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Hey, welcome again. Uh, domain Dave CheapwinePlanner.com. I got a wine from Aldi today. A little bit different. Um, while being exactly the same as all their other ones. Uh, this is the Bear Brothers Reserve North Coast Cabernet Sauvignon 2023. Bear Brothers is a brand that they've had around since at least the 2017 vintage, which is nine years now. Um, but it was always, you know, a bear is the animal of California, and it's I don't know why they call it bros or brother. Any way you want to do that. Um but it's they've had a nice line. There's there's a rose, there's a Cabernet Sauvignon, I think there's um a uh Chardonnay. You know, they've always had these wines and they're nice. And this is the first reserve wine I've seen. This they're made by um an entity of Suter Home, which is uh part of the Trinchiro family of wines. They do Joel Got, um Menage A Trois, Sea Glass, some pretty decent value-priced wines right there. And Suter Home's been around for like 140 years. They I mean um they make value-priced uh wines. No, I checked their website, and the most expensive wine they had on there is 20 bucks, but they're in St. Helena, uh Napa, and have been forever. And uh I did the California wine caller registry, which tells you if it's in the system you and you put it in there, right? Who's the um the winery of record? And it was there, and it was there, I believe, um St. Helena uh winery. I also showed Lodi on the back label, but this is a North Coast Cabernet Sauvignon, and Lodi is not in the North Coast, so that's what I know. The back label mentions um mentions a lot of like uh you know oak spice and you know vanilla and all the all the oak barrel flavors, and there's probably oak barrels in this. And and at 2023, and then in fall, uh harvest was earlier this year and and out that way. So this is like the fourth harvest since this was picked, anyway. It's a little bit uh, you know, it's not not an incredibly long aging process, but it is for Aldi Bear Bros wines. And I'm gonna take a sip. So, why is this a reserve? I don't know. Um reserve wines don't mean anything in California. You can call anything reserve you want to. You don't normally just lie about it. Usually this means it's a cut above what you normally do. Um, you know, in Spain and uh reserve, there there are criteria to be a reserve wine. Here, nothing, but I do believe it is a cut above. North Coast is uh Sonoma, Mendocino, Lake County, and Napa, plus um two little tiny uh AVAs I've never seen a wine from. Um you know, which could be my problem. They might have lots of wines, I just haven't seen them. But there you go on that one. So this is from fancy growing region. North Coast is, you know, there's a central coast and a north coast. Those are the two main growing areas. This is a medium-body wine, it's got a lot of nice spice to it, like warm, rich flavors to it. There's like maybe uh a little bit of molasses or some herbs, um, nothing too crazy. It's not not one of those um wines that every time you take a sip that something different comes out, but every time you do take a sip, it's nice. It's a nice one. Is it um I mean they probably have a Bear Brothers uh cabinet salvion, just the regular one at your winery, and it's probably $8.99 rather than $12.99. Is it worth the extra four bucks? I'm thinking that, well, you know, it depends, but this is a very nice one, and I I did haven't done the two of them back to back, and I don't think I'm going to, because this is a nice wine. $12.99 is not crazy. Um, you know, um, anything over $11 is a premium wine nowadays. Anything below that's supposed to be bulk wine, but those distinctions are kind of blurred nowadays. Looking at one more sip. The bottle is an Apple Valley bottle, nice and heavy with a big punt in the bottom, the hole in the bottom. Not a hole, but an indent indent in the bottom. Typically for these wines, you're you're gonna get eco uh bottles because when you're trying to cut costs, keep it down. If you can make a case of wine uh bottles uh less heavy because you use the eco bottles and it reduces your shipping cost, you do that. They made no effort to reduce the shipping costs on this one. This is uh a substantial bottle. It's a bottle that you could um you could put away. Uh the cork wasn't any short little plug, it was a full-length nap of cork. I think it was a I don't think it was a real cork. I think it was a composite or something. But it was a real cork, it was it was all the way. So they're telling you this wine is a little bit special, and I think it just might be. I just think it might be a really nice $12.99 Cabernet Sauvignon from Aldi that you can just pick up on your way to get uh whatever you're getting at Aldi. That's kind of like a great place to shop nowadays, and everything is more expensive, even at Aldi's, but less expensive there. So, adios, keep it cheap. Domain Dave, uh cheaperwinefighter.com. And I'll be talking in a couple days. Keep it cheap. Adios, bye bye.