Are you guys ready? We're bringing the energy. You're bringing the one, two, three, four, five, six, seven wines. Hey, it's a wine episode. You've been bitching that we haven't had one in a while. That's mostly just to make them feel bad, not because I actually wanted to participate in one. You also have to think in this one too. Indeed. So today's episode, for those of you driving in the car, just wanting to maybe play some trivia with us. Wondering why you're listening to us instead of, wait, wait, don't tell me. Well, you're going to do wine trivia and see how much these guys actually know about wine. Wine trivia. And these guys meaning me and Greg and Roger? Yep. The answer is we don't. Yeah, so we don't. So, Greg used to be a wine guy. Don't say this. People already know. You don't have to talk about it. It cheapens the image of the company. So, really, this is just let's see how much Greg remembers because Brophy and I haven't worked in wine. And I think you might outperform him. If I was a betting woman. But Greg knows how to tie on an apron. Challenge accepted. My money is on Greg scoring last. Oh, last. You know what? You guys are on. Let's do it. You are listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. It's great to be back with you. The one where Greg goes down. Acknowledgement, okay. The one where Alicia shows up. All right. I'm Alicia, I work in wine. In the room with me today to play our first edition of Wine Trivia. Your contestants. I'm Pat, insufferable in general. Yeah, Greg, communications used to be in wine. Used to. Also insufferable. Roger from beer. All right, and our hosts and judges today. I am judge, jury and executioner. Chris and Alicia, you already said your name. All right, so what are we doing? So I'm going to throw out a wine trivia question. I did bring some wine. I did bring some wine. You'd get bored, Pat. Yeah, so we will taste along the way when a fun wine kind of relates to the question and we can talk about it more. But we'll just give you guys a second with each question and we'll see what your answers are. And you have to answer something. What's the format? Everybody has to answer something? Yes. Oh, all right. OK, that's it, huh? Some will answer correctly. Is there a better format? We don't have buzzers. What do you want? You want a Jeopardy podium? I'm just going to copy Pat's answer. Everybody write your answer down. Write your answer down? And then we have to hear the truth. Oh, that's good. Nobody thought of this, huh? There's a shortage of pens. Alex Trebek. Here you go, Pat. Your official answer sheet. And you have to hold up your paper so we know you're not lying because... So, we have our writing implements, we're going to write our answers down, super secret ballot style, and then we're all going to hold them up so that you can see how dumb we are. Play at home. If you get all of them right, email us and we'll give you a prize. Nice. You're in the honor system. Pat on the back. OK. So, you're ready to go, question one? Ready to go. Question one. We're going to start out pretty easy. The theme of this first group meeting of questions is grape varieties. Grape varieties. All right. The popular grape variety Malbec is native to what country? The look of fear in the eyes. Okay. All right, gentlemen. Answers? Pat says Italy. Greg says France. And Roger says... Chile. Shouldn't we say these in our own words? Pat says Italy. Greg says France. Chile. I hear you have vacation in Italy, Pat. Is that where you found this out? Apparently you didn't learn anything while you were there. Well, I know it's not Chile or Argentina. Did you taste any Malbec when you were in Italy? No, but that doesn't mean it's not native to there. Italy kicked it out with all the fascist government officials or something and they fled to South America. What's the answer? The answer, unfortunately, Greg is right. It is France. It is native to the southwest part of France and we're going to taste a Malbec. Oh, this is punishment? We have to taste Malbec now? Yeah. So we're going to taste Malbec from the Cahors region of France. So if you kind of think about where Bordeaux is, Oh, French Malbec. you move a little bit further south and east of Bordeaux and you will find yourself in Cahors where Malbec is native to. We are going to give some people some ability to get a bonus question right on Malbec. Pat, Roger, you can redeem yourselves here. In a second. This is Mary Taylor. And I actually see a lot of staff picks on this wine. We've brought in more wines from Cahors as of late. And yes, it is true Malbec was brought over to Argentina. And that's really where the world has fallen in love with it. And some excellent expressions, but also some great values as well. But we now see the home of Malbec really kind of riding the coattails of that new world wine producing region. So Malbec from Cahors even gaining popularity in our stores because of where it went to in Argentina. Once known as the Black Wine of Cahors. OK, it's kind of gamey, but it's not crazy gamey. And there's a lot more fruit than I was expecting. Yeah. So generally speaking, when we kind of teach one on one and we talk about Malbec, you do find more savory, earthy, kind of more rustic expression of Malbec instead of sometimes in