$85 for $12 @ Costco-VulTour Napa Valley Red Blend 2023

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Hey, welcome Domain Dave again, like always, again and again and again and again. Um today's a fun one. We got a well, we we've got a kind of a value-priced wine. The price is low, but maybe it's not a value-priced wine. Um I'll explain. I went to Costco and found a $12 wine, $11.99, I believe. It's the Voltour V-U-L, capital T-O-U-R, but all one word. Um, like Vulture, but it is um a shout out to the Peregrine Falcons that uh fly around uh Napa. It's the Voltour Napa Valley proprietary red blend 2023. See, I got it out. It means that they're not telling you the percentages. The the blend is, and normally when they write it out, that's the that's the order. Cabernet uh Sauvignon, Petit Verdeaux, and Zinfidel, so you would figure Cabernet Sauvignon is the most petit the second and Zinfidel the third. Petit Verdeaux is a Bordeaux grape. It's usually like 2%, 3% of a of a Bordeaux blend. And what I've been told by Bordeaux winemakers is it never gets they can't trust it to get ripe enough that you could give it a bigger roll because some years you barely get any. But and Napa Valley gets plenty ripe. And then well, you y'all know Zimfandale and Cabernet Sauvignon. So that's the three grapes. It's an interesting one. It's uh Bordeaux grapes with Zimfandel, which is a Croatian grape by way of Italy, by way of California. I'm gonna take a sip. Deep, dark, and lovely in the woods. Um Voltaire is a boutique winery. They I don't believe they have their own vineyards. Uh they tend to buy grapes from a special block of certain vineyards. So you're getting a you're not just getting this a single vineyard wine, you're getting a single block in that vineyard of prestigious vineyards in great AVAs. And uh I think they their winemaker was with Opus One, and I'm not sure the whole story. Their wines typically get 94 to 100 points, they sell beginning for $125. This red blend is kind of their starting wine, and and here's the weird part about it on their website, if you go to the website to buy this, on their website it's $85. So winery direct, it's $85. So you can walk to or go to Casco and get it for $12. So if you really, really want this cheaper, you can pay the $60 for uh Casco, then pay the $12, it's only $72. It's $13 cheaper than buying it elsewhere. But there you go. So this is a legitimate $85 wine. I I pressed the button on their website, $85, to see if it would go through, and I didn't buy it, but it was $85 on their website. So you got a Napa Valley entry-level wine, and I don't know what this is. I don't know if they just got uh were given uh that this is a leftover wine. You know, they they put together their their big wines and they had some leftovers, so they combined them to make a uh a more affordable wine because it's about $40 to $50 cheaper than their normal wines, even at the big price. This is a these are these are high-end wines. Saying or so. Napa's having problems, they're down, or you know, there's they're pulling up grapes, they're trying to find different markets for their grapes. So it's it's a it's a buyer's market for the people buying grapes out there to make wine. So I'm not sure of the story about it, but since they're a boutique winery that just does the most elite wineries, I don't think they lower their standards for this wine. So there you go. So if you got 12 bucks in your pocket and you want a high-end Napa wine, even though the average price on the internet's like $15, and you get it under, it's it's $15 to $20, but Casco's $11.99. And and this is legit, yeah, it tastes legit. It it has, they don't give any tasty notes, they don't tell you how what oak it is. But the one thing about these, if it's in barrel programs, these high-end wineries don't have cheap barrels. They've got they've got you know name brand barrels cut to their specifications for their wines. So if this is in barrels, even if it was used barrels, it's going to be in barrels that look a bit better than the ones we're normally used to at this price range. It's smooth. It's got really good flavor. It's got blackberry, it's got plum, it's got sharp spices, it's got uh tart cranberry, it's got uh kind of like um coca powder, maybe a little vanilla in there just hidden in there. It's a deep and dark. This is a fall wine. You want you want this one if you it's too hot and sticky outside right now. Not that you can't drink it in air conditioning, but this is the first cool night where you gotta put on a jacket because it's 50 outside, and you want a wine that kind of uh warms you up in a very, very nice way. Well, this is it. Smooth, smooth, smooth and deep. Yeah, smooth and deep is what this is. I mean, it does things that a 12 dollar wine, you know, an average 12 dollar uh Cabernet Red Blend type of wine can't do. They can be very good, but you don't get the depth. You don't get the uh you get kind of they're making those wines in mass production. And there's certain things they can't do in mass production that these smaller boutique wineries can do, and these smaller boutique boutique wineries do it well. So there you go, the Voltaire Nath Valley Red Blend 2023, Costco 12 bucks, 15 or so, maybe more elsewhere. And if you want to get it from the uh wineries, 85. So audios keep it cheap. I'll be talking this domain day. Bye bye.