hey I'm Samuel Andre Houston Mack and today we're going to be tasting seven different Pinot noirs from seven different regions in the world France Germany South Africa U.S Argentina Australia and New Zealand this is my favorite way to taste it's the best way to kind of really get the nuances and the subtleties and the wine so what's amazing about wine is these are all the same grape Pinot Noir but what makes them different or what can influence the taste is where they're grown so micro climates the soil all those things have a reflection on the wine and that's what's really cool about the whole thing first up let's start with France so this is Joseph jewin this is 2018 Chevrolet so this is actually from France in a region called burgundy and jevre is a village in burgundy and so much like real estate it's about location location I thought it would be best to start here since this is the birthplace of Pinot Noir and this will be the Benchmark for our tasting today the French believe in something called terroir so the wine is named after a place and that particular place lends flavor and characteristics to the wine so if you look at this bottle there's no grape varietal does it tell you that it's Pinot Noir so we're going to give it a little pour here right Ruby clear this is quintessential Pinot Noir the look I mean I can already smell the Aromas coming out of the bottle so burgundy has a continental climate very short Summers cool Winters and that can really affect the color of the grape the closer you are to the Equator the warmer it is this is a lot further away from the equator so you don't get a lot of sunlight so the grapes don't really have a chance to really kind of ripen if you don't get a lot of sunlight you don't get a lot of color in the wine all right so I'm going to go ahead and give it a smell here so I'm getting raspberries I'm smelling like a little slate and some minerality to the wine so I would assume that that comes from you know the Limestone that it's grown on because of the Limestone soil it produces wines that are full of character minerality and nuance and generally when you're talking about old world wine which France has considered you know it tends to lead a little bit more with mushroom and soil I do get like this fruity and kind of tartness to it so that tells me that it's cool climate cool climate is like a retention of acidity all right so now we're gonna taste it I'm already starting to salivate that means the wine is high in acid those things kind of really kind of shine through it's not sharp or angular in any way it just means that the wine is not like too acidic doesn't feel like needles poking you it's pretty well distributed but it definitely has that silkiness that we talk about in pinot noir so it's like kind of like brush cotton right now and then the second sip you know it tends to get a little bit more satiny in a way and that's what I kind of really enjoy about it and then as you like start to like go back in and smell it it's already started to change a little bit I'm smelling a little bit of Sandalwood this wine is 90 and that's pretty expensive I always like to say you get what you pay for in wine but there are different examples of burgundy that you can get for right around 30 or 40 bucks I actually like this one I think it's great I think it's a great place to start as we kind of move through the tasting from around the world so now we have the United States this is Pinot Noir from the Willamette Valley and this is called King's Ridge so there's other places in Oregon that grow Pinot Noir but the Willamette Valley is the Premier place for Pinot Noir in the United States like a good screw cap Perry look at that easy and simple and I think first off you can see just the concentration about color I always call it like an electric raspberry it has like this kind of glow to it looking at the color I could definitely say that this is grown in a warmer place generally the grapes would be green right so if you get less Sun then they don't get all the way to Red the Willamette to me is a remarkable place what makes this region special is the break in the coastal mountains which is called the van dusa Corridor and that break in the mountains really allows that Maritime influence from the Pacific Ocean to come down and cool down the valley so if you're growing grapes you need hot days cool nights yeah so right out of the top just like big Jammy more like raspberry jam there's a sweetness to it and then in like faint in the background there's a little bit of some little tea you know like a Earl Gray tea cherry and a slight bit of mint depending on what part of the valley this is from you know I'm thinking more the Red Hills of Dundee that have these kind of Rich uh clay soils and sometimes from that I get I get like this expression of tea from it all right let's taste this lots of fruit raspberry boysenberry Blackberry not sweet at all it is ripe there's some warm baking spices there a little bit of forest floor so like the minerality and the mushroom and kind of the wet floors floor thing that you're getting definitely are attributed from the soil and the color and the ripeness of fruit is because it's from a warmer climate it does rain quite a bit but there are really long Summers and hot summers that help the grapes ripen Oregon to me is kind of like The Best of Both Worlds so you definitely have that fruit that you associate with newer wines and you definitely also have terroir you know uh kind of the taste of the land that you associate with the old world and I think that's what's always made this area special so this wine is 20 and I think that's pretty fair this is entry level Willamette Valley Pinot Noir this is the least expensive wine that we're chasing today at this price point this wine has always been a Starlet and over deliver so this is a Pinot Noir from New