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Speaker 1
0:02
Hey , tomei and Dave , CheapWineFindercom again with another podcast . We write up three wine reviews for affordable wines every week and then we plug in the microphone and here we are right now . Right now , what we have is the Trader Joe's Reserve Arroyo Seco , monterey County , chardonnay 2023 . These Trader Joe's Reserve wines always have really long names and that's what that one is . It's a $9.99 wine , less than $10 . I don't know who made it . The back label I have . All the links on the website is for kind of like a Jack of all trades wine webpage where you can buy wine equipment , you can buy wine , you can get employment news , you can get everything there . But I don't know if they make wine or not , and Trader Joe's has something about their fearless flyer about a winemakeremaker and we'll get into that a little bit .
Speaker 1
1:09
Arroyo Seco is in Monterey County . It's one of the older AVA's . It's one of the smaller AVA's . This one became an AVA in 1983 . Before that they didn't have all these , all these outlined areas where that were different . Somehow every , every ava . There's something about that . It makes it unique .
Speaker 1
1:30
So , um , the royal secco is in the salinas valley , about 40 miles from the uh , from the pacific ocean and right off the pacific ocean . There in Monterey Bay there is the blue dot or the blue hole , which is the coldest place in the entire Pacific Ocean and those winds go sweeping down the valley . And there is a Royal Seco down there . It's named after the Royal Seco River and the Royal Seco means dry river , but it's only dry certain times of the year . When the water has run off it becomes our actual river again . And there you have it . It's actually a pretty high value place for Chardonnay wines . There's a lot of old school California wine families and wineries in there owning vineyards . So this is an excellent place . The cool weather and the soil , the ancient riverbed and all that allow for really , really long growing seasons , not too much rain . They don't get too much rain . You've got a really long , fully ripened fruit and that's a very good place .
Speaker 1
2:54
Who made it ? I don't know the name they put in the back . They don't know . What Trader Joe's did say about it is that the winemaker put half of the wine in French oak barrels and the other half in American oak barrels to age , which is pretty good for a $10 wine that actually gets American and French oak . That's pretty good . Oak barrels can cost $1,000 . They probably weren't all new . I mean , that's $1,000 new , they probably weren't all new . But what that does there's two different species of oak . French oak has a tighter grain . It's uh , more subtle , more spicy . And the open grain of the american oak , when you toast it , you can get different . Toasting gives you different flavors . That's where you get your chocolates and your vanillas and your butters and that type of thing .
Speaker 1
3:38
I'm gonna take a sip . This has a kind of a huskier flavor to this is not a bright and shiny wine . Technically speaking , $10 wines are just bright and juicy and shiny and happy . This one is a little more brooding , a little more um , a little more of a food wine . This is kind of a chardonnay old school school Chardonnay , not 100% . Another thing I think they did I don't know they did . I think they did partial malolactic fermentation . Malolactic fermentation takes the tart acid that is naturally in the grapes and replaces it or just converts it to a lactic lactose milk . That's everything rounded acid and and it kind of like there's some tart flavors here and some others , so usually if there's still tart flavors flowing through , they didn't do all of it malolactic fermentation . So this one's got a couple different kinds of oak and possibly and I'm just going off guessing that maybe a little bit of , uh , different types of malolactic fermentation or no malolactic on certain parts of it , which is pretty fancy for a 9.99 wine . I'll take another sip . It's good , it tastes good , this isa . This is a well balanced , tasty wine .
Speaker 1
5:18
One of the things about these Trader Joe's Reserve wines is like this is from the Arroyo Seco , I think . Another one they have out currently is one from the Canaros region , chardonnay . So if you buy the two of them , you can kind of get a little bit of insight in what Canaros tastes like and what Arroyo Seco . One is just north of San Pablo Bay , canaros , east of Oakland . The other one is on the coast in the Salinas Valley off of Monterey Bay , and they're going to taste different but they're still going to be Chardonnay grape . So it's one of those things where you can actually learn a bit about and get a good wine at a good price $10 for a solid wine . That's delicious . I mean . This is a good tasting wine .
Speaker 1
6:05
The grapes from the Royal Seco they don't normally end up in inexpensive bottles unless there's some leftover and all the Costco Trader Joe's gets a hold of them . So I'm gonna take one more sip before I close it up . Okay , this is a Trader Joe's reserve , a Royal Seco Chardonnay 2020 . Was that two or 23 ? Let me check the bottle 23 . Really new . It's delicious , tastes good . Try it if you go to Trader Joe's , so like us where you like your podcast , if you will . It helps a lot . This is Domain Dave . We've got more wines coming . I can't believe that February is like the last month of winter . We're almost through it . So , adios , stay warm and I'll be talking to everybody in a couple days . Bye-bye , keep it cheap .
