To Burgundy & Beyond: Inventing Terroir with Pinot

Class transcript:

Everyone happy Easter to all of you celebrating out there! Thank you so much for joining us, as always. It wouldn't be Sunday without wine to pour and wine esoterica to further explore. I would love to introduce a very special guest moderator today. Joan got called into babysitting duty and her husband who is on the front line of the health care crisis he is doing his very noble work, so in her stead, very own Sarah Thompson is in the mix and will be helping me respond to the chat as questions come in. We're gonna give folks a moment here just to trickle in, you know... As always, it is thrilling to be able to connect with you all through this. Platform, especially on a day like Easter, you know all houses of worship sadly have been closed.

But we have this form to celebrate wine and to celebrate one another with, and I'm very grateful for it myself. Today, we're diving into Pinot Noir it's kind of the most noble and elegant of old world varietals. And we're considering this kind of ephemeral, abstract notion of terroir which Pinot Noir in its birthplace Burgundy really gave birth to. We're gonna consider what is special about this particular grape, both in Burgundy proper and as it is expressed elsewhere in the world. I encourage you all for the sake of class. Today for further discussion of Pinot noir, the concept of Burgundy therefore a public Uh say we then have an underbrushed version with two wines so the idea here was that we would have one kind of classic old world Burgundy so just not to put the cart before the horse here Burgundy the region synonymous with the great Pinot Noir and there are a host of villages on the French, especially elegant ones, would say we don't make Pinot climat, or location, and that's more important than the grape itself, but Pinot is the kind of paint or sorts that they express that terroir in, And it has a lot of really interesting properties that make it, you know, special and maddening in equal measure. So I have one Old World Burgundy and one New World wine. In this case, I have a bottle from the Sonoma Coast from a husband and wife team. Their surname, Flowers, you know, how evocative, and they are actually former Pennsylvanians who moved to the Sonoma Coast, and it is a cartoonishly beautiful place to be making wine and to make wildly elegant Pinot Noir, kind of cut from the cloth of the Burgundian wine. style, but, you know, with, you know, a je ne sais quoi all its own.

Thanks again. We're up to 177 participants, which, again, is thrilling. I'm gonna kick off class. Happy Easter to all of you who are celebrating. Happy Sunday. Happy belated Passover. Just, you know, thank you all so much for being here. A special shout out to all the families. To all the families who are connecting through this platform today, whether it's district strands of, you know, immediate families, whether it's Sara with her folks loitering at the kitchen table off camera, whether it's my immediate family connecting from home. I hope the nephews are cooperating. Hi guys, and of course my restaurant family, but thank you all for using this platform as a way to stay connected. You know, ultimately wine is just a good excuse for that coming together that we are all doing here, albeit virtually.

As we're wont to do, we're going to kick it off with a bit of verse here for the stay home wine class experience and today we're starting with a bit of verse from Marge Piercy. She is a gifted author and activist and this is a work called 'To Be Of Use'. To be abused by people I love best, one jumps into work headfirst without dallying in the shallows and swimming off with sure strokes almost out of sight; they seem to become natives of that element. The black, sleek heads of seals bouncing like half-submerged balls. I love people who harness themselves an ox to a heavy heart cart, who pull like water buffalo with massive patience, who strain in the mud and the muck to move things for, who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge in the task, who go into the fields to harvest and work in a row, and pass the bags along; who are not parlor generals and field deserters but move in a common rhythm when the food must come in or the fire should be put out. The work of the world is not as mud, box smears the hands, crumbles to dust, but the thing worth doing well done has a shape that satisfies clean and evident. We can have tours for wine or places that held corn.

um so uh i love that um kind of her evocation of um you know something as humble um as working the land with your hands that you know transcends its origins and you know wine itself has taken on this exalted uh status and um you know has this attendant you know trapping of luxury um but um at its core the best of them are but humble kind of expressions of europe um and pinot in particular you know has this way of transcending those humble origins but simultaneously evoking them there's a great french expression that um you know the finest burgundy should have the soup which is you know the smell of shit so it's both something that's exhaust exalted and perfumey and profound but also you know wonderfully earthy and i think that's something that this particular work um evokes really beautifully um so uh without further ado um let's move on to uh pinot noir and uh visual aid uh here uh different um clones as it were of pinot and that's something we'll come back to in just a second but um i want to uh consider um pinot the grape um and how it came into being um and then we're going to talk about its innate characteristics and then move into a further consideration of burgundy the region um what makes it special um and uh the you know uh it encapsulates um so um i often like to say that you know studying um the history of an individual grape uh like pinot noir studying the history of wine is very much like studying um you know a history of of civilization itself um wine has been with us for over uh 8 000 years um the vine was first uh domesticated uh uh in the modern day uh caucuses um but it spread quickly um throughout uh continental europe um the romans uh were the first um you know civilization to introduce it broadly um across um you know uh their empire at scale and make it available uh both to prince um and popper um but uh wine as we know it was really um you know perfected um uh by the church um after the fall of uh the western uh section of the roman empire um and that you know is a perfect um transition uh into our consideration of pinot noir um it's thought some people think the first mention of a grape that could be pinot um was by um uh the roman uh vineyardist uh coimella and he was uh writing in the first century and mentions a grape that some people think could refer to modern day pinot noir um the first published mention of pinot under uh that name uh dates from the 14th century but uh most scholars uh believe that uh pinot noir is a grape that is uh it had been in existence Um, well before that moment, and a lot of people speculate that it, uh, itself was descended um, from wild vines. Um, we talked about the parentage of uh, some grapes like Chardonnay and Riesling.

Um, Pinot's uh, exact origins have yet to be unraveled and uh, that speaks to um, how ancient it most likely is. The very word itself, Pinot, comes from the French word uh, pourparole, and it's a word that comes from the French word pourparole, and it's a word that comes from the word pinecone. Um, and uh, that's because it's thought the great clusters themselves um, kind of resemble uh, a pinecone. Pinot Noir, the grape, uh, grew up um, in uh, the region of Burgundy, which is, uh, and, uh, spread from there throughout, um, continental Europe, um, you know I think, uh, surprised a lot of people to know that Germany actually has, um, the third most plantings of Pinot, um, in the world, um, after the first century of Pinot Noir, um, and that's because it's thought that, after France proper and the United States, but, uh, Pinot thrives in cooler climates, um, uh, outside of its, its home origin, um, Burgundy itself is a marginal, uh, cooler, uh, climate, fascinatingly enough for, um, a grape that has this amazing exalted status, um, Pinot is a bit of a pain in the ass, you know everyone, uh, you know has or many Of you have seen the movie, Uh, Sideways, and I won't, um, you know the monologue, but uh, one of the the main characters points is that a Pinot, unlike Cabernet, is not a survivalist, it's a a very fickle grape; it's a very sensitive, uh, grape. It's sensitive to extremes of uh, temperature, although it is relatively, uh, cold hardy. Um, it's sensitive to uh, rapid, uh, fluctuations in temperature.

