- Melbourne! We're actually leaving Melbourne now.
- We are on our way to the wine regions of Victoria.
- Victoria!
Goodbye to the city.
(kissing sound)
- [Steven] Check it out. - [Andrew] World War I.
(upbeat music)
- We are now in part two of a three part series,
we're the Worth It Hungry Boys.
- Well today we're thirsty boys.
- Taking on Oz.
- Today on Worth It Wine, Australia edition,
we're going to be trying three bottles of wine,
at three drastically different price points,
to find out which wine is the most worthy at its price.
- So I did some more independent research--
- Uh huh
- About Australian drinking culture.
I learned from our driver, Sam,
an alternative to saying "cheers."
This one is a little bit more of a thinker.
Up yours.
- That's not a thinker it's uh--
- It's a stinker.
(laughing)
(lively guitar music)
- My name is Alister Purbrick and I'm
a fourth generation wine maker.
We're standing in the Tahbilk Winery,
which began its operations back in 1860.
Today we're gonna be talking about Marsanne,
and in particular, the 2016 vintage.
We have 100 acres, which is
the largest single holding in the world.
We make our Marsanne differently to most
in that it is done with steel, fermented.
The critical factor is about excluding oxygen
over every step of the process.
That's the only way that you'll be able
to showcase the diversity of flavors that the variety has.
The wine enters the bottle and the gas cover,
and then it just runs around and gets labeled into boxes,
stacked away, ready for sale.
- In the case over there we saw a spectrum of Marsanne's
that are getting darker as the bottle is older.
Can you tell us what is happening with those?
- [Alister] That's just the normal oxidative process.
The more yellow, the closer it is to its best.
- As admitted amateur wine tasters,
what should we be looking out for?
- The best way for you to develop your pallets,
is to drink a lot of wine.
(laughing)
So you've got a very happy future in front of yourselves.
- We're starting off with the 2016 Marsanne
from the number one Marsanne supplier in the world.
- Pale white wines are one of the most
beautiful colors in the natural world.
To smell. You have to smell wine before you drink it.
This is a-- - I'm a seasoned wine taster.
- You are...
(glasses clinking)
Look how fogged up your glass is.
Seasoned my--
(beep)
- Whatever.
- Honestly, Halloween candy.
It's like Starburst and Snickers. Tell me what you smell.
- I'm like, taking a nap at the beach, right?
Guy's coming by with the cart of fruit.
The pineapple, and the
the oranges and the citrus fruits.
You wanna drink?
- Ooh.
When I pick up a wine that's this color,
I'm expecting a sharpness, so this is extremely smooth.
- Words that come to mind:
sweet, oddly very complex. Complexly sweet.
- There's something fun about tasting wine where it's made.
I mean we're in this cool, old building...
- It's almost like you're tasting the--
- History!
- The environment.
- Oh, sure. I'm gonna get you a new glass.
- We were encouraged to actually try
the Marsanne what it was like in 2010.
- In 2010, there were grapes that were crushed
that turned into this.
- I was the baby.
- How old are you?
- Alrighty. Time travel, 2010, here we go.
(glasses clinking)
- Smell it! Jesus, have you learned nothing?
Woah. That is a drastically different smell.
- This is mature.
That's nice.
It's muskier.
- You know what this makes me think of?
You're a kid, put a rubber band in your mouth.
If you reduced all of the akridness
and just had that pure taste...
- You're spot on with that rubber band.
- It's like a little piney, like, pine cone-y.
I bet a rubber tree smells and tastes
exactly like this wine, in a delicious way.
- I know that sounds crazy.
It sounds crazy to you, Adam? Come here.
- [Steven] How was it?
- [Andrew] Was I wrong?
Thank you.
Mellow, fruity, delight of a wine.
- And dare I say, truffle-y.
- It was not truffle-y.
- Slightly truffle-y.
Wine fact!
Grapes native to Australia are not suitable for wine.
- Really?
- The wine industry in Australia
actually comes from immigrants from Europe.
Those people then export it back to Europe.
Transcontinental trade at its finest.
- Wow, that is an interesting wine fact.
- Wait, do you wanna hear more about that fact?
There's more.
- Not really.
- There's more!
(jazz music)
- My name's Ian Firth, I'm the chief storyteller
here at Fowle's wine.
- What does that mean exactly?
- It means that I have absolutely no
qualifications whatsoever.
