Can I Rank 4 Cabernets From $15 to $150 by Price? (Blind Tasting)

Most wine purchased in the U.S. is under $20 a bottle, and plenty of people never really consider moving much beyond that. But what actually happens when you do? Is a $30 Cabernet noticeably better than a $15 one? What about $80? $150? For this video I blind tasted four Cabernet Sauvignons at very different price points. I knew which four wines were on the table, but I had no idea which wine was in which glass. My job was to taste all four and try to put them in order from least to most expensive. The wines: Josh Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon 2023 Hawkstone Napa County Cabernet Sauvignon 2022 Cakebread Cellars Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 2020 CADE Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon 2019 The results were... not quite what I expected. *SPOILER ALERT: DON'T READ ANY FURTHER IF YOU HAVEN'T WATCHED THE VIDEO* CADE was clearly the most expensive wine on the table. There was really no mistaking it, and that was the one bottle I got exactly right. The rest was not nearly as simple. I probably should have gotten Josh right, but as you saw in the video, I disliked the Cakebread enough that I think it blinded me to some of the signals. I remembered Josh being more overblown than it actually was, while the Cakebread came across to me as flabby and overextracted, so I stuck it in the $15 spot. Hawkstone was the real surprise. I thought it was balanced, interesting, and genuinely good, and I ranked it much higher than its actual price. Even better, I kept drinking it after filming and it held up really well for the next few days. Price doesn't always dictate how much you're going to enjoy a wine. If you're going to make the jump from a $15 or $20 bottle to something much more expensive, it helps to know what you actually like and how that more expensive bottle compares stylistically. A wine can be more complex, more prestigious, or more expensive and still not be the wine you personally want to drink. That's really the whole idea behind 100 Wines: A Guide to Building Your Palate. Taste deliberately, pay attention to what you like, and get better at understanding why you like it. Get the book here: https://linkly.link/2lMyW 00:00 Intro 00:36 Wine #1 01:23 Wine #2 02:15 Wine #3 03:00 Wine #4 03:45 Reconsidering My Rankings 05:01 Final Taste & Locking In My Picks 05:41 The Reveal 06:10 What Did This Blind Tasting Prove? 06:47 Final Ratings & Would I Buy Them Again? 07:44 100 Wines & Outro #CabernetSauvignon #BlindTasting #WineTasting #WineComparison #NapaValleyWine