It's sensitive to drought. It has very thin skins. It's challenging to uh, harvest, and transport it. And it's a very sensitive grape anywhere um, because of those thin skins. It doesn't take on color um, as readily as other grapes, like you know. Syrah or, or the aforementioned Cabernet um, it's it's fickle, it's maddening um, and there's a huge gulp between Pinot at its best and normal workaday Pinot uh, it's a grape that if you grow it um, if you over crop it if you grow too much of it if you let um too many clusters uh survive on an individual vine or you plant your vines too far apart or you over water it um, it makes wines that are relatively unremarkable and sip and insipid uh, but if you treat it right um as Paul Giamatti reminds us then you know it's capable of these really um amazing and profound uh expressions and um, there's a bit of a religiosity to Pinot appreciation.

There's a church of Pinot, which feels fitting, uh, uh, you know, especially given, um, you know, that it's Easter Sunday. Um, these are different images of clones of Pinot Noir. So we talked about grape varietals, um, being like breeds of dogs, um, if you want to carry that analogy further, clones would be like individual dogs, um, so they, you know, would be, uh, individual collies, um, that are subspecies of, you know, the breed, uh, Collie. And, uh, these are five of them you see listed here. Pinot is actually very susceptible, uh, to genetic mutation, um, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Noir, Pinot Mounier, um, are actually essentially genetically identical, um. Uh, products, but because Pinot has been with us for so long, um, it has a lot of different, um, expressions um and uh, a lot of vineyard, uh, owners when they're you know deciding to plant with uh the grape Pinot, um, you know they have more work to do.

It's not just should I plant Pinot Noir, it's which of these individual, uh, clones, uh, should I plant and they have different properties, uh, from one, uh, to the next. Um, there are literally thousands of them, um, around the world but, um, 47 uh commercially uh developed uh in France. We're going to take some questions here from Sarah if you have any questions about what to open, uh, in particular. Uh, please uh don't hesitate to to hit me up now, uh, before we move into, um, kind of burgundy basics considering, uh, the region itself, um, in Pinot Noir, but, um, having you know talked about the difficulties of working with this particular grape, not only the vineyard but also in the cellar, um, because you know it's very susceptible to disease, but in the cellar, um, it's also very, uh, susceptible to stuck fermentations and, um, it can be equally difficult to um extract color out of as I mentioned, uh, before or make into a a wine that is ultimately shop stable, but what Pinot does well is it has this remarkable sensitivity. uh for sight and uh it is this amazing lens through which um to look at uh individual uh vineyards and the conditions in a particular place at a particular time um and uh that has been the case for a long long time um uh as early as uh 6 30 um the nuns at the abbey de bids which is in the northern uh realm of burgundy um had uh defined the limits of a vineyard that continues to exist to this day and i think there's something really remarkable about that that as early as 6 30 you have these learned uh monks or nuns in this case um who were essentially only people driving viticulture forward at the time because they had the spare time Um, the education and resources, um, to devote to Pinot but, um, they were making uh sophisticated enough wines and they were highly tuned enough, uh, to the environment that they were working in. They identified this small parcel, um, that we continue to celebrate, uh, into the modern era and, uh, the parcel they identified as a grand cru, um, to this day known as Chambertin Clodivis, um, and you know, I think, you know, that very quality, um, in spite of how maddening it can be to work with that, um, way in which it expresses, um, this sense of place, uh, both in Burgundy and elsewhere is, um, ultimately what I want us to celebrate about Pinot Noir.

Today, uh Sarah, did you have any questions? I do. Um, so I'm going to start with a couple of more basic questions which is where does the name come from? Uh, again, uh noir just refers to the fact that the grape itself is um black on the vine um, you know we say red grape but grapes um on the vine properly look look blue or black. Uh, Pinot in particular as it ripens takes on a really um, you know kind of uh deep uh black hue. Uh, it, in addition to the other things that make it maddening to work with tends to ripen unevenly um so it has has this property called phantom ripeness where the top of the bunch will ripen but the bottom is still green um and Pinot.

Producers often will talk about um not waiting for the moment when everything is black, they want to harvest with you know some underripe and some overripe, and you know, to get the quality of all those grapes. Um, is beneficial. Now, the first bit there, Pinot, um, P-O-N-O-T comes from a French word, p-i-n uh e-a-u uh, which means pine cone and refers to the thought to refer to the shape of the grape, um, and then what about aeration? Do Pinot Noirs need to have a lot of aeration, like decanting, etc. Um, excellent, excellent question, so I think Pinot, you know, is a wine that benefits greatly from aeration. People think in terms of decanting. a decanting wine often in terms of you know alcohol i've got this you know brooding masculine you know 14 15 clunker um you know of course it needs to you know you know spread its shoulders and you know uh get air um but i find um wines that are are delicate and and heavily perfumed like pinot um especially if they're a little younger uh benefit from an aggressive decant um uh more than those big um you know kind of brutish um you know uh kind of red wines and then once you've got one of those wines open what's the best way to store it um both in a bottle and maybe in a decanter um you know i would just you know monitor the temperature Um, and don't be afraid to throw it back in the fridge for a second if it gets if it gets too warm, um, but you know, uh, hopefully you know, um, either you got it in you know, a wine fridge or or you stuck it in uh, you know, the kitchen refrigerator, um, for you know, the better part of 30 minutes prior to opening so the temperature is where you want, but you know, um, even the simple act of pouring it doesn't have to be decanter, it could be a beaker, it could be you know, a lemonade pitcher, the simple act of pouring the wine out, um, will open it up uh quite a bit. How many days do you think one of these wines can last, um, you know, it's not as um, hardy, uh, and And you know, a long-lasting I find, uh, Pinot as you know like a Riesling would be um, I typically you know will enjoy a wine you know the day of and the next day but you know after that it'll just you know start to lose a little life um, it might still be enjoyable um, but you know I think you're looking at like you know a one-to-two-day window for the sake of um most Pinots uh, the older it should be said the older somewhat counterintuitive but older wines um, you know tend to give up the ghost a little sooner um, so uh they tend to um, you know uh fade faster uh than than younger ones and what should be people be noting about the color as they're Drinking the wine, oh fine question.

So um, we talked about Pinot um, not having um, the depth of color as other red wines is because um, it's not as um, uh chock full of anthocyanins which are the pigments ultimately that uh, determine a wine's color and uh, Pinot has fewer of those than grapes like Cabernet, Malbec or Syrah and uh, especially in cooler climates it can be maddening to get Pinot to take on colour you know, uh that said, colour as a barometer of taste is relatively insignificant. You know, there are plenty of, plenty of wine that's not really described in terms of English, some of the wine that's produced uh, they're specifically Known to both the Su Via Ga and Veritas chain as uh as a wealth of wines for expensively expensive, I mean you don't supply panic with this kind of quality as a product such as wine worshipro Crunch white in May days feels like two lager we've all been getting to some other wines or at least sense of this at home, but the Burgundy that I'm drinking is here, and this is a Sonoma Pinot, and I think, you know, even, you know, online, you know, you get a sense that the Burgundy is much lighter in color than the Sonoma County wine, and that's because it's from a cooler climate, and wines from cooler climates, red wines from cooler climates, Tend to take on less color than red wines from warmer climates. Great, which is an excellent segue. Oh, Sarah, did you have one more for me? A couple of quick things as you go into Burgundy to consider that people are wondering about.