Zealand so this is a burn Cottage Moonlight races 2020 from Central otago I think we're all familiar with the white wine from New Zealand sauvignon blanc with most people don't know is they make some of the most amazing and Sublime Pinot Noir let's get right into it that's the drunk uncle pour there looking at the color this definitely looks different than a Pinot noirs that we poured before it is pretty I want to call it cloudy but you can't see through it it's probably unfiltered and fine how it was made you know a lot of people don't believe in finding or filtering the wine because they feel like it strips the flavor from it so I'm okay with that but it's a different kind of purple really kind of looks like grape juice you know and I can attribute part of that to its location it is a warmer part of New Zealand and that tends to lead to more concentrated color it doesn't have what we talk about that P Funk that doesn't have that barnyard anything that you tend to get from Pinot Noir but like what you get is all these aromatics feels like a Cherry Coke to me and I generally get that all through Pinot noirs from this particular area which leads me to believe that it has something to do with the soil and the way that it's grown and then like it's underlining like there's tobacco it smells like a cigarette that tastes like cherry pie there's some ripeness in it from the fruit not sweet lots of mouth filled layers of savory components truffles there's leather like Rosemary it's herbaceous a little bit of thyme maybe a lot of those characteristics and things I described are essential to a central otago Pinot Noir you look at the central otago it's like mountainous it's a very dry climate but what you get is you get those big temperature swings that are really great for Pinot Noir so the soil type in central otago is mainly composed of schist which is very porous porous soil means that water from the rain actually falls deeper in order to extract water and nutrients the Grapevine struggles and has to dig deeper the more it struggles the better concentration you get so you get less clusters but you get better clusters that are full of energy and full of rich and like fruit component I think what's always set you know Central otago Pinot Noir is apart and kind of a legend within the Pinot Noir World it is kind of that fruity aspect to it it's electric it's it feels alive I mean it probably has more tannic structure than you know than the wine from France and that's only just because of you know it might spend some time longer on the Skins not overly noticeable this Pinot Noir from New Zealand comes in at 50 this one is great I think that it drinks you know more like a hundred dollar bottle of Pinot Noir if you're looking for a you know an example of New Zealand Pinot Noir this is it so here we have Germany this is the 2020 Pinot Noir from indoor and mole and this is from Baden Baden is the southernmost wine region in Germany for any grape are you growing anything you need warmth you need the sun button they always talk about it or call it blessed with sun right because the other parts of Germany aren't really blessed with some but this is the warmest place and the best place to grow Pinot Noir in Germany we should open this thing up so we'll go ahead and give it a pour here just maybe a lighter Ruby kind of raspberry kind of color to it this is pretty pale compared to the wine from France that we tasted earlier and because there's less sunlight in Baden than there is in burgundy it's going to be reflective in the color you hear people talk about legs and they're like oh look at those legs and basically those are the teardrops that fall here and what that can actually tell you about is viscosity alcohol can translate to texture on the palette so I can look at this and I can swirl and basically you want to see how fast the legs drop the faster they fall the less alcohol the slower they fall means the higher alcohol so it's really just about evaporation smells wild I don't know another way to put it like a wild animal a wet dog it smells musty these are all not bad attributes by the way this is just kind of how I explain the wine there's a little like Menthol in the wine and Then followed by like crushed berries like blackberries but it's really leading with kind of minerality almost kind of a little bit of a Sandstone the minerality definitely comes from the sandstone and Limestone that the wine is produced on so you definitely get that this particular Cuvee these wines come from uh old world Vines which are about 30 years old so the older the vine the more concentrated fruit that you get from it so you can definitely get that on the nose you know I'm getting a lot of acid there it's almost kind of like this dill pickle thing going on with it as well less fruit warming kind of like cooking spices so the region of Baden is located between the Black Forest Hills and the Rhine River Hills and that creates the valley but also it's close to the Rhine River and that's where it imparts kind of the salinity into the wine as well Pinot Noir that was grown in Germany seemed to be linear thin and not giving much in complexity and I think over the years this is a shining example of what it could be here we have South African Pinot Noir so this is Hamilton Russell Pinot Noir and this is actually from Walker Bay Hamilton Russell I would consider and a lot of people in the industry consider it one of the finest Pinot noirs in the world burgundy is this Beacon of light of which Pinot Noir produces around the world love or want to make Hamilton Russell comes very close to that indistinguishable in some instances we'll go ahead and open this so that's where it sounds so first off on color it's definitely a lot lighter like a pale strawberry color there's probably several factors that play into that but I think the biggest thing is is just