Argentina. I mean, it's all about the fruit. And sometimes the fruit note combination can be a little a little clunky, in my opinion. Sometimes Argentinian Malbec just they make it taste like wood somehow. How do they get all that wood flavor in there? Yeah. How do they do that? Greg, tricky question. How is wood introduced to the flavor profile? Otherwise, you got some raspberries. This is backyard raspberry patch. Yeah. Yeah. Super brambly. Yep. We're looking kind of a nice medium bodied wine, but really fresh acid as well. Probably more acid than some of the lower elevation sites in Argentina. And a little bit bit of that grippy tannin. If you got 10 seconds with a customer in an aisle of the store and you need to explain the broad difference they can expect between French Malbec and Argentinian Malbec, what would you say? So as I mentioned before, I think Argentina, we're showcasing fruit, black fruit, purple fruit, all right, and a little more body and a little bit more obvious use of oak. And more earthiness in the French. In French, a more kind of rustic example. More earthy, savory qualities, still a lot of fruit, but just in a more restrained way. Not as extracted as Argentinian. Like in a colder place. Not for long. So bonus on our Malbec question here is, what is the synonym for Malbec that is often used in the Loire Valley? Synonym for Malbec, what do they grow in the Loire? Is this still the easy question? Three letters. Yep, short word. My two-year-old son takes a nap on it. Matt. Box. I was gonna say cardboard box. That's more than three letters. Caught, rug, caught. It's caught. C-O-T. C-O-T. Did anybody write anything down? Nobody wrote anything for hours. Spitballing on that one. So if you do come across caught, C-O-T, with a little tent of an accent over the O, that is Malbec, folks, from the Larval. It is indeed. And here's a little aside about synonyms. And I gave a little dissertation in the office the other day when we were tasting some Cremont de Alsace because there is a synonym for Malbec that is used in Cahors that is also the same name used for a white grape variety in Alsace. What's that? This is an extra bonus. Alagotay. No, no, but it starts at the same letter. Yes, true. Alagotay is Burgundian. I have no idea. It's a barrel of laughs so far. It's Auxerrois. Auxerrois, that's right. Now I remember his rant. Of course. Strangely, we have a light white grape that's crossed between Pinot and Gouet Blanc, one of the parent grapes for Chardonnay as well, known as Auxerrois. I know, right? Also can go into variety labeled Pinot Blanc bottlings in Alsace. The answer to the next question, the answer better be Australia or something. Everything is going to start with A. All right. Next question. Greg is in the lead with one point. Wait, did he get a point for Cotty even though you gave him a point? No, but he got frame. That was his eighth guess. Here we go. What does GSM stand for? Roger, you got this one? I have no idea. What? You don't know what GSM is? You don't know what GSM is? Is this how you imagine this episode to go? Because I'm probably not going to go to the answer to any of these questions. You know more about wine than you give yourself credit for. No, I don't know what it means. There'll be some sharing questions. We're going to go into some wine making questions. Roger, I've been talking about wine for 15 years, damn it. So GSM, Pat and Greg got this correct. This is an acronym for a very common blend, commonly used in the Rome, Grenache, Syrah and Mourvedre. And I'll ask- That's what Chardonnay, Popstar, Rome, and Val. You don't listen to our podcast, do you? No, he only complains about me on it. Interestingly, Grenache usually takes the lead in these blends, but you can have an MSG or an SGM or whatever you like, with the highest proportion being the first letter. The first letter, interesting. But DSM, very universal. A lot of customers come in and say they love DSM blends. Some of them know what it means. Some of them do not know what it means. But yeah, Grenache, Syrah, and Mavedra. And this really coming, again, from the Rome. And as Chris mentioned, Cote du Rhone wines, excellent value, love them, dominated by Grenache, and then that Syrah and Mavedra play supporting roles. So of those three to our contestants here, which of those is best known for its distinct black pepper and olive aromas? Mavedra? Nope. Syrah. Syrah? Syrah. Yes, that is correct. Syrah. So pretty gamey, pretty olivy, bacon fat, super savory. That black pepper note is- Roger needs a hug. I'm not going to know any of this ______. I don't know why you want me here. Because we enjoy your company. Yeah, man. Yeah, and you're going to learn something, too. Like the fact that black pepper notes are from something called rotundone. Rotundone. Dude, if he said the word rotundone in correlation with any fruit, you'd be all about it. Okay, here we go. Roger's going to go on strike. Sarah is, in fact, a fruit, by the way. I am going to... I'm altering this question a little bit. We're going to make this one simple. You keeping score on this? I just want you to say who's in the lead again. Greg is in the lead. Roger, ready? Yeah. Pinotage. In which country is it most planted? Pinotage. Oh, she's going to make us taste this