Best vintages, winemakers, importers, and then how long you want to lay some of these down for as you're going through Burgundy, and then, of course, how monks dealt with phylloxera as well. Excellent. So, to that first point. The growing conditions, conditions between Old World and New World. Yeah, great. Jump in. So, let's start with, that's a great segue. Let's start with the map here. So, we've got France, and, you know, again, when I say Old World, I'm talking about the continent, the place where these traditions evolved, and the New World is basically everything outside of that. It is a very Eurocentric worldview, and I will own that, but for the sake of wine, the sake of Pinot Noir, it was birthed in Burgundy, which you can see right here.

So, Burgundy sits at the 47th parallel of latitude. For those of you playing along at home, that is the same latitude as St. John, Newfoundland, or essentially Seattle, Washington. So, that's pretty far north. It has a relatively moderate climate, that being said, and it snows there occasionally in the winter. And it gets relatively warm in the summer, but, you know, historically, you were talking, you know, 80 plus degree days, not 90 degree days. That, again, has changed and will continue to change as the world warms, but historically, the challenge in Burgundy was always getting full ripeness out of your grapes. And for five vintages out of 10 in Burgundy, they would have to add sugar to the wines to, again, not make them sweet.

But to give the yeast themselves more nutrients to feed on to make a wine that was satisfyingly full in body. You know, so historically, you know, it was hit or miss in Burgundy. And through the 70s, that continued to be the case. Now, you asked about vintages. Burgundy is in the midst of a bit of a golden age. And that is because they have benefited from global warming to some extent. You know, if one out of two vintages, you're not gonna get full ripeness, you know, that's gonna be a problem. And that's gonna make people who are buying Burgundy very attuned to individual vintages. It is the case now that even in a cooler year, by modern kind of post 2003 terms, you know, the wines will still be, you know, sufficiently ripe, even in historically cooler sites.

So, you know, I would say that vintage variation is less of an issue in Burgundy now than it has been historically. I wanted to hit on some basics when it came to Burgundy. Just in terms of vocabulary, so that we're all on the same page. So, I earlier mentioned the Clos de Baise. Clos is a French term for a walled vineyard. And the very monks who, essentially, who are bringing Pinot into the world and determining, you know, what are the greatest sites for these wines in this small, you know, 30-mile corridor of Eastern France, they tended to wall off their most favorable vineyards. So, Clos refers to one of those walled-off vineyards. It says C-L-O-S. So, anytime you see Clo on a label, it refers to one of those historically significant walled-off sites.

We're going to be speaking in terms of hyphens, so throughout Burgundy you have Givry-Chambertin, you know, Bonne-Românae, you know, all of these appended words, and that's because you're dealing with very astute marketers. So in the 19th century, the merchants of Burgundy, who by that point had established international renown for their wine, realized that, you know, they should tie their villages to its most famous product, or to their most famous product. So in the case of Givry in the north, the citizens of Givry said, 'We've got this great vineyard, Chambertin, you know, let's make a brand out of this.' So instead of, you know, being, you know, humble winemakers from, you know, Givry, they became, you know, exalted winemakers from Givry-Chambertin.

So they appended the vineyard name to the village name, and that happened throughout the region, and they were tremendously successful with it. So that is why there are so many hyphens throughout the region. It's early 19th century branding. You have a map of Burgundy here. Just to briefly touch on the phylloxera question there, Sara, monks didn't have to worry about phylloxera because if you didn't play music, you could use it. You can play music by a It didn't make its way to Burgundy until the tail end of the 19th century, at which point most of the monks had been superseded by tens of thousands of smaller growers because of the French Revolution. Neither here nor there. Let's consider the region geographically. The heart of Burgundy is what's called the Côte d'Or, and it's at the top here.

It constitutes, I like this map because even though you probably can't read it at home, for which I apologize, and at some point hopefully we'll get a little more sophisticated with our wine school graphics, but at the very least, you can see at the top of this map, and top does equal north, there it goes, at the top of this map that just fell down, we can add that to the wine school blooper reel, you've got red and yellow. And red and yellow equal north. And then we've got the Côte de Nuit and the Côte de Beaune, named after two villages in each sub-region. Together they form what is evocatively known as the Côte d'Or. People like to think that that means the Côte of Gold, because it is such a prosperous region.

Sadly, the OR there is a shortened form of Orient, or west, because we are on the western bank of the Seine River, which itself, is a northern tributary of the Rhône, flowing south into the Mediterranean. And the northern edge, sorry, the western edge of this valley, which was created through, essentially along a geological fault line, exposed a band of limestone that is really critical to this relationship between Pino, and these individual vineyard sites, that monks and nuns spent, you know, the better part of centuries studying and fine tuning. So this northern section of the Cote d'Or, those are your most famous names in Burgundy. The wine I'm drinking is a Mâconnais, and it comes from the southern end of the yellow section, which is the Côte de Beaune.

And it was actually, Mâcon is a village next to Saint-Denis. I'm drinking a wine from a sixth generation grower, Vachérie Le Gros. It is wildly elegant. It's elegant, and tart, and subtle, and fabulous. To address the importer question, for your sake, Sarah, I think that's a really great way to select wine, particularly in a place like Burgundy. So because the citizens of France, through the action of the French Revolution, took back all the church vineyards and distributed them, to not only the firstborn sons but all the sons, ownership of these exalted vineyards in Burgundy is spread between a maddeningly broad assortment of producers. And that makes it very hard for anyone but the most hardcore Burgundy lover to easily, you know, select wines.

Looking at an importer's portfolio is a great way to, kind of, find a book of wines that you like. The one I'm drinking comes from, I believe, David Bowler. And I will, tomorrow, send out more recommendations. But another one of my favorite importers would be Becky Wasserman. She started in the 60s selling oak to the merchants of Burgundy. And this is at a time when a lot of Burgundian winemakers wouldn't even let a woman in the cellar, you know, let alone buy barrels from them. And she befriended merchants throughout the region and became the most famous American importer of Burgundy through that kind of action. Now, we're gonna move on and consider some new world wines and take some questions, but I wanted to consider the quality pyramid.

So we talked about as early as the seventh century, individual you know vineyard workers, individual you know vineyard workers, in the form of nuns and monks, walling off choice vineyards and identifying the best sites. As early as 1855, that wisdom was codified, you know, by various authors and took the form of classification schemes, which the French government enshrined in law in 1935. And in Burgundy, it's blessedly simple. You have a tier of regional wines, which are just labeled Bourgogne, the French name for Burgundy. Then you have the village wines. Those are the appended names we talked about before, the Gevries, Saint-Martin, the Vaux-en-Romanes. And then you have individual Premier Crus and Grand Crus. And those are geographical sites, unlike in Bordeaux, where you had individual merchants classifying the estates, the wineries themselves.

