I didn't know it's eighteen, I might say eighteen or or twenty perhaps. It smells quite young, although It's freshness. It's it's quite rich color in the glass. It it looks quite nice. For me, there's a little bit of cedar, a little bit of fact, a little bit of spice, some there. It's juicy. I get nice acidity. I think there's freshness on the palette. It's some red fruits. It's quite nice. It's it's a little bit kind of tight around in my mouth, a little bit spiced edges. So I don't think it's got layers, but, I think it's quite charming. I think it would go with food. Quite nicely. When would you drink this wine if you were to drink it? I think it's, you know, it's kind of an an everyday wine that you'd pick up. It's probably not a special occasion wine. It doesn't have a huge amount of length. For me, I still get a little bit of a flavor still, but it's not lean, not austere. I think it's quite a nice expression. There's some succulents there. Well presented, a bit of licorice on the finish suggesting suggesting the oak again. So maybe, you know, you could leave this still a couple of years, maybe if you didn't want to drink it. I think that's a great thing about Bordeaux is that you can buy a twenty pound or euro wine, and it will age five, ten years easily depending on the kind of characteristics that you want. For me, you know, it's it's not exceptional, but it it's fine. Absolutely fine. So if I was to ask you to score it here and now, would you? For me, it doesn't hit the ninety point category. I'd have to fall down somewhere between eighty seven and eighty nine. Maybe eighty seven eighty eight, eighty eight. I think I'd have to or I'd want to maybe see it as part of a bigger range to say, okay, what other kind of border reds have I tried that are from eighteen? Is it slightly better than that? Is it worse than that? What else is it like? How does it compare to these two? You know, where would I benchmark in terms of score? So for the moment, I would be around that. Eight seven eighty nine, maybe an eighty eight point. So the next one, let's go No. I would want to pinpoint it against the other AOC borders. I mean, it's it's very rare that you would get that I personally would get three wines from different vintages and different, towa also. So I would go back to my notes if I have any from Bordeaux, twenty eighteen, look at what I said about them and try and imagine, okay, well, do I like this more? And and is it good value? Can I recommend this at what point would I, at what score would I, would I really give? AT8 for me is obviously a better wine than eighty seven. But AT8s, you know, it's a nice wine that I would say, yeah, go to the store and pick it up and drink it and enjoy. Okay. So number two, this is the two thousand and seventeen. So this has a majority of Camene sauvignon, so I'm expecting it to be a bit more structured. However, seventeen is a lighter vintage. It's not your eighteen, it's not your sixteen, it's not your twenties, not your nineteen, it's not your twenty two. It's they are going to be more elegant, a bit more finessed, maybe towards the UK palette if if we can really say that still, it's going to be a bit finer, maybe for sooner drinking, potentially. And from PESAC, you know, you you you're not sure necessarily, is it gonna be more gravel to us? Is it gonna be more limestone? Is it gonna be more clay? Because it it's a mix in PESAC. So I'd want to obviously taste it to see where it kind of falls down. Quite nice. It's got some fragrance on the nose, a bit of, menthol characters, a little bit of the cabernet kind of greeny, herbal aspects that you get with that grape, which I love. It's quite delicate. It's quite nuanced. It's not really shouting out the glass to me. Quite high in acid. It's quite tangy. Kinda makes me, suck my cheeks in, but I what I love with the seventeens and the twenty ones also is that the sun isn't masking any terrible aspects. And for me, but that's also what I love most about Bordeaux is that you really can pin a wine to a place, and you you can. I mean, you can tell a Poyac from a Santa Steph, and you can tell this onto me on from a pomerole. And I like that this well, for me, it's putting me on on gravel because it's quite salty. There's a minerality there. It's a little bit lean, but it's not unpleasant. It's still balanced. It's lighter. It's not giving you flesh and plumpness. But I feel like I would say it it's from this vintage, and and from the tail art, maybe we'll we'll find it afterwards. But, I quite like the expression. I think it's, it's quite pretty. It's quite finesse. And so those kind of weaker off integers, for me, really express what the estate is trying to do, and I think you can tell a good winemaker better in a week of interest than you can in a stronger vintage, that everything isn't masked by sun and oak and tannins and ripeness, you know, it's it's hard to make a good two thousand seventeen. And and I think this is good. I think this is really nice. Valu so it's about value and whether there's a sliding scale when I think it scores. To be honest, it it has an importance price, but more so I would say I would use the tasting note to evaluate the the value and versus quality. I think you can't We also talked about this this morning when Claire asked would an under twenty pounds get a ninety five points? And I'm I don't know, you know, it's generally cheaper wines or more value wines are made differently to those that are more expensive They they are given. There may be different harvested. There may be different sorting, different barrels, different aging, different corks potentially. But if I taste