(laughing)
I'm not a winemaker, I'm not a good acculturalist,
I just love wine and I love talking about wine.
Today we're gonna be trying the
Ladies who Shoot their Lunch Shiraz.
- [Steven] Ladies who Shoot their Lunch.
Is there a story behind that?
- [Ian] There is a story about that.
Our chief winemaker is an avid hunter.
He was eating these meats and trying to match
the right wine to it and he thought,
"There's gotta be a wine that's perfect for game food."
- What specific foods did you have in mind with these?
- [Ian] So at the moment we're matching a venison
with the Shiraz, with a beetroot relish.
You get this wonderful burst of flavor
between the two that just compliment each other really well.
Fowles wine is located in the Strathbogie Ranges.
This is a cool climate region now,
vineyards are at 500 meters above sea level.
It's a very even ripening process,
so you get really great ripe fruit,
but you maintain some really lovely acid with the wine.
- And that's because of the weather
you have in this particular area?
- Absolutely, because of that cooler climate
the fruit has time to develop these really intense flavors.
We ferment it in stainless steel, to start off with,
and we retain half of that batch in stainless steel
to keep that primary fruit character.
25% of the batch goes into very traditional oak barrels,
so you do get a lot of new oak flavor coming in.
The last 25% we put into 140 year old English casks.
Those three components, and then blended back together
to create the final wine.
- That's some impressive chemistry happening there.
- Shall we try some?
(lively regal music)
- I can only start this taste test by just laughing.
- Why? Cos it's the most romantic setting possible?
Two glasses of wine, a baguette.
Let's just take a moment and appreciate this.
(lively regal music)
- Alright.
- To the boys who drink their lunch.
(glasses clinking)
- That's delightful.
- That's gorgeous.
(lively regal music)
A little speechless right now
by just the wine, the countryside,
there's a baby over there hanging out with us.
- What sort of mouth movement should I do
when tasting a wine for the first time?
- [Ian] Suck the air in over the top of your tongue,
which aerates the wine.
- Let's taste our wine for real this time.
(glasses clinking)
(slurping)
That's like a whole other wine.
- Okay, I got exactly what that tastes like now.
It's fruity, it dances on your tongue,
it actually makes you thirstier the more you drink.
(glasses clink)
Up yours.
(laughing)
This is a dangerous wine.
- Wine is often regarded as a pretentious beverage, some--
He knows what I'm talking about.
Something that's enjoyed in lounges, but this
is in fact the proper setting for wine to be enjoyed.
It's not for dark dining rooms,
it's for bright, crisp vistas.
- And the alcohol is definitely there,
I can tell you that right now because I'm feeling great.
So here we have venison.
- Deer, for the uninitiated,
with a little beetroot chutney on top.
- Cheers.
(lively regal music)
Damn, that is good.
Here we go.
- Oh man, that's beautiful.
- Ooh!
- I love this. It makes wine seem a little bit more rugged
and connected to the earth in a way
that I've never appreciated before.
- This countryside is a wonderland.
- Kind of have a crush on this lady.
The boys who drink their lunch.
- Wine fact!
Australia actually exports more wine
to the UK than France does.
- Really? - Yeah.
- Australians seem like they would
share anything with anybody.
Made a bunch of wine-- - That's true.
- come have it.
The French, on the other hand, seem like,
"Oh I just keep it in my cellar.
No one drinks it forever."
(laughing)
- Hey look, some cows.
Sheep! Hold up.
- Steven loves sheep.
- Oh, not enough space on my phone.
- Womp, womp.
(bright classical music)
- My name is Nick, I'm a winemaker at All Saints Estate,
and one of the owners along with my two sisters.
Today we're tasting the Museum Muscadelle and Museum Muscat,
which are both fortified wines, upon average 100 years old.
Fortified wine is a wine that is fortified by spirit,
in our case, neutral grape spirit.
- So you're adding a stronger alcohol
to a wine that's not done becoming a wine.
- Correct.
The grapes, they're on the vine ripening 'til Autumn
where the sugar accumulation is super high.
Before the yeast gobble up all the sugar
and turn it into alcohol, we pump in 96% grape spirit,
which stops the yeast in their tracks,
increases the alcohol to about 18%, and fortifies the wine.
So the wines we're tasting today
are a blend of different years,
but on average it's 100 years old.