In Burgundy, it's much more poetic than that. They consider the individual vineyard. Now, this is a cross-section of a typical kind of Burgundian slope. So this is, again, the Western edge of the Seine River Valley. And this is what Burgundy looks like in cross-section. And the French are obsessed with what they call the saddle of the slope. So that midpoint of the slope has the best kind of balance of water retention. So you have these beautiful vines and water draining capacities. There's an amazing layer of exposed limestone, which does wonders for the structure of these wines and, you know, tends to preserve acidity in a grape like Pinot that can occasionally lose it. And this is kind of like the classic form that, in the most exalted villages, these wines take.

So you have, you know, the forest, the point at which, you get too high in elevation for grapes to reliably ripen, and then you'll have a nice bit of open, a band of typically, you know, Premier Cru vineyards at the top, or very often producers will plant Chardonnay, and these tend to be, you know, thinner soils and really hard limestone that depending on, you know, the individual site can be, you know, extremely difficult for vine roots to penetrate, and then in that saddle, in that center band, you have the Grand Cru, and then another layer of Premier Cru below that, and then the village, and you know, kind of regional wines thereafter, but the wines of Burgundy, you know, very much speak to the geography of the place, more so than any wine that I can think of, and I think in particular of someone like Hugh Johnson, who's an Oxford darling, and you know, he's a great wine lover, and he's a great wine lover, and he's a great wine lover, and he wrote one of my favorite reference works on wine, which is the World Atlas of Wine and he said that someone asked him whether they thought that would be a good idea to release a book of maps that was essentially a wine guide, and he said, 'wine is a map,' and no more is that kind of true than in Burgundy, and that really gets at this whole notion of terroir, and I really love the way that Hugh Johnson encapsulated that.

He said, 'terroir is the whole ecology of the vineyard.' In every aspect of its surroundings, from bedrock to late frost to autumn mist, not excluding the way the vineyard is tended, not even the soul of the vigneron, so it's this coming together of place and people that is uniquely evocative, and Pinot Noir is an amazing prism, an amazing lens for that transformation. Thompson, what do you have for me? Yeah, a couple of things. Carmen had a question. She's joining us from Maine. And she's asking about less Eurocentric terms to use, rather than Old World versus New World. You see, you know, continent, and like Europe and beyond, you know, so I think, yeah, speaking continentally would do that, and, you know, I, that's something I could definitely, you know, be incorporating in my own lexicon more.

And then in terms of reading a Burgundy label, there are a number of folks out there who are wondering how to read their label. So, I'm going to ask you, you know, what's the best way to read the labels best to figure out where exactly their wines are from? Fabulous question. So, sadly, you can't, it'll be blessedly difficult to see here, but we'll get a little closer. So, again, you will not find Pinot Noir listed on this label at all. That's not because this is any more or less Pinot than the wine that is labeled Pinot, that's just because the French think in terms of place. So, for them, this is Mérgues. It is not Pinot Noir.

And to be called Mirange, the French are not only indicating a set of geographical parameters, they're also indicating all sorts of viticultural practices that they buy into for the sake of making their wine Mirange. And then before this wine hits the market, there's actually a tasting panel conducted, whereby local winemakers and bureaucrats sign off on this as a wine that is representative of this particular village, in this case. So, here you have Mirange. Mirange is the village. If you had a Grand Cru, if you're lucky enough to be drinking Bon Mar at home, which is from Chambord-Missigny, your wine would not say the village. It wouldn't say Chambord-Missigny. It would just list the headliner, which is Bon Mar. Maddeningly enough, it is up to the consumer to know that Bon Mar happens to be in the village Chambord-Missigny.

That's just the way the French think. They think that should be enough. You know, Bon Mar is the Madonna or Cher of the Burgundy firmament. My particular wine is Vévin. In this case, the vines were planted, this is actually a selection across different parcels, but planted shortly after World War II. There is no codified definition of Vévin in French law, but typically connotes vines that at their youngest are 30 years, but, you know, people use 50 years. So, you know, you can use the Vévin as a parameter. And then you have the Domaine Vachy l'Aigre listed here, and then the vintage as well. You can't see it at all, but very often they will name another commune. In this case, it's Saint-Denis, and that's because this Domaine is based in Saint-Denis, which is an adjoining village to Mirange.

You can't, you guys can't see it here, The Importer, by law, is listed on the back label. I incorrectly stated it as David Bowler earlier. I apologize if there's anyone from Weigant-Mensler listening in, because this is Weigant's wine, and Weigant is another great place to look. Weigant, for those of you listening in D.C. Area, is particularly fun because they also have an amazing liquor store that carries the wines that they bring in. And I think, again, especially for Burgundy, a lot of people, they'll look at the front label and try to decipher it, but turning it around and looking for that importer on the back label can be really illuminating. And if you try a wine and you see that it happens to be brought in by the folks at Weigant, then you can continue to turn bottles around.

And every time you see that Weigant, you think to yourself, oh, this is a good endorsement. Someone has curated a portfolio. And I like their sensibility, and I'm going to give them another go at it. But I think that is really, if you're flying blind, one of the best ways to pick wine in a retail outlet that you're not familiar with. And then if you could go a little bit more into the different profiles of different regions, including kind of talking from lightest to fullest and alcohol content in general of those regions. Absolutely. Absolutely. So I just talked. I talked through the Côte d'Or. I'll bring back the multicolored map. So I talked through the Côte d'Or, and you have Côte de Nuit and Côte de Bon.

The Côte de Nuit almost exclusively makes red wine. There's a small trickling of white, mostly in the form of Chardonnay. There's a small trickle of Aligoté there as well, but we're not going to talk about it. But the limestone there is notably older and harder than the limestone outcroppings in the Côte de Bon to the south. The wines in the Côte de Nuit tend to be, people say, you know, harder, more, you know, savory, more structured, more, you know, masculine, masculine to put it in gender terms and apologies. But, you know, they are, they're brooding wines, broadly speaking. That said, there's considerable variation from village. To village, and each of the villages has a distinct personality, and then each of the vineyards has a distinct personality, and that's the beauty of Burgundy, you know, there is, you know, no end to this subtle play of terroir there and, you know, talking to someone who's immersed in it can be one of the most, you know, kind of wonderfully illuminating wine experiences you'll ever encounter or one of the most maddening, depending on your perspective. South of that, you have a region that's blue. You have a region called the Cote Chalonnais, a source of amazing values, less prestigious than the Cote d'Or, and then, but they make equal smattering of red and white, and then further south, in green, you have Maconais, again, named for the village of Macon, which makes almost exclusively white wine.

The Cote de Bon, within the Cote d'Or, tends to make more supple, fleshier, fruitier wines, but again, there's considerable variation. So, you know, that's the beauty of Burgundy, you know, having individual villages there. What else do you have? Well, some of this gets more into wines from other regions as well, but do you have any thoughts on, like, where the biggest Pinots are coming from and the lightest ones, and what are your thoughts on German Pinots? So, I would say, you know, historically, the biggest Pinots would never come from, you know, Burgundy proper, and that's not something that you would ask of Pinot. You know? I think, you know, Pinot, you know, it is elegant, first and foremost.