a wine that I think is great, that I know is under twenty pounds or is valued, then I will say this is great. You know, I really recommend it. This is a bargain. I wouldn't necessarily give it a better score just because it's cheaper, but I would talk about the great winemaker or that it's over performed for its price bracket. Equally, you know, very, very expensive, the flip side is very, very expensive wines, can get those scores too. You can give a first growth ninety three points, so price definitely doesn't necessarily equate to quality mostly it does. But when there are wines that are really great, I did a a huge value border tasting for the UK last year. It's a hundred and fifty wines, all under twenty pounds. And there was some amazing wines, but ninety three was still the highest score. But that was brilliant. You know, that was a really great score. So, yes, it does play a part and suddenly for the awards, they have different stickers for for value where they have exceeded expectations, but would it change my score? No. So for this one, in the middle, the score, I would be around I mean, I think it and again, so where you place you you'd hope that a ninety two let's say a ninety two point one in two thousand seventeen it's not going to be the same taste as a ninety two point one in two thousand eighteen, but where it sits within their peers and for that vintage, it still gets the same score. And I was saying to Claire, okay, well, This one, maybe I might give a ninety one or ninety two points. I'd I'd I'd like it. I think it's great. I think it's a great example. Maybe I might fall on ninety two points, but it's not going to taste the same as ninety two point two thousand eighteen, and that's why for me, It's really important to know your gestures and know what style that you want from your wine. I I feel the quality is gonna be the same, but the style will be completely different. So that's how I might justify giving scores at the same level for completely different vintages. But again, there's another aspect which is the the, the estate profile. You know, if they've over and achieved, you know, if they're really excelling, then and that this way verticals are quite interesting because you may end up thinking a wine that has a different score in a vertical where you start from the beginning and their most recent finishes are excellent. Well, you have to start at a certain point. You you take the best and then work down from that. And so again, you then have to think in your mind, well, oh my gosh, that was better than that, and that was better than that, but that doesn't really fit with what I thought in prima as because you're comparing them to a different set of wines. And so again, it it's not an exact science, and and you try and do your best and try and calibrate the wine within the set it's in, and hope it overall comes out somewhere where you want it to be. I think we have a few minutes left. Okay. Hold. Last wine. Okay. So this is a two thousand sixteen LaSak. So two thousand sixteen, one of the best vintages of the last twenty years, maybe ever, it was seen as an exceptional vintage at the time. The wines are generally from birth have been very charming, very pretty, very easy to drink, unlike, let's say, two thousand fifteen or two thousand eighteen, maybe. This one, as it's from the sack, I'm expecting a little bit more flinty, a bit more minerality, maybe a bit more lean and austere, but still some structure. It's eighty percent merlot, twenty percent cabernet franc, which is a grape I love, and it's been grown a bit more on the right bank. Because it's a bit easier to deal with and not as difficult as my love. It's very perfumed. I'm getting way more cabinet font on the nose, which is which I really, really like. It's quite intense aromatics, quite, but ripe, but quite cool, and there was that sunshine in two thousand and sixteen. So I guess it depends when producers picked and and how they've been a five. Bit of salty bit of tobacco. It's juicy, quite lively in my mouth. It's quite mouth watering. It makes my, yeah, makes my mouth water. It's quite succulent. Think it's quite charming, quite friendly. It's quite quite youthful still. It's also quite direct. It has that kind of linearity, which you you can get in sixteen where you do get depth, but not so much weight. On the palette. I feel like it's giving quite a lot of fruit. A nice, almost chalky texture kind of slightly, maybe from a limestone or something to do with the tailwind a sec. It's not the longest wine. It's not the most filling. It's not the most complex, but I find it really, really enjoyable. I like the kind of salty tang to it. I I I love I get more of the cabernet aspect and maybe some kind of old vine aspect to it. I think it's very, very easy drinking, and it's stylist it's quite stylish. I like the style in general. I think it's, It's a nice example from LaSak, which is a a satellite appylation. You know, they don't make that many wines. It's obviously not as loved and famous as Santimion itself, but I think they are making some great wines there too. So and it's always gonna be a value, you know, ish category. This is a value of twenty to thirty pounds, and number two is thirty to forty pounds if I if I didn't say. So I would say, this is a nice example. I mean, when you get over twenty pounds, you really want a wine to deliver. And I think this is nice. I think it's worthy of its category, score wise, ninety one. I mean, I think I think it's nice. I think it's great. It's For me, it's probably not. It doesn't have the finesse, the complexity of the number two, even though it's from