Transcription
Master of Wine here! I finished the Apple TV wine show, "The Drops of God," and while I liked the first two episodes, I noticed quite a bit of weird and wrong information in the third episode. So today, I want to sit back, relax, eat some almonds, drink some Sherry, and watch those parts with you in order to explain what they got wrong so that you get to learn something.
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If you did not watch the first part of this review, the show is based on the Japanese manga "The Drops of God," which was first released in 2004 and became really popular. So popular, in fact, that the wines featured in each manga sold out quickly after the release of a new book.
In the TV adaptation, Camille has to battle wine expert Issei in different wine tasting tasks for her father's inheritance, which is a wine collection worth 148 million dollars. Mamma Mia! So let's dive right in.
I'm watching episode number three. In episodes one and two, Camille discovered that she has this inheritance but that she has to compete against Issei in order to get it. She also overcame her problems with wine and realized that she's actually a pretty good taster. So now she's ready to go and compete in the first task.
Hi, this is Constantine! After I watched the video, I realized that I didn't really talk about the challenge that Camille has to go through in episode number three. She blind-tasted wine in episode number two and got a nosebleed and all that kind of stuff. She'll have to taste the same wine at the end of episode number three again and identify it. So this episode will be about her discovering her superpowers.
Well, let's get back to the video.
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So this is actually a cool bit about the social aspect of wine tasting. It's really nice the way they highlight what it feels like to taste different wines and dive into the flavors.
But, that's pretty cool, right?
Oh yes! So that's kind of silly, in my opinion. They act as if you would just have to list different flavors and then come up with a conclusion in a blind tasting. That's not how it works. Flavor is important, but the texture, the tannins, the acidity, and the alcohol level are even more important in many cases. You have to look at the wine in its totality in order to really know what it is. They pretend like it's a detective game where you have to identify different flavors, and then in the end, you see the wine on the wall. That's not how it works.
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Now they're just repeating those flavors over and over as if that would help anyone.
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So after repeating those flavors for what feels like an hour, the father has this Eureka moment in the class.
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Okay, I actually never heard of "lineage," and I think they just made it up for this show. I don't really know why they didn't integrate existing wines into the show as they did in the manga, which would have been a little bit more fun. But I think "lineage" is just a gimmick.
So they're hunting down the winemaker who made "lineage" and stopped doing so for whatever reason because the wine appears to be a cult wine now worth thousands of Euros.
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So that's a bit silly. You can make a white and red wine out of most red grape varieties by pressing the grapes softly and keeping the juice separate from the skins. So that's what they call a "blonde Noir," and that's not something special.
There is no bottle of "lineage" left at the winery for Camille to try, so she decides to go back to Japan to talk to one of her father's friends who owns restaurants. He has "lineage" in his cellar, but he doesn't want to open it because it's so expensive.
So they come up with this plan where they make one of the guests of the restaurant order the bottle of "lineage" so that Camille can taste it after serving it to the customer. But before that, they give her a master class on how to open wine and serve it in a restaurant.
The wine you're going to serve is sensitive.
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To try it straight away:
1. Introduce the wine with the label facing the customers.
2. Announce the wine.
3. Cut the foil just beneath the lower lip of the bottleneck.
That's also one of my pet peeves. You always cut the foil below the bottom lip. It's the knife that turns, not the bottle, so the client always gets to see the label.
He wipes the edge of the cork to remove any potential mildew, then you plant the corkscrew in. When the screw is properly embedded, anchor the first notch onto the bottleneck and lever it to extract the cork. Do the same at the second level and finish with your hand for more discretion and to avoid the pop, which is too aggressive.
Sorry, I like the pop! I like the pop as well, so I can feel his pain. Just let them pop!
So that was actually a surprisingly accurate and pretty much spot on. The only thing is they made it feel like opening a bottle is like Mission Impossible. It isn't! I mean, you just open it, and that's it. It's natural; she knows how to do it. Apparently, her father taught her already.
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Good job! The thing is, this is all a bit overblown in a restaurant setting. I always open the bottle, take a little sip—much smaller than this—to smell and taste the wine. So she could have done that probably as well in a restaurant without the customer getting angry.
But in this setting, they make it appear like only the customer is allowed to taste the wine. That's not true! The sommelier should taste the wine as well, or at least smell it, in order to make sure that there are no flaws. Sometimes he or she might decide that they have to decant it based on the nose alone.
On top of that, it's always good to make sure that the sommelier gets to taste the stuff in order for him or her to learn more. Next time, they'll be able to give you better advice.