You know, it can be, you know, elegant and earthy, it can be elegant and poopy, you know, we talked about that barnyard earlier, but it embodies both, you know, almost always. Pinot, in the modern era, is getting bigger because the world is warming. Pinot gets huge in parts of the New World. In places like California and the Russian River Valley, you know, you see Pinot tipping scales at, you know, 15% alcohol. Pinot is also a brand. The most popular Pinot on the market is a wine called Miomi, but that's not Pinot as an agricultural product. Miomi is a brand. Miomi has a decent amount of Gewürztraminer in it for aromatics. That's part of the recipe of Miomi. Miomi is barely dry. If dry, you know, so I think it's important to make those distinctions.

I think a lot of the perception that people have of Pinot is less about what Pinot is, you know, in places like Burgundy, and more about a brand of Pinot. Vis-à-vis Germany, Germany historically cooler, or most parts of Germany cooler than Burgundy. Germany makes Pinot under the name Schmargunder, which is just more fun to say than Pinot Noir. Schmapergunder is like Wunderbar. Schmapergunder is one of my favorite wines in the world. It tends to be a little lighter than Burgundys, most Burgundys you find in Burgundy proper. And it tastes on this level, kind of bitter, herbaceous, who knew my German red wine could taste like Amaro, kind of, you know, transformation. That is stunning. Alsatian Pinot kind of does the same thing. And people will talk about cool climate Pinot.

And typically they're referring to Pinot Noir from even more marginal climates than Burgundy. So this is from the Wine Folly. You kind of see Pinot bands, but the best places to grow Pinot tend to be the, globally, tend to be the more kind of historically marginal climates. So places where from year to year it can be a struggle to ripen grapes. And I'm going to go into kind of like a lightning round of Pinoit throughout the New World. But we're going to start in the Willamette Valley. Can you jump into the New World? Will you tell people what the subtle differences they should be tasting in their glass as they jump into their California or Willamette Valley Pinoits in front of them? Yeah, totally. So for me it's all about quality of fruit.

So I give my staff a hard time, especially as they're, you know, learning more about wine, if they say for something, you know, this wine is fruity. Of course it's fruity. It's made from fucking fruit. You know, that's not enough. You know, to say fruity about a wine, you know, is, you know, kind of prima facie. You know, it's very surface level. You know, what is that fruit like? So, you know, not only talking different kinds of fruit and, you know, for the sake of Pinot, you know, people dive a lot into cherry or, you know, berry fruit, you know, be it, you know, strawberry, raspberry or like, you know, crazy forest fruits. You know, but for me, you know, what is the quality of that fruit? You know, is it underripe?

Is it, you know, overripe? Is it pickled? You know, is this, you know, fruit syrup? You know, is it, you know, jammer? You know, is it that, you know, kind of fruit that's on the verge of spoiling but strangely enjoyable nonetheless? For me, the fruit profile classically on Burgundy is very much tart fruit. You know, so it's more, you know, slightly crunchy and maybe a little underripe, but not unpleasantly so. Whereas in, you know, most parts of the New World, in a place like the Willamette Valley, which we'll consider in a second, or, you know, for the sake of my wine, Sonoma County, it gets a lot hotter. And, you know, the wines taste more sun-kissed because of that.

And, you know, the quality of fruit in something like the Flowers, even though, you know, you are overlooking the Pacific and you have all of these cooling influences because of that oceanic influence, the quality of fruit in this wine compared to Burgundy is way riper, you know, almost startlingly so. And that's the first, you know, kind of, you know, thing that sticks out to me. I love the Merange, for those of you tasting at home. You know, it has almost this espadrille pepper, like paprika-like kind of smokiness to it. And then the Flowers, maybe it's just, you know, because of, you know, the incredibly evocative surname. But, you know, there's something like very pretty and floral about it on top of that, you know, ripe, juicy kind of New World fruit.

What else you got, Thompson? What's with the bottle shape? What gives? This is so much different than the bottle shape of Riesling from last week. Ah, fine question. So yesterday we were considering Riesling that historically laid down in, you know, cabinets. In the world of wine, you have, so that's called a hock bottle. This is fittingly called a Burgundy bottle. And then the major other shape in play would be the high-necked Bordeaux bottle. And, you know, typically these are, you know, people worked with cellars in Burgundy. And the neck of the bottle evolved to catch some of the sediment. You know, I've heard that Bordeaux bottles, you know, got their high shoulders because the wines threw more sediment. Bottles, as we know, as we know them today, didn't enter winemaking broadly until the 19th century.

Prior to that, most people drank wine directly out of cups. So the notion of aging a wine for a prolonged period in bottle is very recent. You know, honestly, I don't know how the Burgundy, you know, bottle evolved. I think it's just a classic bottle shape. You know, much like the Pinot Noir grape has, you know, no known shape. No known parentage because it's so old. You know, I think the Burgundy bottle has no known parentage just because, you know, it's kind of like a classic, you know, form for a bottle. So that'll be my cop-out, I really have no idea, bottle shape of all kinds an answer there, Thompson. But it is, this is properly called a Burgundy bottle, this shape. 

A couple of people are wondering what your, like, best bang for your buck Pinot is. What would be my final offering thought, and then what would be my best baller option would be. Ooh. So, if you were lucky enough to be buying wine, you know, before let's say 1995-ish, you know, you could get incredibly renowned Burgundy at a reasonable price. That world does not exist anymore. One of the real challenges of buying Burgundy is that it's gotten incredibly expensive. You know, you have to imagine the most famous wine, so let's take something like Romany Conti, for instance. So Romany Conti is a, what's called a monopole. A monopole is a single vineyard owned by one producer, in this case, the domain of the same name.

They make, like, 600 cases of that wine in a given year. It sells for you know Romany Conti like $20,000 Yeah and it's a bottle because of its scarcity and because global demand has you know skyrocketed for these wines You are always better off looking off the beaten path The cool thing about Burgundy even in a place as renowned as the Côte d'Ivoire is there's still an off-the-beaten-path there The Mirange that I have here is a great example Mirange was not a wine It was not a single village wine within Burgundy until the late 80s Prior to that it just existed as a generic Côte d'Ivoire kind of wine So lesser-known villages, names that you don't recognize, are always a good bet within the Côte d'Ivoire. Wines from the Côte Chalonnais are a great bet.

For reds, you know, it's like Ruy, Givry. These are historically, you know, very proud. Yeah. Labels, but less well-known. And because they're in a sub-region that's less exalted, they tend to be great values. And then on the white side, some of my favorite Burgundys in the world are from the Macanais. Amazing Chardonnay there, amazing value. But, you know, the sad fact of Burgundy is that, you know, for every great wine, there are, you know, a dozen unremarkable ones. And it can be really hard unless you know the region to figure one from the next. In terms of looking for values elsewhere, you know, I would encourage you to find regions that you like. You know, Willamette Pinot, California Pinot is not the value that it once was. And a lot of those cult names, you know, this is, the Flowers, you know, in particular, is more expensive than the Mirange that I bought. You know, so, you know, I would just— Again, you know, look for labels that are less well-known. Look for names that you don't recognize. And, you know, find a wine shop that you trust. Find an importer that you trust. And, you know, find those, you know, voices that you respect. And, you know, follow them on those leaps of faith. And you'll be rewarded.