Pinotage. Oh, yeah. I don't know. All right. I hope it's not some kind of trick question. Pat? France. South Africa. Correct. Roger, what'd you guess? The US. It seemed like something the United States would think of. What? Pinotage is a singular grape variety? It is, but- I thought it was like a Meritage of different Pinots. No, it's a cross, though. That's Meritage. Yes. So Pinotage was a cross that was crafted at the University of Stellenbosch in 1925, and it's a cross between Pinot Noir and Sinso. And its name is coming because in South Africa they used to call Sinso Hermitage. That's where that name come from. So a cross that is two Vitis vinifera parents, all right, are brought together and you get Pinotage. So we're going to taste it because not a lot of people taste Pinotage that frequently. It tends to be a hate it or love it type of thing. It's like Pat's dog, the Spoodle. Or just Pat. You hate him or love him. In opposition to a hybrid grape, which is a cross between different species, a cross is two Vitis vinifera varieties cross together. So this is Barista Pinotage. This is definitely one of our best sellers. Super kind of coffee bean like and. Whoa, crazy coffee aroma. They didn't misname this one. Okay, but you know what? I bet if they didn't call it Barista, you'd be like, why is it so smoky? Yeah, burnt and roasty. So, yeah, they nailed it with the name. I remember when I was first taking some some formal wine classes and in one of my WCIT kind of two classes when they introduced the scrape writing, it was a very esteemed instructor and they literally referred to Pinotage as WD 40. So there are some criticisms, especially the mass product, the kind of high volume expressions of Pinotage that can be a little off putting. However, when done well, it can be it can be a perfectly charming wine, but most that hit the US market are this very kind of coffee, chocolate, super ripe, very toasty, plummy expressions. That's man, once you said that, now it's like it smells like a new tire. Yeah, smoke, tire rubber for sure. Matchstick is in there. But there's fruit too. I mean, it's not one dimensional. True. That rubbery note, though, is pretty common. We do find a lot of people that like this wine, that aren't traditional wine drinkers. That explosion of flavor. I think it's a beer drinker's wine. Yeah, like a stout drinker. I don't know. We had a Tilken recently on the podcast. Tilken makes a beer that's a blend of a Flanders Red and an Imperial stout. And so it has some... Have you ever had that one, Raj? No one's had that one, bro. Oh, I've had that one several times. I think it's called Stout Ruhlquin, R-U-L-L. I'd have to double-check. It's got a Flanders Red kind of tanginess to it here, mixed with that kind of roasty stout texture. This has an herbal quality, and it's partially like dry tobacco, but it's also partially like green aloe, like under-ripe lime peel acidity. It's funny you mention that because one of the aloes used to bitter various amari is native to South Africa. Whoa. Yeah, black aloe. You're saying that the Pinotage has those notes. I thought it was kind of regional, like some kind of regional terroir thing. The grape is that way. We've had some fabulous Syrah from South Africa. Yeah. These things are pretty characteristic to Pinotage. There's also a reason that not that many people plant Pinotage in the world. Yeah. They're not clamoring for it in Australia. They're like, hey, you want to cut sales even more? Roger, do you like that one? No. He was doing the, if you don't have anything nice to say. Okay. This is going to be our last grape variety question. Great. They're going to get a lot easier after this. What do the grape varieties Carmoneer and Sauvignon Blanc, a white grape variety, have in common? Carmoneer and Sauvignon Blanc. Carmoneer and Sauvignon Blanc. I can think of at least three very obvious answers to this question. What? Carmoneer and Sauvignon Blanc. What do they have in common? I'm curious your third and two in mind. I'll just tell you the categories you could think of here. Can we throw out crazy answers first? Yeah, let's hear the parent grape variety. Yes, good one. What is it? You didn't ask that. Oh, you asked what they had in common. That's great. I wrote Cab Sauv parentage. Nope. But is it Fronk? Good. Because I crossed out Fronk. That means I'm tied with Greg. Cab Sauv is actually a parent of, no. Cab Sauv is a parent of Cab Sauv. Cab Sauv, yes. But the Cab Fronk wasn't part of it. That's why I crossed it out and went back to Sauv. Roger, you got a guess? I just wrote same parentage. I assume you'd want to know what, but I don't know. We're all on the same wavelength as you. Did you really write same parentage or did you guess it after? Same parents. Oh, okay. You did. Well done. All right, Chris. Cabernet Franc is a shared parent. My two other obvious things is they're both classic Bordeaux varietals. The obvious thing organoleptically- Definitely the least obvious thing. No, is that they have high levels of piracy. This is what first came to mind. What's the first thing you'd think of when you smell and taste Sauvignon Blanc? Green pepper. Green bell pepper. Grass, jalapeno. All right, these are all aromas from the compounds of pirazine, and that same pirazine