So they are hoping that the guests leave some wine in their glasses or in the bottle, and they get really drunk. It appears like there is still some wine left in one of the glasses, so they are hoping they will get to taste the famous "lineage."
So no luck! They're drinking the last bit of it, and Camille doesn't get to taste the famous "lineage." They only have like a tiny, tiny drop in the bottle, and well, that's maybe not enough to really identify whether that wine is the wine for the first challenge—the wine that Camille tasted in the second episode.
This makes me remember this one story when I worked at this very expensive restaurant. One of our customers ordered lots of expensive wines for his friends, and at the end of the evening, there was quite a bit of wine left in some of the glasses.
For whatever reason, he got really upset and decided that he was going to drink all of the leftover wine. So this super-rich guy sat in the corner at his table, drinking leftover wines just to make sure that no wine was going to waste.
After tasting this tiny drop, Camille decides that the wine isn't the right wine, so they have to start from scratch. After another Eureka moment, they come up with this really weird theory: truffle! Gosh, that's it! Well, that changes everything.
So they decide that the celery root flavor is actually a truffle flavor, and apparently, that kind of helps them out a lot. The truffle gives us two key elements:
1. There must be Cabernet Sauvignon or Cabernet Franc in the blend.
2. It has to be a great vintage Bordeaux or a great world wine made with Cabernet, and truffle is a sign of the wine's aging process, so it has to be older than 2006.
So truffle isn't really a pointer for Cabernet, in my opinion. It's more of a pointer for Merlot or maybe Nebbiolo and some others, even though I never really get a super intense truffle flavor from anyone.
On top of that, it is true that truffle flavors come out more with aging, but you can't really say the cutoff point is 2006 and everything older will smell of truffles and everything younger won't. That's just complete BS.
So now things get really weird. It seems like the person who was advising them about wine just took a day off, and they decided that they are going to wing it—not even attempting to Google any of the information.
So most of the stuff that is coming up now is just completely wrong. The problem is that both Vega Sicilia and Cheval Blanc are made with exactly the same grape varieties. It will be very difficult to tear them apart. They shouldn't look for what they have in common; they should look for what makes them different.
The Cheval Blanc has a classic maturation process in new barrels, while the Vega Sicilia Unico stays for at least six years in wood—one of the longest aging processes in the world for red wines in oak barrels.
I have no idea how they come up with this idea that the only two wines that could smell of truffles are Vega Sicilia Unico and Cheval Blanc—two wines from two totally different regions. They also don't use the same grape varieties, and the winemaking processes are very different.
But both of them are actually aged in new wood. The Vega Sicilia Unico is aged for a long time in new and old wood, but they also use American wood—something that they are not mentioning here. That's clearly something that you could pick up in a blind tasting: the smell of vanilla.
But yeah, I mean, if I had a Cheval Blanc in my glass in my Master of Wine exam and would have argued that this is actually a Vega Sicilia Unico, I think I would have failed. I mean, those two wines are just very different.
I don't really understand that you're making this expensive TV production and then you don't even Google this. I mean, this is all publicly available information. It's not difficult to find, and I could have asked someone who knows a little bit about wine, and they might have helped them on their way. But they decided just to do it like that.
So this is actually again pretty cool—the way they explain how she tastes and processes things in her head. She sees the old barrel from Vega Sicilia and then this new barrel from Cheval Blanc and then decides for Cheval Blanc.
But still, I mean, those wines are just completely different, and I don't really understand how she could identify Cheval Blanc without ever having tasted it.
But anyways, now she has to make up her mind on which vintage the wine might be, and for some reason, she decides between '99 and 2000. Even though those vintages follow each other, they are very different in character.
First, she goes for '99 and then changes her mind and goes for 2000. Issei also thinks it's a Cheval Blanc, but he says it's the '99 vintage.
Now, on the big reveal: Can you guess?
I'm still not sure—2000? The wine you tasted is a Château Cheval Blanc 1999.
Depending on who you're rooting for, Camille lost this task, but the other tests are coming up, and I don't want to spoil all the fun of you watching it yourself.
I think overall the show was quite enjoyable. I like the fact that there is a show like this on wine, and some aspects were really silly, but others were also kind of nice. I mean, I enjoyed watching it to the end, but I don't think I'm going to do another reaction video to this show.
If you liked this video, then please like it down here and subscribe to my channel if you haven't done so already.
My question of the day is: Which one is your favorite wine TV show or movie? Let me know down below.
I hope to see you guys again soon. Until then, stay thirsty!
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