So I'm going to dive briefly into — I spoke to Willamette Pinot. But I think in terms of the New World, in terms of the U.S., I'm drinking a Sonoma Pinot. But the story of American Pinot Noir, I think, really starts in the Willamette. Pinot came over to the United States before Prohibition. But it is a harder grape to work with, especially in California, which was the center of vinifera production prior to Prohibition. And so grapes that were better suited. To the warmer regions of California, took off, like Zinfandel and Cabernet. And Pinot really didn't gain a toehold there until the 70s and 80s. But through the work of a gentleman named David Lett, who became known as Papa Pinot, he was essentially a hippie. And the San Francisco scene got too hot for him.

And he fell in love with the lands of Burgundy and wanted to work in a cooler climate. And he fled north to the Willamette Valley. About 50 miles south of Portland. And he was one of the first people to plant Pinot in the Willamette and quickly gained this amazing following for his wines. And people talk about this great event in American wine appreciation, the 1976 Judgment of Paris. And this was a tasting organized in Paris. By a local wine school that pitted the greatest California Cabernets against the greatest analogous Old World Bordeaux, which were made from the same grape. People forget that a mere three years later, in 1979, at Wine Olympiad held in France, one of Eric's wines, which was made by Papa Pinot, by David Lett, outperformed the greatest Burgundy.

So, there's this great moment for Oregon wine that gets overshadowed when people talk about that great moment for California wine. And so, Pinot took off from there in the Willamette and it became, you know, identifiable. It became uniquely tied to the identity of the wine region in a way that's really poetic. The quality of Pinot there is a little different. The most famous soil in the Willamette is volcanic. It's called Jory. Oregon actually has a state soil. It's called Jory. And as such, the Pinots that come from Willamette, you know, they tend to be fuller-fruited and a little juicier than their counterparts in Burgundy proper. But, you know, they are equally terroir-expressive in a different way. And, you know, the Willamette is a region that appeals to people in Burgundy because it is, unlike parts of California, still very much an agricultural community.

And environmentally, they're very astute in terms of the way they're working the land layer. And it's still very bucolic and, you know, there are smaller growers. And it's not like Napa in the sense of being this place that, you know, is as much an advertisement for a luxury, you know, wine living lifestyle. You know, most of the greatest growers in the Willamette Valley are farmers first. And, you know, I think it's amazing that they've managed to preserve that. I'm drinking a Pinot from the north coast of California. Most of the best regions for a growing Pinot in California tend to be coastal. And that's because you get a cooling influence from the Pacific Ocean, which has currents sweeping up the coast that bring colder air and fog to the vineyard sites closer to the coast.

The Flowers Pinot comes from very close to Fort Ross, which is actually the southernmost outpost of the Russians who tried unsuccessfully to colonize California. And it's at elevation. It's preposterously beautiful. When this husband and wife team first planted Pinot there, a lot of people thought they were crazy. A lot of people thought there was no way they would get their grapes to ripen. But they've carved out this wonderful niche for both Pinot and Chardonnay on the Sonoma Coast. But Pinot tends to do better in those cooler coastal sites, both on the north coast of California and in the central coast around Santa Barbara, which is where Paul Giamatti and his friends were touring in the aforementioned Sideways.

It tends to do better on those coastal sites than it does in the Central Valleys, where it just gets way too hot for a grape like Pinot to, you know, thrive. Did you have any additional questions for me for the time being? Yeah. So people are asking if you could describe kind of what the taste of more alcohol in wine is and how you would describe it. And then also, I mean, these are more local wines. These are more stylistic questions about why a Pinot is jammy, like where that comes from. Yeah. Those are really interesting questions. So the alcohol, you know, for me, in terms of discerning it in a wine, is less about, you know, tasting notes and more about, you know, kind of a sensual experience of the wine.

So, you know, tasting something like Burgundy here, incidentally, it should be said that on the label, both of these are identified as 13 and a half percent alcohol. You know, for me, you know, the Merange drinks is a lighter wine than the Flowers. You know, and the way I experience alcohol is, you know, where does the wine ultimately rest on the palate? Does it, you know, dissipate, you know, toward the front of your palate when you're drinking it? Or does it work its way, you know, further to the back of your mid-palate and then throat? And, you know, the first thing I think is that, you know, I've had a lot of these wines. The further it weasels its way back in your mouth, typically the higher in alcohol the wine is.

Now, all of that is tied to other factors. So, as you raise the acid in a wine, for instance, this being from a cooler climate in Burgundy than Sonoma ever will be, this is higher acid. And because of that, I perceive the alcohol and the body of the wine as lighter because the acid's higher. And then the quality of fruit has something to do with that, too. So, you know, for the sake of the flowers, the quality of fruit is juicier. And when I say jammy, you know, I just mean that, you know, the fruit itself tastes like it's been cooked, as opposed to tasting, you know, like fresh fruit right off the vine. And those sets of flavors in a wine will cause you to perceive something as fuller in body and higher in alcohol.

Whether or not it actually is. So, you know, there are all of these interrelated variables that come together. And, you know, it's impossible to separate one from the other. You know, as much as we're talking about these individual variables in a wine, experientially, they're all, you know, streaming at you at once, all at once. You know, much like we see and hear at the same time, you can't divorce one from the other. They are part of this, you know, whole that we are, you know, kind of experiencing in real-time, at any given moment. And, you know, because of that, you know, something like alcohol is, you know, insidiously difficult to pinpoint. I don't know if that's the answer they were looking for or not, but that's the best one I can give for the time being.

I loved it. What else you got for me, Thompson? Can you talk a little bit about Jirapinos and why they're stylistically so different? Yeah, so, Jirap is a region of France that's just east of Burgundy. And the, so you can see the Burgundy here, and then you go further east, approaching the Alps, and you have the Jirap. The soil type there is a lot like it is in Burgundy, so they have quite a bit of limestone there as well. But it is a much cooler climate because, you know, ostensibly you're going up the mountain in elevation. And stylistically, the Pinots are more like they would be in, you know, Germany or Alsace. So, and actually, the Jirap doesn't get quite as much sun as a place like Alsace does.

So, they just tend to be a lot lighter as wines. And, you know, that is the classic, you know, style for all Jirap Reds. So, they work with a couple other grapes that are not unlike, like Pinot in producing very delicate, you know, aromatic lower alcohol wines, Trousseau and Poulsard. And, you know, that is just kind of the, you know, leitmotif for those wines. They're always, you know, you know, delicate and easy drinking. You know, that said, there are individual sites within the larger region that are better for reliable ripening. And, you know, there are individual sites that are, you know, more Burgundian. Because they get more sun than others. So, you know, if you have a wine that is from one of those privileged sites and from older vines, you know, then perhaps it's more similar to, you know, a typical Burgundy than you might expect of a wine from the Jirap.