quality also comes out in carmineer. And Cabernet Franc. And Cabernet Franc. Yes, and- That's where they get it. Yep, and there's a little bit in Merlot, too, if you don't let it ripen too far. So both known for that pirazine quality and that green bell pepper. And we see carmineer in chili, even though, yes, it's a Bordeaux variety, but a lot of plantings over in chili, and very kind of jalapeno in its profile. Long confused for Merlot in chili until an ampullographer came and said, hey, these leaves don't look like Merlot leaves. What is this? And so for years, people were selling carmineer as Bridal Merlot. That's fantastic. And everybody's like, why is Chilean Merlot so green? True story. Because it's not Merlot. What's our score? Chris, you keep in track? It's Pat 2, Greg 2, and Roger 1. I got 3. He got the parentage thing right, unfortunately. Oh, I wasn't counting that one. France, Grenache, Saramavedra, and South Africa. That's 3. I wrote the word parentage. You got 4. I got 4. Well, parentage is right. Yeah, that's fine. You didn't need to know the specific ones. I wasn't even thinking about that when I wrote the question. I'm not. I was thinking of pyrazines. You were thinking about pyrazines? Yeah. Well, I thought that would be the obvious. Why aren't you thinking about pyrazines? Am I right? Roger, how many points you got? One? Yeah, he's got one. You got a point. Yep. What's interesting with this is that we often talk about the pyrazine, and that is very much a thing in coffee beers, being green pepper. But it's interesting to me with this that you've mentioned specifically jalapeno, and there is a difference. This really does seem more like jalapeno. Definitely expresses that way sometimes. I think a distinguisher too, if you were kind of blind tasting, of Cabernet Franc, say, from the Loire Valley, much more in the green pepper space, and Carmonier just shouting with jalapeno at you. Your next trivia question, we're going to get into wine making. And many think that the word corked is just a universal term for wine that is faulty. When in reality, it's just describing one of a handful of possible wine faults, which is the TCA contamination of the cork, trichloroanisole. We've talked about that quite a bit on the podcast. But there's another one that could possibly be one of the next kind of most common ones on our shelf. All right. And it's a fault that can result in kind of like a struck match or a burnt match aroma. At worst could even get to rotten eggs. What fault are we talking about here? In some wines, not necessarily been considered a fault, but you would be one of those characters. You're like, give me the fart wine. No, but a struck match is a common descriptor in a few things, flintiness, sulfuriness. My guess is autolysis, like autolized yeast. Really? I'm going to guess sulfur. Yes. Half point. What? Half point? Half point. Well, what's the origin of the sulfur and what is the exact compound? I mean, you literally described it as sulfur. How can you answer sulfur? They were like, it smells like sulfur. You're like, sulfur. Over sulfite in the wine then? The fault is reduction or to describe the wine as reductive. And reductive winemaking is where you protect the wine heavily from oxygen. But if you do this so much, that's where yes, you're going to get some kind of burnt match aromas. But if you do it to its extreme, that's where kind of this rotten eggs kind of garbage aroma will come from. I'm not taking a half point on that. So specifically, it would be hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen sulfide. And in its fixed form, like the matchstick, it's what's known as a mercaptan. If he's taking a half point, I'm playing the rest of this game under protest. I'm not taking a half point. I didn't think you actually said the word sulfur, which is why I said that. Did you actually say the word solver? No, I didn't say it. These things can be anything from... And they said struck match. Yes. Reductive qualities can be transitory and resolvable with oxygen, or they can become fixed and not reactive with oxygen. So normal people would hear you... Much like inflationary pressures. Transitory inflationary pressures. What you meant to say was sometimes it blows off. Sometimes with air, sometimes it doesn't. So it's from over treating the wine? It's from not allowing enough oxygen content. Yeah. It's actually, it's sulfur that's in the grape must itself generally. And when you don't have enough oxygen in your ferment, sometimes the yeast has to scavenge for nutrients and breaks apart sulfur compounds and hydrogen sulfide is the result. So next time you drink your white burgundy, you get that sulfur-y matchstick. This is what you'll get. Not that I want to keep talking about this, but why doesn't that happen in beer production very often? Why doesn't that happen in beer production often? I mean, they brew in anaerobic environment. So I said autolysis. Isn't it sometimes in beer when the yeast are digesting themselves? Essentially, you either stay on the yeast too long and then the beer reabsorbs what the yeast have absorbed, or in the case of a lager, you don't lager long enough. Because sulfur is created during fermentation in beer and the whole purpose of lagerine is so the dead yeast