Somm III

You know, how people taste,

and what wines are next to each other can oftentimes change

how the wine next to it is smelling and tasting.

It's not easy to blind taste.

- The fear of blind tasting is basically being wrong.

- I'll tell you what, I mean I've been fooled.

I think the most random

that we could try to make this, the better.

If you enjoy wine,

there's nothing to be gained by blind tasting

because I think wine's all about its history and its place.

- So wine one, is the glass closest to you on the left.

Two, three, four, five, six.

- Well, we blind taste each other for games.

- For bragging rights and all of that.

- I got it right, I'm the greatest.

- In that style, I mean it's a parlor trick.

- I love blind tasting and it's not a parlor trick.

- It's useful in only rare circumstances.

If you're a scientist trying to study

the effect of some variable on wine,

then certainly you wanna taste it blind.

- There's some wine critics who have to taste blind,

particularly if they're working for a publication,

take sponsorship.

- You know, when I was buying wines,

we'd taste everything blind.

- When I was a sommelier, the way I bought wine

was if I nailed the wine, nailed the price,

I would then buy the wine.

- You're not biased by the producer,

by any score or what you've heard,

or what you think that you should think about this wine.

You know, the naked wine.

- When you remove all people's preconceived notions

about the origin of a wine,

you get an assessment that's very, very different

than the assessment that you get

if people are looking at the bottle.

But 40 years ago,

a blind tasting changed the world.

The wine industry has boomed

at an exponential rate in the last 40 years.

- In the US, the wine industry is a $220 billion business.

85 years ago,

wine was illegal to make and sell, right up until 1933.

There was no industry.

- For the first several thousand years

of humans making wine, they simply collected grapes

and crushed them and did very little else,

and I think that it's only in the last century

that people really started to learn

how to manage the wine making itself.

- For wine to change it had to be challenged,

and we've people to thank for that.

On the one hand, you've got the seekers, the explorers,

who go out and find where there is great wine in the world

that's never been found before,

and they bring that wine to the critics,

and the critics get together, they disagree or they agree,

and they make a lot of noise,

and then you've got the sommeliers and the resellers

who deliver the actual bottle to you.

So much of what we know about wine today

was built on the work of just a few people,

and three of those people are getting together

in Paris to taste the wines that changed them.

- Arguably three of the most important people

who have ever been involved with the world of wine.

- They're all big voices, but they're also

in a lot of times, they're conflicting voices.

- These guys made wine what it is today.

She might be

the most influential wine critic in the world.

- To make it clear, I've never been in the wine business.

I've never had any connection with the wine trade,

never worked in the wine trade,

and I've worked very, very hard

to sort of keep my hands clean.

- Jancis has had a huge influence on me.

I mean, some of the books that she's written have been

part of my library since almost day one.

- She wrote The Oxford Companion to Wine,

which is the most comprehensive wine encyclopedia

that the world has ever seen.

In regards of what

if there's a term I didn't know,

I could go to that one resource, The Oxford Companion,

and I could find the definition of whatever that word was.

My children tease me

that The Oxford Companion is my fourth child.

- Jancis meant to wine what Julia Child did to food.

She brought a beautiful joy and enthusiasm to it

that made the world of wine fun.

- If she says good things about your wine,

people notice that.

- If she doesn't like a wine,

she's got no problem in saying it upfront,

so she's petrifying to do a tasting with.

Her opinion matters, I mean she's a serious woman.

It's now my honor

to invite Jancis Robinson to the stage.

- I think probably I've done a little bit

to make employers feel that female employees

in the world of wine should be given absolutely their due.

Wherever this award is being held

and for whichever country we would be for it,

but particularly for Australia because you have to admit,

the Australian wine scene

has been pretty male dominated for quite a while.

- You're talking about the 10 or 20 people in the world

whom are probably instinctive tasters,

where they're sort of born with a very high level of gift,

and I mean, she's on of 'em.

- Women are better tasters, better blind tasters for sure.

We have a sensory memory that men don't have,

- There are lots of scientific studies that suggest

that women actually taste more accurately than men,

but it's a very male thing

that competitive blind tasting, yeah.

- We're gonna do a little blind tasting today,

and I'm in the latter part of my career,

so today we'll see what few skills I have left.

- There's incredibly famous stories about Fred.

More people know of the legend of Fred Dame

than have tasted with Fred.

- Fred is one of the best blind tasters

I've ever met in my life.

He was in Seattle.

Everyone's blind tasting an old bottle of Madeira.

He puts his nose in the glass and says, "This is 1905."

- I've never really gave Fred a flight, you know, of wine.

- Jay is competitive as hell, and Fred is as well,

so I'd love to see that.

- I decided to pick a couple things with some age, right?

Because age kind of masks things.

- Probably like the scene in Heat,

you know, when you have like De Niro and Pacino

sitting down having coffee together.

Hold on, not just yet.

- How many Master Sommeliers

does it take to decant a bottle of wine?

Apparently more than one.

You always wonder, you know,

how your skills have done as time marches on,

as gravity takes hold of your body, right?

Fred likes to win.

Come on in Fred, let's have a glass of wine, buddy.

Oh, let's not.

I'm a little old for this, you know?

gosh.

- I think you're pretty good, but I bet you,

you'd call these white wines.

Chardonnay, Riesling.

Thank you. - Done, thank you.

Done, you pass.

Fred Dame is the grandfather

of the American sommelier business.

- He is the best hospitality,

restaurateur, sommelier.

- I don't think wine in restaurants would be

where it is today if it weren't for someone like him.

- The big wine list with the teaching,

with the training.

He really reshaped the landscape

of not only California wine lists,

but wine lists throughout the United States.

- Oh, I think I deserve all the credit.

- I picked the Guigal Chateau d'Ampuis Cote-Rotie.

This is a classic wine from the Rhone Valley.

It's Syrah with a little bit of Viognier.

The trick on that wine is it's got the new oak on it,

so it could be misleading and take him somewhere else.

The other trick on that wine is that it's a 1995 vintage.

So here we got a 22-year-old wine.

Alright, well, I can tell you

whoever decanted these did one crap job.

'Cause I got a big chunk of cork floating in mine.

It looks like you used a chainsaw.

- That's all I had, a chainsaw.

We're in Montana. - Okay.

- I broke it down with a chainsaw,

threw some wood chips in there.

- Point number one, the viscosity is very, very good.

It's going a little garnet from center to the rim.

It's got a little watery rim,

which tells me the glycerol's a little high.

Well, it's really peppery,

and really smoky, and really meaty,

but really, really well crafted.

This wine seems to be showing some age.

It smells like a Rhone wine.

I mean, that's what it smells like.

I'd put it in Northern Rhone.

I'd say Cote-Rotie or Hermitage.

Cote-Rotie is kind of what I really like

'cause it's so peppery and meaty.

Very high quality producer.

So final call Cote-Rotie.

What's the final vintage call?