Somebody's asking, they have a Pinot Noir from the Finger Lakes that's almost sour on the nose. Could you explain kind of what the Finger Lakes Pinots do as well? Yeah, that's a fun, that's a fun question. I love the Finger Lakes, it is an amazing wine region. I like the Riesling-Georgian smells like weed. That's great. Sorry I got distracted there. That could be, so that's a fun, a lot of Pinot does smell like a dispensary, and a lot of that has to do with stem inclusion in the wine. So we've talked a lot about fruit here, but historically, when you made a wine, you didn't have to use membranes to make this wine. didn't take the grapes meticulously off the stems, you just threw everything in the mix.

And that's a technique called whole cluster. And there are a lot of winemakers in Burgundy who continue to work with that, especially in Gevrey, because they have a shit ton of old vine material to work with. And that stemmy, kind of resin-y kick, that herbaceousness on the wine that is downright hempy, or smells like what the kids call 'kind bud', is really intoxicating in Pinot, if you come across it, and can be really fun. For the sake of the Finger Lakes, it is a cooler climate. In the Finger Lakes, the growing season's compressed. So one of the things that's really special about Burgundy is that the climate is relatively moderate. Because they're at a northern latitude, they get like 15 hours plus of sun at the height of summer.

And you know, the way they're wines, grapes, ripen, is this like slow, even progression. And you know, that gives you, in a very sensitive animal like Pinot, you know, these incredible layers of flavor and development of complexity. The growing season in the Finger Lakes is much more clipped, because the winters in particular are more severe. So you have this like narrow window for the sake of ripening. It gets very cold still at night, so you get great acid in the wine, gets very warm, you know, at times during the summer. But the Pinots in the Finger Lakes tend to have more in common with German Pinot and Girard Pinot, in the sense that they are cooler climate wines, they tend to be lower in alcohol, and they have more of this impolite, you know, bitter, herbal, you know, taste.

So you have this, you know, this, you know, sour, you know, kind of funkiness to them, than, you know, something as pretty as Burgundy or something as voluptuous as the Cinno and Pinot that I had in front of me. A lot of these wine regions are becoming pretty pricey, including Malamite Valley. And so people are kind of wondering where you would go next for an up and coming region in terms of more cost effective. Heidi was wondering about Corsica. Corsica is also like a tough one in terms of like cost effectiveness, just because it's in France and because it's an island. Pinot in general is, I don't think Pinot is a great place to look for value in wine. You know, you do, you have to love Pinot to coax the best expressions out of it.

It requires, you know, very limited yields. It requires a lot of work by hand. It requires a lot of work by hand. It requires a lot of work by hand. You know, so inherently, you know, with Pinot more so than some other wines, you get what you pay for. If you like lighter reds, you know, there are other grapes like, you know, Gamay that kind of vibrate on a similar wavelength or, or, or Cab Franc in the Loire, you know, that vibrate at a similar wavelength that do some of the same things, but that represent better values than, than Pinot to my mind. You know, I think it's just, you know, because of how, you know, fickle and finicky it is, it's not always a great place to look for, for value in wine.

There's just other places I would, I would, you know, search for that. If you're looking for a lighter red, which again, you know, not the most satisfying answer, but you know, hopefully instructive. You know, in terms of emerging regions in, in, in the world. You know, some of the, the most exciting Pinots I've tried have been from, from really like disparate places like Patagonia, which is turning out some really amazing Pinot Noir. Tasmania is turning out some amazing wine. Sarah, I know your parents are enjoying a New Zealand Pinot. We have a map of New Zealand here. My New Zealand, in addition to being cartoonishly beautiful, makes amazing wines. The wine that the Thompsons are drinking is from, you know, Marlborough, which is at the northern end of the Southern Island.

The most famous Pinots out of New Zealand come from central Otago, which is at the bottom of the Southern Island, which is also the birthplace of bungee jumping, ironically, but Marlborough is more of a maritime climate, central Otago, because it has these middle-earthish, 10,000-plus foot mountain peaks. It's a pretty hot, dry place, especially given how far south it is. And, and those wines are meatier, they're sturdier. And, you know, it's, it's a really spectacular place that also happens to make great wines. Again, they're, they're not great, they're not great values. You know, you pay what you get for, or you pay, you pay for, you know, the quality of the, and the expense entailed for the sake of making those wines.

But, you know, when it's worth it, it's like nothing else. Um, and, and, and I think, you know, for the sake of Pinot, that's what we're celebrating. Um, you know, that's not to say that you can't find a great $20 bottle. Um, you know, I think there are good, you know, $20 bottles out there, but you're not going to find great $15 Pinot. Um, you know, it just, it, it doesn't work that way. So if you like the median aromatic profiles of say some of these Burgundies, would there be another grape varietal that maybe you would recommend in a better price point for folks? Yeah.

Um, uh, I would look to Cab Franc, um, in the lower Valley, um, is, you know, just, uh, underlooked, um, amazing, uh, wine. Um, the flavor profile is going to be different, you know, um, uh, Cab Franc has this graphitey, um, you know, uh, you know, green herbaceousness that, that's kind of different than, um, than, than Pinot's, you know, a little more exuberantly cherry, uh, inflected, you know, kind of precociousness, but, um, uh, it's, it's a stunning, stunning wine. Um, and, uh, there are great values, be it Chinon or Bregaille or, or what have you. Um, they make, um, some spectacular Pinot in the Loire as well, um, in places like Sancerre. Um, but again, you know, you're just gonna, you're gonna pay, um, uh, for it.

Um, again, A is one of life's great joys. Um, uh, Beaujolais gets such a bad rap. Um, but, um, you know, it is just a really fun, fabulous wine. Um, uh, Beaujolais is lumped in with Burgundy, um, unfortunately, because, uh, the wines are hugely, uh, different in their own right. But, um, you have winemakers like Marcel Lapierre making Vendée France, um, uh, under the Raison Galois label. You know, that's what, like a $10, $15 bottle of wine wholesale. Um, the fruit is from, you know, um, Morgon Proper, which is, is one of the greatest corners of, of the, the region, um, for, uh, the wine. And it's, it's stupid, stupid good. Um, you know, so, uh, that's another great place to, to look, I think.

Um, again, this whole notion of, you know, just looking off the beaten path, uh, for things will serve you well. Um, I love the red wines of Galicia, um, and they are, you know, stupidly inexpensive. Um, and then, ironically, um, a lot of Bordeaux, um, if you look outside of the classified growth, uh, milieu, um, you know, they make a shit ton of wine there. They make way more wine than they do in Burgundy. And, um, people have this faulty assumption of Bordeaux that it's a, you know, because Cab Sauvés in the mix, because, you know, God forbid Merlot's in the mix, it's a big wine, but classically Bordeaux is, you know, as elegant in and of its own right as the best of Burgundy.