cells reabsorb the sulfur from the fermented beer. Not dead cells, living cells reabsorb it. So the yeast is reabsorbing it and the giveaway there with a lot of lagers is if you only lager for three weeks, it will be sulfur-y, but if you lager for six or eight, that character is gone. Yeah, it's interesting in the complexities of fermentation, a lot of things are created and can be reabsorbed with time, which may even come into play in a later question about something else entirely. What a teaser, Chris. I'm well known as a tease. The next question under our wine-making umbrella is, What are lees? How specific do you want this? We'll go super basic on this, and then we'll talk about how they impact the wine. Really dovetails with what you were saying earlier. All right, Roger, let's start with you. What are lees? Sorry, I started trying the wine. Lees are yeast. Yeah, I wrote dead yeast muck. Muck. Indeed. Muck raker. I said yeast, but I think normally it's spoken of as spent yeast. Mostly the dead yeast cells, yeah, to what Roger was... Sedimented. Yeah. Was mentioned. So immediately after fermentation, pretty quickly after, once the yeast have consumed all the sugar and converted it, they're going to die and fall to the bottom of your tank. So that sediment there... And there'll be other kind of insoluble compounds in there, but that's called your lees. Way to segue in with the lagering talk, buddy. Yeah, in which, yeah, you can... The autolysis then can fall. Yeah. In wine too. But then you have lees in the champagne method as well. Right, where autolytic conditioning in beer. Autolytic qualities are prized in certain champagnes. So it's standard practice to what we call rack the wine off those lees. All right, so we're going to just take the wine out of that tank, put it in another tank to separate it. But there are some regions and wines in the world, and Roger did mention champagne, which traditional methods sparkling, yes, sits on those dead e-cells in bottle. But there are some other places that this happens, and it gives the wine when you leave it on those lees, and then especially if you were to stir it, it gives aromas like yogurt and dough and biscuit and kind of toasted bread. Everything there sounded amazing except for yogurt. But you know what's funny is actually the wine in your glass, I think has quite a bit of yogurt in it. Really? And the lees add texture to a wine, and they also protect it from oxygen, so it can kind of help that wine sit and mature in its more stable environment for a longer period, and you don't have to use as much SO2. So anyway, the question for you, now that you guys all got... Like the creaminess of yogurt? Is that the part of yogurt that I'm picking up on? Yeah, they'll get a slightly kind of creamy... Because like yogurt is like creamy plus tang. Yeah. And it has some tang too, but I would assume... I think of yogurt as more of a tang. So what wine is commonly aged on its lees? It's in your glass. Nobody looked at the bottle, thankfully. If I guess it right, will you accuse me of having looked at the bottle? I'm already... J'accuse. Well, aren't there two answers to this? Aren't there? There could be a bunch. I mean, Roger said champagne. So you could... I mean, Roger, stick with that. That's correct. I wrote champagne initially and then you started being cheeky about the bottle. So I guess my other guess would be... It could be a musket or something like that. You're almost there. It's a muscadet. Yes. One of the few wines that will actually call it out on the label. I'm the only guy that actually looked at the label when it passed by. Yeah, clearly. Oh, well, you... Incorrect. This is... I also guess musket and not muscadet. Well, it's a shame you don't get a point for that because Roger and I both guess champagne. Malone de Bourgogne. AJA Malone de Bourgogne. Roger, this is four, five and three points here. This is anybody's game. So we're in the Loire Valley. And yes, there are several wines, many wines that we'll see Lee's contact, again, to add texture and protect from oxygen. Can I see this bottle again? But one of the... I love this wine. One of the most famous, as Chris mentioned, that will call it out by name and by law requires it, is Muscadet Sèvres Amen. And this is in the Loire Valley, right where the Loire Valley meets the Atlantic Ocean. And this actually is in an Appalachian, kind of one step up from even just the broader Muscadet Appalachian. What's cool that's going on there is, I think it's something like you have to bottle between like March and September of the year after harvest. So it's sitting on Lee's for that whole time, right? But some producers have gone beyond that and are aging it on Lee's for even longer. So they can't even use the Appalachian name because they didn't think that people would do that eventually. So some other Appalachians have come up where they just declassify. But this is from Domaine de la Pépier and a fantastic example from the Appalachian of Clisson. $25.99 on the shelf. I think this is an outstanding wine. Okay, everyone has a question. How much is this? $26. $26 bucks. Muscadet is generally very, very affordable. This is an expensive Muscadet in fact. And the melon grape is relatively neutral. So this early aging gives it