- [Steven] You're actually inheriting somebody
who had the foresight to barrel up the wine
and let it sit for 100 years.
- [Nick] Yeah, that's right.
- [Andrew] Are you presently creating wine
that 100 years in the future then also turn into this wine?
- [Nick] That's right.
- [Andrew] Kind of a weird thing to think about, isn't it?
- [Nick] It is, yeah, it's a wine that
no one will drink whilst I'm alive.
- How do you arrive at the combination of wines
that go into this to form the blend?
- There might be 30 or 40 wines lined up.
We smell and taste through the wines
and choose the final blend.
It's such an amazing, complex style of wine.
One sip goes a long way.
- So how much is this wine?
- About $1,000. It is a lot of money, I know.
My sisters and I actually asked our accountant
if he could work out what the wine costs us to make.
He came back with a figure of $20,000 a bottle.
- [Andrew] Really? - [Steven] What?
- By adding up all the time it's taken
to look after the wine, and my sisters and I said
we can't charge that but,
$1,000 should cover our costs and our time.
- Imagine a $20,000 new car
that you could have for $1,000.
- Yeah.
We are going to now try two $1,000 wines.
- [Nick] This one is the All Saints Museum Muscadelle.
Muscadelle's more aromatic and tastes a bit lighter.
(bright classical music)
- [Steven] I never experienced
that much wine by just sniffing.
- At first it reminded me of when
I discovered my mother's vanilla extract
and I was like, "This will be delicious."
- Let me set the scene.
You're in Harry Potter's world.
- Okay.
- And you walk into the chocolate candy shop.
- [Andrew] Yeah.
- And there's just all these ridiculously
amazing candies on the wall.
- This would for sure be Dumbledore's preferred drink.
- Cheers.
(glasses clinking)
(bright classical music)
- Oh my god. Oh my god.
- [Andrew] That's extremely tasty.
- I don't wanna sound pretentious.
Like, it was the deepest, richest,
grape-y, raisin flavor, just--
- So raisin-y.
- Filling.
- It's like you had the most delicious banquet dinner.
The moment after your last bite
and you're reminded of all the flavors you just had.
It's all of those in an instant.
- And it has the touch of a lover.
- I kind of get what you mean.
- Yes! - Yes!
- [Nick] This one is the All Saints Museum Muscat.
Richer and more concentrated, and they say it to be sweeter.
- Woah.
- [Andrew] This is a step up from the previous one.
- [Steven] This is deep.
- Look how steamy you made your glass with the smelling.
You're a monster.
(bright classical music)
- Oh yeah. - Oh yeah.
That one was more fragrant, this one's more intense.
- It's like this labyrinth of flavor.
That is why it would be Dumbledore's favorite drink.
You know when he pulls the memories out of his mind?
This is like that time warp where you can just sample
an infinite number of memories.
- It's ticking the top of the roof of my mouth,
but I don't have taste buds up there, how is that possible?
I'm having a hard time coming up with the words
to describe how powerful and beautiful this is.
- I think that's important, though.
If it was easier to explain, it wouldn't be as worth it.
- Somebody was preparing this wine
before I was alive, before my mom was alive...
- But they didn't know that it would make this.
And that is the crazy part.
I'm still not sure I know totally what it tastes like,
but it tastes like a lot and I'm liking it.
- That's crazy.
- Which wine was the most worth it at its price range?
- The Marsanne Tahbilk was unlike
any other white wine I've ever had.
Fowles, the Ladies who Shoot their Lunch.
That was my Worth It winner.
- Of course, that lady on the bottle got you.
- Did she snipe my heart?
Perhaps.
It was just the most delicious, and I really like the label.
And to be honest that's how I pick most of my wine.
Who's your winner?
- They were just all so good.
I think I'm gonna go with All Saints wine.
- [Andrew] Really?
- Yes! I can't believe it! I'm not a fancy boy I promise.
That wine was born more than 100 years ago.
Even taste the history.
That does it for Worth It Wine, Oz edition.
- You guys aren't gonna ask about my favorite wine?
- What's your favorite wine?
- Ladies who Shoot their Lunch.
- I win.
- So this was only part two of a three part Oz series.
So, we've got something special coming up.
Maybe with some of the background of this shot actually.
Rhymes with rake.
(laughing)
Cos we're rakin' in the cows.
- Rhymes with...
Cake.
It's not cake, though.
- [Male] Oh yes!