Kirkland Signature Series Columbia Valley Red Wine 2021-You Want To Know About This Wine!

Welcome. This is Domain Dave, again from cheapwinefightercom, and we've got a different wine today, a little bit special but not that expensive. It's from Costco and it's $16.99. And it's something of a unique wine. I've not really come across one of these from Costco before. What is it? It's the Kirkland Signature Series, columbia Valley Red Wine 2021. Doesn't sound all that exciting, but all Kirkland Branded wines are Kirkland Signature. But the Signature Series is something else. What they do is they contract a high-end wine maker and have him make a wine from high-end vineyards and then they sell it for a good price and what we have here I'm going to grab the bottle and it's Frenchman. You know most of the high-end, very famous guys I don't know I'm a cheap winefighter, giles or Guy, because he's French. Nicole, he's a wine maker for Long Shadow and he's been around forever. And what Long Shadow is? Just to explain that it's a project from the guy who was the CEO of Chateau Saint-Michel forever, and this is his project for 20 years. And what he did is he hired some of the best wine makers in the world to make one bottling a year for him. Guy makes a Cabernet Sauvignon Syrah blend. I think 2018 is the current vintage. He has Michel Rouland. He has the guy does Penfolds doing a Syrah. Penfolds make some of the most expensive wines in Australia and each one of these wine makers also is a co-owner and they get their pick of these great vineyards and they make these. I never knew Long Shadow existed, but there you go Now. Guy makes these wines. His is a 2018, it's being sold now. It's five years of age. This is a 2021, which is what you expect for a value-priced wine. And there is a difference because there's two different styles of wine. That $65 bottle of wine. They do a lot of extraction. What extraction is is when they press the grapes. They leave the grape skins in for a seriously long time at different temperatures. They do different things to it. They want all that chemical goodness come out of the grapes. I know you're drinking grape juice, but the skins also have a whole lot to do with what your wine is going to end up with. And then I think he's got mostly new barrels for French oak and the new barrels adds more oak influence to the wine and get all this extraction. It takes some time for the wine to bounce out and that's not something you see people do with a value-priced wine because the quicker you get it together, the faster you can sell it and the less expensive you can sell it. So this Kirkland Signature Series Glamy Valley Red Wine is a Cabinets of Yom or Low and a Surat from Walla, walla, walla, luke's Slope and Horse Heaven Hills, and I think these guys got access to some seriously good vineyards. I'm going to take a sip of this thing. Yeah, you can tell he's French. Everything's balanced. Nothing's going to go to the top. American wine makers tend to like to do flavor first and bounce second. Frenchmen have everything. Oh, french wine makers shouldn't come. Yeah, and this is a very classic classy, though the blend is not classic. This Cabinets of Yom or Low yeah, that's a Bordeaux thing, a Surat in there. That's a little bit different, but not that different. It does go together. Like I said, since the 2021, they made it in a way that's with less extraction, less oak, though I think they had a pretty good oak barrel program, because when I first put my nose a sniff I could, I could. It was like really good oak spice in there. You don't always get that with value-priced wines. You might get the flavors, you might get some chocolate, you might get this, but this was like oh, they did things a little bit differently this time. I'm impressed, you know. So it's a. So this 16.99 wine is a drink it now wine. I mean, it'll probably still be good for five to seven years. You want to put it away, but when the winemaker finished the wine and released it, it was ready to go. So trust the winemaker if he said it's ready to go drink it. You know that he says that 2018 is ready to go. Hey, you might want to put it away for a little bit more, but you could drink it. So this is a wine that is not your typical $17 wine. I'm going to take another sip and I'm going to talk about it because it's it's it's more complex and it's deeper than it's almost a different style. We'll talk about that too. Yeah, it's a drink it now wine in a different style. Drink it now wines like really try to show off their fruit and then they try to show off the oak, which is chocolate and vanilla, and maybe some coffee and mocha and that kind of thing. This one is different. It's spice, there's intensity, there's some tons of underlying flavor. It's far more complex than you're used to, because usually if it tastes great. You don't really need more flavors. I mean, that's the whole theory behind drinking now. Right, if what hits you is what you like, then don't worry about how complex it can be. And this one has a deeper feel to it. It just doesn't feel different. It's all styled. It's a different style than you get. Now, the wines it's not a matter of good or bad. A more expensive wine isn't good and a less expensive is bad. It's just a wine that's made in a different style. And actually the less expensive wines are far more popular and you might not like this style, but if you do, you're not going to be able to get it at $17. I don't think you can touch this for under $25. I mean, and plus it's in a French style which is kind of different, because a lot of times when you're talking about California or Washington, you're really getting American wine makers with American sensibility. And while this guy does have universal sensibility, it is in the French style. It is, but he's with Washington grapes, which are usually ripe and bold and full of flavor, and especially when you get some of the best vineyards around. I think he did so. This is a wine by a wine maker you're not going to see. In this price range With vineyards you might not be getting. You know, not to say that there's bad vineyards for regular wine, there's different horses for different courses. I mean you can get really good grapes for that Oak program. Something is a step up, I would say, from what you normally see and that does make a huge difference with wine. I mean, it seems like it has a higher end selection of oak. Sometimes you get a lot of used, broken, a lot of American, and then they do a lot of different things to it, so that's bad. But here it seems to be more focused and more in depth. And for 1699, I mean this is a good wine, this is. I mean, trader Joe's had these wines from Napa, different Oakville and all those types of stuff which were pretty good, but this goes a different direction. This is not that it was from a great area, this is a great wine maker. And guess what? Having a good wine maker makes all the difference in the world. So that's it for me. Domain Day from ChiefWineFindercom. Kirkland Signature Series Columbia Valley Red Wine 2021. Seek it out. I mean, this is a wine that you're going to want to if you're going to have it with a steak. This can stand up. This is going to be a wine you want to share with friends. This is like a cigar wine If you've been to smoking cigars. It's a sipping wine. I'm sipping it. It does drink very well, but this is a very versatile wine and it tastes great. And that's it for me. Domain Day Keep it cheap. Casco did good this time and I'll be talking to you in a couple of days. I've got a Merlot from Lodi. We'll talk about that. So stay cool, stay safe and I'll be talking to you. Adios, bye-bye. Thanks for watching.