a week of vintage. But I think it's got cool fruits, it's got freshness, it's got balance, So that's I don't know. This is a question back there. Someone stop me talking. Oh, sorry. I can't I can't hear. Do you have a standard time from when you pull a cork and then taste question one? Question two. Do you have a do you ever do a calibration where someone gives you a wine that you've already had to see if it's tasted the same and scored the same? And the third one, do you ever taste on the biodynamic calendar? Good questions. In terms of time opening, no. Unfortunately, I guess if I was at home, I'd wait a couple of hours. But when you go to to estates and for tastings, you're not always sure how long they've you can ask how long they've had the wines open. But invariably some like to open them right in front of you and you have zero time, but at least you're tasting all the wines in exactly the same way, and some will go, oh, we open them, you know, this morning, or this is left. We opened this yesterday, and we want you to taste it. So that has no, I don't have the same situation for every wine, but it is taken into account once you know how it's how long it's been opened. The second one was the calibration. Sometimes, yes. And it's always nice, finding a wine. I I keep a record of all the wines I've tasted, so it's nice to go back and think, oh, okay. Well, I tasted that last week or two weeks ago and how's it tasting now? So, yes, sometimes there will be that, or you taste wine in a vertical, and then you taste the same one at lunch, and then you see how it's kind of evolved. And I I really like doing that also because when you're you know, I tasted a huge nineteen eighty two tasting early this year in Canada and the wines were open, and it is amazing how much they changed at the end of the evening. Some had completely fallen off a cliff, whereas you're tasting them straight away and like, oh, yes. This actually really juicy really lively. So again, you have to take into consideration the age of the wines as well and and try and give your your best analysis of what is going on. You know, you I I heard, yesterday that some critics try the wines over four or five days and five times. And I was like, wow, that, you know, that logistically, I don't know how that is possible when tasting so many wines. In an ideal world, maybe yes, you could go to the office day on day on day and taste the same forty wines five times. But that really isn't possible. And so you just try to give based on all your knowledge and everything you try to give the best assessment. And biodynamic calendar is is strange and I don't live by it, but sometimes if a w if wines are collectively tasting bad, I go is this a root day? Cause the wines are really terrible today, but I also think weather plays a massive part. You know, there are tastings for primers, and you can have a storm one day. You can have sunshine, you can have rain, and I did exactly the same tasting. And one day in Santimillion is the grumpy plasti again, and it was a storm and the wines were awful. They were so bad. I hated them. And I just thought, oh, maybe it's me, maybe I've eaten something. It's terrible. And I thought, okay, I'm just gonna go back the next day. It was even though it was I hadn't planned it, and I wasn't prepared for it, and it was two hours drive out my way, and the wines had really changed. They were much better the next day. Again, I didn't assess whether that was a biodynamic thing, but I thought it will okay the pressure outside is just crazy and the wines don't deserve it. And again, for me, that's really important. You've got to think a winemaker has spent their entire year making this bottle of wine and the love and everything that goes into it you've gotta really try and give that wine the fairest assessment and not to give inflated scores or notes where they, you know, don't deserve it. And it's not my job to make a winemaker make a wine that just I like. So I really try to be objective also in saying, okay, well, I might not like this wine, but that doesn't mean it's not a good wine, and that doesn't mean someone won't like it, and it's not worthy of an okay score or a good score, even. There are certainly border styles that I would not buy, and I and I would not choose to drink, but I know a lot of people that would. And I've been in the same rooms where they've been their favorite wines. And so I can't discount those, and I think Decantha tries to be very impartial in that sense. It might mean that people don't follow me necessarily as from my specific case, but I think that's okay. I'm I'm fine with that. I think we've run out of time. Sorry rambling on. The aging potential. Sure. So for number three, I would give it a relatively short. I mean, already it's eighteen, so it's five years old. And I think that's great for a wine to be up to five years old for an a generic auto that costs I don't know. Fifteen euros. I think it still has a bit more life in it left, so I would say that has an another two years potentially. The middle one I'd say is much longer. Even for a week of vintage, I would say that's up to twenty years, you know, PESAC, they're generally well built wines. And the number one maybe ten to fifteen years, you know, wines do live longer than you think. I I know that we don't all have sellers and can age our wines and people like to drink them young, but I love mature bordeaux, and and if you can, age it that bit longer. I think that you're always rewarded for it. I think we have to stop there. Okay. Thank you so much for going. Thank you. 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