So, you know, um, those are the regions, uh, within, within France proper, um, you know, that I, I would look at, um, for, you know, wines that are, you know, maybe a little lighter, maybe a little more herbaceous and meaty, um, but, you know, more affordable. And I think finally to round things out, people want to know what your most memorable Pinot experience is. Oh, that's a great question. Um, uh, so it was, um, working at, um, uh, so before, um, John, Jill, and I opened, uh, Taylor, Coat, um, I, uh, managed the dining room and, uh, wine list at Komi restaurant in Washington, D.C., um, and, uh, we did the whole fine dining wine pairing thing, and occasionally people would, um, bring, uh, bottles of their own in, and someone brought in a,  it was a, um, Saint-Vivant, it was, uh, yeah, it was, it was a, uh, Romain Saint-Vivant, um, so it was a, a Grand Cru, um, from, um, from, um, from, um, from, um, from, um, from, um, from, um, from, um, uh, uh, Saint-Vivant was the name of a, an abbey, um, uh, in Beaune, and, uh, it is, You know, an amazing, uh, wine, and, and, you know, it was one of those moments where I'd never really had Burgundy like that before, and I can't really afford it to this day, um, because, you know, those are thousand-dollar bottles, um, but it was one of those rare moments where I tasted something and, you know, um, I'd read about it, and everything clicked, and it was like, you know, I still don't know whether I'd spend a thousand dollars of my own money for it, but, you know, I get why, um, you know, this has the exalted reputation that it does, and then, um, the other, uh, experience for me was the first time this was just a, a, um, a tasting with, uh, uh, one of the first memorable experiences I had with, um, uh, German Pinot, um, which is, like, cool climate Pinot, German Pinot is a very different animal, um, than, um, Burgundy. You know, because it has this, you know, black olive brine meets bitter herbal leaf, um, thing going, like, like Passover bitter herbs, and I love those flavors, um, and I had a wine from the Fülz from a producer named Chrisman, uh, Chrisman, and, and, uh, I can remember trying it and thinking I've never had a Pinot Noir like this, and, it's just being this, like, you know, moment where, you know, you taste something, um, you know, as, as simple as wine, and, you know, it, it illuminates this whole other world of possibilities that you never knew existed before, and I think, you know, once you have that kind of moment with, you know, uh, an individual wine or wine in general, you kind of never are the same, um, and, and so, uh, those would be, those would be the two, the, uh, the Romain de Saint-Bervan and the, the, um, the, the Fülz Pinot. Uh, with the Chrisman Pinot, incidentally, like, not a cheap wine, but, you know, maybe, like, $25, $30, um, in a wine store, um, so very, very affordable, or, uh, it's all relative, but not, you know, at Grand Cru Burgundy, you know, expense account levels.

Um, I'm gonna tie things up, uh, Thompson, and then I can take more questions here. We've, we've gone, we've gone long. I apologize. I hope you all are, um, enjoying the wines, have enjoyed this presentation. Um, thank you so much for spending your Easter, um, uh, with me. Uh, it is, you know, um, just, uh, again, you know, I, I can't emphasize this enough, you know, in as much as, um, you know, uh, we're celebrating these wines, you know, the, um, simple act of coming together, uh, through this, uh, virtual platform, um, is, is what we, um, you know, should really be celebrating, um, and I thank you all for, um, if you're celebrating, uh, Easter, celebrating it with me, if you're just celebrating Sunday, um, you know, spending, uh, this time, um, over a glass of wine, um, and, uh, you know, I wanted to, uh, you know, circle back, we, we've talked to Pinot, um, as it was birthed in, in Burgundy, um, you know, it is this incredibly fickle grape, but, you know, the beauty of it is the way that it can evoke this notion of place, um, and, uh, you know, I wanted to give you one more definition of, of terroir, uh, while we're at it. This comes from Dean Alexander, who's a wine blogger extraordinaire, but, uh, he said, you know, while terroir is, uh, at its heart, the physicality of a place is also the acceptance of terroir as a notion that allows it to express in the glass. So, you know, not only do we have this collective memory of a place imprinted on a wine, but we also have, you know, uh, this, you know, broader cultural acceptance of, um, you know, that expression existing.

So terroir doesn't exist without, um, you know, our ability to discern it, uh, in the glass. And, you know, circling back to those most rewarding wine experiences, you know, I've tasted enough wine that some of my, um, you know, most, um, enjoyable experiences now are, um, tasting a wine, um, smelling the wine and immediately, uh, knowing what it is or, you know, circling back to that sense of, uh, you know, memory that I've developed about it. So to, to, to smell something and to recognize it immediately as Pinot, to recognize it immediately as well-made Burgundy, you know, it tastes like coming home again. And, you know, the deeper you dive into wine, the more of those moments that you exist, the more sensitive you become to that notion of terroir and whether or not it is exactly what you thought it was, you know, those moments are, I find, uh, hugely, uh, rewarding.

And, and, you know, again, just to, you know, bring it back to that, um, you know, poem that we, we circled, uh, back to, you know, that, that, uh, notion of, you know, something that smears the hands, that crumbles to dust. Um, you know, something that, that is, you know, that dirty and that fragile, but that, you know, nonetheless has this, you know, shape that satisfies is, um, you know, uh, poetic and, and, you know, in my case, uh, worth devoting, um, a career to, worth, uh, devoting a life to. Um, uh, and I thank you all again, uh, for joining. Uh, if, um, you haven't, um, uh, already, um, uh, I encourage you, um, if you want to, um, offer some kind of recompense for, uh, class, uh, to visit our website, um, you can give it to, um, our, uh, employee relief fund.

Um, uh, Sarah, um, is, uh, moderating today's chat. She is not being, um, compensated in the very least. Um, and she has been, uh, incredibly brave, um, throughout this crisis as, uh, has our, um, entire staff as has, um, our entire industry and, and, and that is worth, um, celebrating and giving to, um, and, uh, you know. Uh, we are, uh, in the midst of, uh, a, a season of hope, um, and resurrection and, and Easter and, and I hope that, you know, you all get a sense to carry that hope with you, um, into, um, you know, your, uh, workaday lives, however monotonous they may be, uh, at the moment and, uh, you know, our customary toast, uh, is always alone, uh, together, uh, wherever you are. We love you. Thompson, what else you got?

Um, I think that's about it, but there are a lot of calls for Cab Franc for classes, and then Loire and Shannon, as well as Galicia. Oh, these are, these are all really, um, you know, close to, close to my heart when it comes to potential subject matter, so, uh, thank you for those suggestions. Obviously, uh, I don't want to tip my hat, uh, too soon, but, um, those are, are all definitely things that we will, um, you know, devote time to, assuming, uh, that this crisis, doesn't abate, um, uh, sadly, uh, anytime soon. Awesome. Well, uh, thank you all, uh, again. Um, I hope you, um, have enjoyed your wines and enjoyed learning a little bit more, uh, about them. Um, have a lovely, lovely Easter Sunday.