looking at the climate Walker Bay is considered the coolest wine grown region in all of South Africa and that can also attribute to the pale color big with this all mineral all minerality Earth Sage a little bit of time smells like meat uh you tend to get that in some Pinot Noir as well that can come from Colonial selection when you think about Pinot Noir there's over a thousand different clones of Pinot some different clones react to though the climate different than others and you want to pick the specific one that's more temperamental to your climate so still very Savory uh it almost kind of has like this iron kind of quality to it and I would suspect that comes from clay and Limestone soil so this is kind of clay rich soil best way to explain it it's kind of weird it's like if you like bite the inside of your lip and the thing that you get from like like just like a little bit of blood in your mouth it tastes like iron that way so this particular area the soil content here is like clay and it's pretty porous so the roots get to dig down deep and by digging Down Deeper they produce more concentrated fruit in the wines and you can actually taste that this Pinot Noir is 60 and I think when we're talking about Pinot Noir from South Africa I think that's kind of at the top and so I don't think you have to start there we're starting with the best here aromatics mouth feel texture the wine being layered uh and evolving you know the real things that Pinot Noir drinkers love about drinking the wine is exhibit in this bottle so this is Pinot Noir from Argentina this is called Barda and this is actually from Patagonia I think when we think about wines from Argentina I think our minds directly go to Malbec but they make good peanut wine really intense minerality like kind of powerful like really jumping out of the glass and that could be from the soil that it's grown on this Plum bittersweet chocolate cherry and then there's a hint of uh fresh cut grass pretty intense following through with that minerality but you get lots of Plum and there is some acid there but pretty well integrated and then like this kind of like very dense wet Rock mineral right at the corn center this wine is grown at the highest elevation of wines that we tasted today the higher you are the cooler it is at night you're closer to the Sun so you get more UV exposure but you still get those cool nights and not to think that's really what makes Pinot Noir Thrive and they found this kind of really great pocket in Patagonia you know I think what's different about this particular wine than some of the others this one actually really has pea Funk like Pinot Noir actually has like this kind of funkiness to it like it has that kind of distinctive smell when you smell it that you kind of know that it's Pinot Noir this wine is 30 bucks and I'd have to say for Argentina and Pinot Noir from Patagonia that might be pretty lofty there's other examples I'm sure of Pinot Noir from Argentina that you can get from you know 10 to 15 bucks but this is something different this is Australian Pinot Noir this is more Duke estate and this comes from the region of Mornington Peninsula so if you're thinking about wine and we're thinking about Australia I think the elephant in the room is Shiraz but also there's these small Pockets around the country that produce some different dare I say more exciting wines there's a little orange Hue to it it's darker in color so as red wine ages uh it tends to get lighter all the pigment starts to fall out this is 2018.
So this one has a little bottle of maturity to it so just like in its name morning to Peninsula is actually surrounded by water on all three sides and that produces a maritime climate hot days cool nights so the grapes can ripen phenolically definitely minerality to it there's some fruit that jumps out I'm getting like Cedar sandalwood and that could come from it being aged in Wood it smells confectionary I guess like the best way to explain it smells like cotton candy a little bit but not sweet it's like has this kind of ripeness to it that just comes from the heat I think like that meaty quality that I that I get in the wine kind of really translates to the soil all the minerals that that I'm getting so the slight little kerosene and that I think could come from the soil it does taste new world because of the fruit in it this is a really fun Pinot Noir I think it delivers in all those things that you would like Pinot Noir to be this well integrated acid there's minerality there's aromatics and then it's slightly Savory Bean Around the ocean um just tends to be a great place for Pinot Noir to thrive so you have these warm places that you need like these cooler nights that's what you get with the ocean and this is a shining example of that they think about the other styles of wine from Australia and they're kind of like beat you over the head with alcohol that's just not the case here and I think there's been a movement in Australia to kind of change that perception of like these heavy-handed high alcohol style wines so this bottle is 32.32 you can buy wine and burgundy for that price I think a lot of people say well aren't they just trying to make burgundy if I can find a bottle of burgundy for thirty dollars buy one I just buy that I think if you're a fan of Pinot Noir you know your curiosity takes you all around the world and you know I think this is a great expression of Pinot Noir just from a different place [Music] it's those nuances and those layers and characteristics that each region exudes make this one of the best ways to taste wine you know I think that this is something that you should try at your next party it doesn't have to be all Pinot Noir you can choose the theme you can choose the price point you know your relationship with wine should never be about monogamy taste as much in anything as you like [Music]