more character, more body. Real breadth richness. Yes. I like this wine a lot. Classic pairing with oysters. Totally. This is known as the Poor Man's Champagne to pair with oysters and other kind of other shellfish and that that you would typically have a champagne with. One more shochu and oyster guys on this podcast more than anything. I think this is more like the upper middle class man's champagne. Okay. So the the Poor Man's Muscadet, the Muscadet of the South is what? Lesser known than Muscadet. So I don't think you've ever heard this before. So I'm going to guess too. Go ahead. Pickpoole. Exactly. Nice one. Pickpoole du Penet. You guys are the worst. How do you recommend? It's like 10 bucks on the shelf. We're going to. It gets more hanky from here, doesn't it? She's so proud. You wrote the quiz. I didn't know you was. P-I-C-P-O-U-L. Correct. We always recommend it for turkey if you don't want something as sweet as a Riesling, because it has like the light almost effervescent, not really like easy fruit. I recommend bourbon for turkey. Bourbon for turkey. Nappy time. Next question. Next question. We're not going to taste with this one. This comes up a lot when people think about wines and think about what wine they personally like. The question is if a winemaker chooses to pick their grapes later than their neighbor. Let's say all the conditions are the same, same grape variety. They have two rows and their neighbor has two rows next to them of grapes. They say, I'm going to pick two weeks after you or three weeks after you. How will that impact the resulting wine? If everything is constant, longer and time. Maturation. There are many things. They just need one for the point. Go ahead. I'm going with a more extracted fruit character and less tannin. The tannin element will be in wine making, and we're going to say that's going to be pretty constant with the choices in the winery itself, but yes, more extractive fruit character. More extractive fruit, and the grape itself is going to have more sugar, so I assume the fermentation is going to be different in the fermentation cellar too. You could say that the tannins might be riper and sweeter. More extractive fruit, correct. One point. One point. I wrote higher sugar, ripeness, more body, lower acid. Good. Yeah, all correct. So as that grape variety stays on the vine, again, your sugars is accumulating. Your sugar is accumulating and your acid is dropping. And so the more sugar you have in fermentation. Look how proud of himself he is right now. I mean, like a teacher's pet over here. You're going to have more resulting alcohol and more body in the wine. Roger, what did you say? Higher ABV potential. Precisely. So yeah, it's just mentioned you likely will have higher alcohol in the wine as well. So for those that like that kind of riper style, more body, more alcohol, kind of more fruit character, a lot of times it's coming because the grapes have been on the vine for a longer period of time and or coming from a warm place that you can get It's going to get that trocan berry in all sorts of ways. And this is really a defining feature. If you were to say go to Napa and you talk to certain producers and their wines are dramatically different, for example, you know, Paul Hobbs. I think most people know Paul Hobbs. He is notorious for picking late. And his fruits, or his wines, excuse me, as a result, are going to be bigger and riper than his neighbors. Where in the US is anyone doing, like, where they're almost letting it raisinate on the vine? Would it just be like Ise wine? I mean, there are certain varietals that are prone to that. So like a really high alcohol Zinfandel might have a lot of raisin character just from hanging on the vine. Plus, it's a notorious uneven ripener, so bunches can have fresher fruit and raisinated fruit together. But that's, you know, some people are pushing ripeness in Zinfandel like that on purpose. Like we've got a bottle of Rombauer in front of us. Their Zinfandel is notoriously porty and extracted. Let's get to the Rombauer question. We are going to hit that up next. But yeah, Roger, to your other point, the other ones would just be kind of some more traditional thinkings of like some late harvest re-sealing that might be happening. I'm specifically thinking the Finger Lakes or ice wine again from the Finger Lakes or from Canada. We'll talk about that in a little bit. I was going to say don't give her an excuse to talk about the Finger Lakes again. Okay, so before we get to the wine. Okay, you mean our buttered bread? Yeah, my question to you as you smell and taste this wine is what is the primary wine making technique that causes that kind of buttery, creamy flavor that is so commonly associated with some styles of sharpening? Well, there could be multiple answers to this. Yeah, but the primary one, I mean, there's really one, a main one. Well, one red herring could be actually Lise contact and Lise stirring, which in French is known as. Damn it. Patinage. I wrote Sir Lee Aging. Is that a red herring? Yes, in this case, yes, absolutely. Although if you stir the Lise, the wines become creamier, but not necessarily buttery. So no point for Greg. This is great news for the day. Huzzah. I thought I was being too smart. I think most people