Transcript: EP6: Lucky Rock(Pinot) vs The World

- [Speaker] On this episode of pronouncing things incorrectly.

- Hey everybody. Welcome to cellar Rats into Seller Rats. This is the sixth episode and I'm Jesse Inman.

- I'm Aaron Inman. Some call me the international man of mystery.

- We also wanna thank all 20 some odd members, of our subscription team on YouTube. We couldn't do basically nothing without you.

- Yes, thank you. So today we're gonna take all 28 of you on a little jaunt around the globe. As we taste Pinot Noirs from exotic places, like New Zealand, Bourgogne and Italy. What?

- Holy Nero, Batman!.

- And, we'll see if the classic Bourgogne taste anything like a classic Pinot Noir from California. So let's go and find out. So Jesse, what makes peanut noir special compared to other grapes?

- Well, it does like a cooler climate typically. Although some people definitely try and grow it in a warmer climate. It's got a thinner skin, it's a smaller berry, and typically it has a little more earthy components to it. Pinot Noir means black cone in French. So there's a little black pine cone.

- Tight little cluster.

- It is typically grown where there's a lot of fog. And so it can be subject to mold and mildew. Also is very high and is very tall, which is one of the more powerful antioxidants. So that's why, an antioxidant helps fight mold and mildew.

- Pinot Noir is one of the oldest grape varietals. They say the Romans might've been sipping on Pinot Noir. Pinot Noir is actually really prone to mutation too. Hence why you have Pinot Grigio or Pinto Gris

- Pinot Meunier. Where is Pinot Noir typically grown in?

- Well, the home Pinot Noir is Bourgogne, France.

- Bourgogne.

- Bourgogne. The grapes in Bourgogne, they struggle a little bit more, so they tend to have a little bit more tannin. They're a little more reserved. They take more time to develop, but that's what makes Bourgogne a little bit special.

- Agreed.

- And California is another special place to grow grapes. One of the nice things about California is the climate is pretty amazing for growing almost any grapes. And then as you get a little bit more coastal where you get the warm days and the cool nights, it's really epic for being one--

- It is such a big coastline you get so much gradation. The coast gets tons of cold weather and fog and all that fog usually works its way in, and works its way back out.

- So those are kind of a contrast of two places that grow Pinot Noir. There's a lot. The third largest producer of Pinot Noir in the world, Germany, who would've thought that? So what's the usual flavor profile of Pinot Noir?

- Beets and mushrooms, beets and mushrooms, beets and mushrooms.

- You know what's funny? When you google Pinot Noir, it's actually all fruit.

- Beets and mushrooms

- All fruit

- I think it's like you get like cherry, you get some apple skin, you get some plum, if you have a really right Pinot Noir. But I think in Russian we have like a lot of beets and mushrooms. It's kind of earthy funky. If it's less ripe of a season, you'll get some black tea, maybe a little bit of herbal components, but I think beets, mushrooms and cherry is typically what I think people will normally characterize it as.

- It has tannin, but it's not tannic. I've had tannic Pinot Noirs, depending on where they've grown them in really stressed out environments. But overall not overly tannic. Tends to be a little bit higher in acidity, and that gives you the nice mouthfeel.

- Exquisite mouth feel!

- So let's get into the tasting. We're gonna taste Pinot Noir from California, New Zealand, Italy and France.

- This is Gerrard Raphet. Literally practiced that three or four times before we started the camera. This is a 2018, details will probably be over here somewhere. And that is, here. Then we have Mount Beautiful. So this is a 2017 and this is from North Canterbury. And then this is Turducken, not true. It's gonna be over here. It's Italian.

- It's a difficult one to make, yeah.

- And as this is a 2017 Pinot Noir, Noir and Noir are the same thing, different languages. And then we have yours truly 2018, California Pinot Noir. It's a blend of three different counties.

- Oh, let's check the color here. Look, it has got good color.

- Hmm, got a little soy sauce thing, that's going on there?

- Little soy sauce a little bit of tin foil kind of--

- Yeah, for sure. And so pH, pH is tied to color. The more reds you get, the lower the pH, the lower the pH the more the acid.

- Yes. It's just got a little bit of a prettier, I don't know what you got underneath that little bit of a tin foil at the beginning.

- Yeah, a little metallic. Hmm, okay. So this one's got a little bit of a farty characteristic and that's because-- I can't wait, screw caps first of all can be an issue, but Pinot Noir can be pretty reductive. that means it puts off sulfur compounds. And so the sulfur compounds turn into like bloated eggy, although this isn't bloated eggy, it's more gun powder

- But this one is not as pretty. Let's say that it's got fruit there, the fruits a little more beat up. It's a little more like rustic. It almost has a little bit of, like an orange rind kind of mixed to it.

