Sommelier Tries The Same Wine From 7 Different Countries

Hey, I'm Sommelier André Hueston Mack

and today we're gonna 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 in 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 microclimates, 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 Drouhin.

This is 2018 Gevrey-Chambertin.

So this is actually from France in a region called Burgundy.

And Gevrey is a village in Burgundy.

And so much like real estate,

it's about location, 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.

It doesn't tell you that it's Pinot Noir.

So we're gonna give it a little pour here.

Bright 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 gonna go ahead and give it a smell here.

So I'm getting raspberries.

I've smelled like a little slate

and some minerality to the wine.

So I would assume that that comes from

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 an old world wine,

which Francis considered,

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 really 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 kind of like brush cotton right now

and then the second sip,

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 start to 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 a ride 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 Kings 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 here.

Look at that.

Easy and simple.

And I think first off you can see

just the concentration of a 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.

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 Duzer Corridor.

And that break in the mountains really allows

that maritime influence from a 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 off 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, I smell a little tea,

like Earl Gray tea, cherry

and a slight bit of mint.

Depending on what part of the valley this is from,

I'm thinking more of the Red Hills of Dundee

that have these kind of rich clay soils.

And sometimes from that

I get 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,

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 tasting today.

At this price point,

this wine has always been a starlet and over-deliver.

So this is Pinot Noir from New Zealand.

So this is a Burn Cottage,

Moonlight Race's 2020 from Central Otago.

I think we're all familiar

with the white wine from New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc.

What 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 wouldn't call it cloudy

but you can't see through it.

It's probably unfiltered and unfined, how it was made.

A lot of people don't believe

in fining 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.

And I can attribute part of that to it's 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,

it doesn't have that barnyard thing

that you tend to get from Pinot Noir

but 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 it's underlining, 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 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 fruit component.

I think what's always said,

Central Otago Pinot Noir is apart

and kind of a legend within the Pinot Noir world.

It has kind of that fruity aspect to it.

It's electric, it feels alive.

I mean it's probably has more tannic structure

than the wine from France.

And that's only just because of,

it might spend some time longer on the skins

not overly noticeable.

This Pinot Noir from New Zealand comes in at $50.

This wine is great.

I think that it drinks

more like a hundred dollars bottle of Pinot Noir.

If you're looking for an example of New Zealand Pinot Noir,

this is it.

So here we have Germany.

This is the 2020 Pinot Noir from Enderle and Moll

and this is from Boden.

Boden is the southernmost wine region in Germany,

for any grape, or you're growing anything

you need warmth, you need the sun.

Boden, they always talk about it,

or call it blessed with sun.

Because the other parts of Germany

aren't really blessed with sun.

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 color to it.

This is pretty pale compared to the wine from France

that we tasted earlier.

And because there's less sunlight in Boden

than there is in Burgundy,

it's gonna 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 pallet.

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.

It 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 crushed berries like blackberries.

But it's really leading with kind of minerality

almost kind of a little bit of like sandstone.

The minerality definitely comes from the sandstone

and limestone that the wine is produced on.

So you definitely get that.

This particular cuvée, these wines come from 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,

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 Boden 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 would consider

and a lot of people in the industry

considered one of the finest Pinot Noirs in the world.

Burgundy is this beacon of light

of which Pinot Noir producers around the world love,

or want to make.

Hamilton Russell comes very close to that

and distinguishable in some instances.

We'll go ahead and open this.

Oh that's the weird sound.

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 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 whiff, just all mineral, all minerality, earth, sage,

a little bit of thyme, smells like meat.

You tend to get that in some Pinot Noir as well

and that can come from Connor selection.

When you think about Pinot Noir

there's over a thousand different clones of Pinot.

Some different clones react to the climate

different than others and you want to pick the specific one

that's more temperamental to your climate.

So still very savory.

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

just like a little bit of blood in your mouth

it tastes like iron in 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 fill, texture,

the wine being layered and evolving.

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 Barta and this is actually from Patagonia.

I think when we think about wines from Argentina

I think our wines directly go to Malbec

but they make good Pinot Noir.

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.

There's plum bittersweet chocolate cherry

and then there's a hint of fresh cut grass.

Pretty intense following through with that minerality.

But you get lots of plum.

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 that I 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 P-funk.

Pinot Noir actually has this kind of funkiness to it.

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 Argentinian 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 Moorooduc Estate

and this comes from the region of Mornington Peninsula.

So if we'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 produced 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 it tends to get lighter.

All the pigment starts to fall out.

This is 2018.

So this wine has a little bottle maturity to it.

So just like in its name,

Mornington 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 phenolicly.

Definitely minerality to it.

There is 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,

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 get in the wine

kind of really translates to the soil.

All the minerals that I'm getting.

There's a slight bit of kerosene in 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 on all those things

that you would like Pinot Noir to be.

There's, well integrated acid.

There's minerality, there's aromatics

and then it's slightly savoring.

Being around the ocean 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.

You 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 these heavy handed high alcohol style wines.

So this bottle is $32.

$32, you can buy wine in 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 $30,

why won't I just buy that?

I think if you're a fan of Pinot Noir,

your curiosity takes you all around the world.

And I think this is a great expression of Pinot Noir

just from a different place.

It's those nuances and those layers and characteristics

that each region exudes

make this one of the best ways to taste wine.

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.

Your relationship with wine should never be about monogamy.

Taste as much and anything as you like.