equate it with oak, but I assume maybe you're talking about the ferment as well, like lactic ferment. Yeah. Nailed it. Melolactic fermentation was the answer I wrote. Exactly. Nobody tell Doug Jeffers I got that one wrong. Come on. See, I second guessed myself because I said malolactic and I showed it to Alicia and she was expressing this and I was like, oh, I should have said American oak aging. Isn't that a big factor in it or is that a myth? Well, they often go hand in hand. So, oaky flavors and lactic flavors are often found together in the same wine and they work together nicely, but that is not what's providing the butter. Greg and I are tied up and Roger is only one point behind. Hey Chris, next time you say what the answer isn't, why don't you let me make a fool of myself first? I think you did that sufficiently. So we're talking about malalactic fermentation here and this is a second fermentation that happens in wine. It happens basically in all red wines and it'll happen naturally unless you kind of take some steps to prevent it. So, it loves this lactic acid bacteria that converts malic acid. So think about that kind of tart acid like in apples to lactic acid, like dairy acids, hence that buttery kind of creaminess we're talking about. Some carbon dioxide and heat are also produced, but warmer temperatures and moderate pH level and low sulfur will kind of encourage this fermentation to happen. You can even force that. You can inoculate if you want, but all red wine will do it, white wine, it's your choice. So yeah, this goes through full malalactic fermentation, hence all that buttery quality and that's what a lot of people think of the Chardonnay. It's not a binary thing. You don't have to, you can do partial malo. You can do one barrel, allow it to go through the other two. You prevent it by a temperature control or sulfur use or filtering the bacteria out. And then you blend for that wine, resulting in a more moderate approach. You guys like the Rombauer Chardonnay? I'm going to defend it. I think it's fabulous. I like it more than I feel like I'm supposed to like it. I mean, it's hedonistic. It's wonderful. It is a very hedonistic wine. It's a good example of the style. I mean, it is roundly mocked, but there's enough acidity here. It's not even out of balance. No, it's just mocked by wine snobs. I think it pulled back on some of the oak and lactic character in recent years, too, which is not. It's actually doing it favors because it is more balanced than it once was, in my opinion. It has a tiny cut of green apple in the sides of the thing. Another thing that's doing it some favors is that, really interesting, but if you taste Rombauer, Rombauer is almost always released at the end of the summer. And if you taste it right then, it can be quite woody, but it integrates relatively quickly. So a good six months or a year later, like we're probably six months from the lease right now, it actually comes into better balance. I'm imagining the woody Chardonnay fan who's like, how long has this been on the shelf? It's getting old, brah. What's the climate like these days as far as, I feel like this in a way almost reminds me of the pumpkin beer scenario where it was like, it became too much of a thing and then there was so much backlash and you were considered so basic if you liked it. Then I'm like, we don't need to shame people into like not drinking it if they like it. This is absolutely true. There was an arc to this where things got really, really round, buttery and super oaky. Even brands like Rombauer have pulled back from that and you got the stainless steel fermentation craze and no oak and totally blocked mallow. The fear was that it would flatten the marketplace into a single style and I think the opposite happened in that you can get any kind of style of Chardonnay you want. Chardonnay is all over the place now. People may recall the ABC movement, anything but Chardonnay, which was predicated on this style really. And Chablis has always existed, so come on. I will say though, while I completely agree, you should drink what you like, 100%. When that became a popular style, it caused a lot of people to change what they were making and follow suit, but do so in a way that frankly was not of high quality. And so there were a lot of really poor expressions out there that were not balanced like this one is. And so yes, you should drink what you want, but when that arc was at its peak, it was also because the market was flooded with a lot of terrible expressions. Yeah, lousy, overdone. And Lake Chardonnay from Australia, where you could get a 1.5 liter bottle of pineapple juice for like 6.99, sure. But what's cool now, to Chris's point, is maybe 10 years ago, you could go into a bar and you would just say, I want a glass of Chardonnay, and because you knew you wanted this style and that was what would hit your glass. But now, they'll probably look at you and say, well, we have several on the list, but also not a guarantee that it's going to be this style anymore. So, yeah. If you've never had Liu and artists series, Chardonnay, it's amazing in this style. It's Australian, like you were saying, but it is a very high quality Chardonnay. And it is the epitome of this like tropical fruit, oak, and butter style. And