Season 5, Table 4 of “So, You Think you Know Wine?”

Grinding to a Halt (a.k.a. The Crusher)

Will “So, You Think You Know Wine?” contestants Zoltan Szabo, Brad Royale, and Chris McDonald be stoked or stumped by the mystery wine at Table 4?

Without any clues, host Seán Cullen takes each table through the swirling, sniffing, and gurgling ritual of wine tasting—asking them to correctly identify the grape, country, region, vintage, and price of the wine. Cullen then issues each player a score but not without, first, testing a few of his own theories against the experts. A champion eventually emerges.

You may have noticed that the first few rounds have been challenging for everyone. It is important to note that some of these crowd-pleasing wines, while tasting good, may lack some of the varietal characteristics that would lead our experts to the correct answer. The tables get better and better as the varietal character of future wines shines through. We thought it would still be fun to share these first few rounds with you.

Click here to watch Table 4 or read on to learn more about the contestants and the scoring method.

Table 4

As always, the video series brings together Canada’s top wine experts, but this time a few well-known food personalities have taken on the daunting task of competing against wine critics, sommeliers, and wine educators.

Zoltan Szabo

Zoltan has worked in the hospitality industry for two decades and on three continents. He worked his way up from dishwasher to sommelier to general manager. Nowadays he’s a consultant, wine judge, educator, and journalist. In 2009, he won the title of Grand Champion in the prestigious Wine Tasting Challenge.

Chris McDonald

Chris has worked in Toronto restaurants for 40 years. He started out as a busboy and quickly traveled up the ranks eventually becoming chef and owner of two of Toronto’s most loved restaurants – Avalon and Cava. He’s now taking a well-deserved break before he starts his next adventure.

Brad Royale

Brad has been involved in retail and restaurant management for fifteen years and he is now the Wine Director for Canadian Rocky Mountain Resorts. He has won multiple awards for his wine programs. In 2012 Brad launched his own wine label, Kitten Swish…it’s delicious.

The Scoring

The scoring on each wine remains similar to past seasons with points for Variety, Country, Region, Appellation, Vintage and Price.

Variety: 3 points
Country, Region, Appellation: up to 4 points
Vintage: up to 2 points
Price (within 10% on either side): 1 point

Let the games begin! Pour yourself a glass of wine and watch table 4.

For those of you new to our video series, “So, You Think You Know Wine?”, we have saved all previous episodes under the Videos tab.

Previously on Season 5 of “So, You Think You Know Wine?”:

Table 1 – Wolf Blass Gold Label Chardonnay 2013
Table 2 – Creekside Sauvignon Blanc 2013
Table 3 – Catena Cabernet Sauvignon 2012

We hope that you find this new series entertaining and that you have as much fun watching as we did filming. As usual, please send your comments to [email protected] and feel free to share this video with your friends and family.

Special thanks to our glassware sponsor, Schott Zwiesel, for their beautiful glasses and carafes used during filming.