- It has like a, I don't know if I'm just full of it or not, but if it has like a wood chippy characteristic.

- A little bit, yeah.

- It could be barrel, but it just might not be very well integrated.

- A little bit of beef jerky.

- And it could be because they didn't use the screw cap correctly. You do have to know what the hell you're doing when you're dealing with a screw cap. This one's got a little more stank on it. This one's more intense stank and this one's a little bit more offensive.

- It's an extensor stink.

- Yeah.

- Faunchy.

- Word of the day, stank. Is it faunchy?

- Yeah, it's struggling on the fruit.

- Yeah.

- It's more like root vegetable and--

- See, that's why I get beets and mushrooms. They're all kind of these earthy, darky

- But I read the tasting notes and it said lots of cherries, plums, all fruit flavors.

- Goes well with every food in the entire book.

- It didn't really mention a lot of like the trash.

- And so then under the lucky rock,

- Some nice cherry fruit there, where you get a little bit of like, almost like you got a real right strawberry and you get a little bit of, like a little bit of that tobacco weed backbone to it, but it's definitely like supporting the fruit. It's not dominating.

- And I usually will get that from something like Santa Lucia Highlands. You get a little bit more of a tobacco dense fruit character.

- There's some of that in here. Now, mainly what we talked about here was the nose. I tasted a couple of these, but we didn't really talk about the mouthfeel-

- Let's talk tannin structure and acidity.

- Let's talk mouthfeel.

- Exquisite mouthfeel.

- Normally we'll go through them then your mouth adjusts. And then I like to run through them again, and things change dramatically.

- There's lot of that reduction that we were talking about directly and indirectly blows off too after a little while. So let's go back through and maybe talk a little bit more about the structure.

- See we're getting more violence now on the nose, but this has got pretty racy tannins. They're pretty grippy kind of chalky. So tannins, we usually describe as like prickly being very small and then chunky being very big and usually somewhere in between those and everybody has their own descriptors. This is a little bit more prickly.

- Yeah, it's a little prickly,

- That's ripe grapes.

- This particular wine will be better with some food.

- Yeah, For sure. So this one I'm getting again a little bit more, it's a little bit tighter, smaller tannins, a little bit more aggressive. But the reduction has blown off a little bit and it's made it taste more wood chip.

- On the second taste of that, I prefer it a little more than I did, like this--

- This is all under 25 bucks, and so they're all gonna be fighting pound for pound. Third one still pretty stinky. Actually, it's getting, it's to the point where it's becoming unenjoyable for me.

- It's moving more, honestly it's to the fruit. Never was there, like in a prominent fashion and now the fruit's really not there.

- It's skunky.

- And then it also has a little bit of like asphalt, like kind of like wet rock tar, which can be good. It can be good when it's layered, but this is too much. The nose would I would not wanna drink that, the mouth is better, but still overall kind of a miss.

- And look here, it's good, it's clean.

- Totally clean, good fruit.

- And again, just cause you grew up, or you make wine that gonna go on a screw cap, doesn't mean it has to smell like a fart. It's just usually bottled with a little bit less sulfur, which we like to bottle with a little bit less sulfur anyway. But that sulfur is keeping the oxygen away, which is helping your wine reduce, which is not necessarily good in the bottle.

- And we've always been big into texture on wine. One of the hallmarks of our wines is we want them to be fairly drinkable on release. And this has a nice, like it's lifted enough. It's got some tannin, it's got some acidity, but it's pretty velvety.

- Yeah, and it's, I mean, it's lighter. It's not a big, robust Pinot Noir, but it's good, clean, nice brew, good tannin structure. It's really everything I want in a Pinot. And it's like this one, if it had a bit more

- Body?

- Yeah, a little bit more like sweet fruit to it, this would be probably in the same camp.

- So for me it sounds like we're in pretty good agreement. Like the real of this was the Pinot Noir, not really good, not beautiful. maybe not so beautiful. And then you've got the Bourgogne which is really nice, but I also think it's a little more food driven for me. And this I like with food or without food, maybe like the concentration of the Bourgogne just a little bit more.

- Yeah.

- Thanks for coming with us on this journey across Bourgogne, Italy, New Zealand and America. I think we made some good discoveries today.

- Yeah, if you made it this far, you've learned--

- Good on you. Maybe we have 29 subscribers now. So thanks for joining us and we'll see you on the next episode.