even they have pulled back on that from their heyday. But it's really interesting. We were talking about how during ferment, you can reabsorb certain things. Dicetyl, the buttery component here, can be reabsorbed if you let the mallow fermentation go long enough. So and you can actually choose how much buttery flavor you get by pitching a lactic bacteria rather than relying just on natural bacteria. And some produce a lot of butteriness and some not so much. And again, it can be reabsorbed on the back end. So even if you put it through mallow lactic, you don't always get buttery notes. It might be creamy. A lot of variables at play. So that's the last winemaking question, winemaking kind of viticulture here too. But coming around is ice flying. Cool. It's from the Finger Lakes. No, this is from Canada. Oh, Rob, you probably like ____. This is from our friends up north. It's from the region in Canada adjacent to the Finger Lakes. Lincoln Lakeshore VQA. Where is Lakeshore VQA? This is Havespring. Yeah, you know where Toronto is, and you just come around and it's like Toronto's on the north side of Lake Ontario. In between Buffalo and Toronto. Yeah. Well, kind of west of the Finger Lakes, directly west of the Finger Lakes. Yeah, west and north of the Finger Lakes. Yeah. Okay, west and north. We can talk Western New York Geography all day long. All day long. And Canada. Anyway, okay, so coming around. Wow, look at this wine. Here's your question, all right? This is one of Canada's most famous wines, ice wine, all right? And it represents 58% of Canadian bottled wine export value. Whoa, really? In value. Oh, in value, okay. So it's like eight bottles. To make ice wine, it requires leaving healthy grapes on the vine into the winter months. By law, you must wait to pick the fruit until it drops to what temperature? And it's Canada, so Celsius is the law. We're doing Celsius? Thanks for the hint. Well, you can convert if you want. It gives you kind of an odd number, though, in Fahrenheit. Why is he still talking? You know, when you're reading a paper and there's, you know, like the footnotes and then there's this like huge glossary and stuff and you just- I'm the human footnote, is that what you're saying? He reads this part. It's Chris. Wow. This wine is awesome. But like two ounces is enough. But I mean, dig that acid balance. Right? Plenty of sugar, but loads of acid. I love that the color, it just tells you immediately what you're in for is it's so honey-like. Yes. It is a lovely wine, but yeah. But the tropical fruit. Residual sugar, 230 grams a liter. And you would never know- That's no slush. You would never know though, honestly. It's fully sweet, but the acid is so high. Yeah, it's well-balanced. Sugar at harvest, 37.1 bricks. The magic of Riesling, one of the words. Just for context, harvest at 31 bricks. Your Pinot Noir might be harvested close to say 24, 23 bricks. Bricks is a measure of sugar. In the berry. Okay, so temperature. Temperature. So yeah, they regulate this by law, all right? What temperature? We'll start with Roger. I'm going to say negative 5C. Oh, pretty good. Zero. Zero C. I'm going to say 18 degrees Fahrenheit. So to put that in perspective for you guys, that's minus 8 degrees C. Pat, were you cheating? How do you guys not know this? This is some bulls**t right here. You've never heard that before? It's like the one thing you learn about ice wine. 18 degrees? Minus 8 degrees C is when it's harvested. So yeah, you picked zero, which is freezing, but the grapes, the water actually has to freeze, which at zero, you're not going to get that. So the grapes are freezing on the vine, all right, and thus concentrating all those sugars and flavors. Sugar water is going to freeze at a lower temperature than just water. If regular water freezes at zero degrees C, you got to be lower. Just imagine, almost everybody's done that. Rogers was at least an educated guess. Yeah. You put a can of Coke in the freezer, right, and you get ice that's clear, and then you get the Coke syrup that doesn't freeze. This is exactly what's happening. It's just like making an ice block. Yeah. It is like making an ice block. This is $59.99 on the shelf. For a wine. For a 375. Cool. That's pretty good. That's very expensive wine to make. You've got to take the risk to leave your perfectly healthy fruit hanging on the vine. It's not going to be affected by botrytis, which is another issue that you could run into. Why not? It's just not part of the style. If you get botrytis, you're looking at TBAs and BAs and things like that in the German regime. No, you mean it's not going to be affected because you can't make it then. You don't want to. You don't want. So you're protecting from. Correct. You don't want botrytis in order to develop on the berry. So you need it to be dry, but then cold. Pure, yeah. Dry and clean. Pure fruit expression, right. You don't want that added layer of spice and saffron and honey character in your ice wine. I can't believe you didn't know that. And Riesling, clearly the greatest grape to make ice wine out of. When you open these, do these have what's the high sugar content? Can you save them like in the fridge for a little bit? Yeah. What would you say, a couple of months? A couple of weeks or that long? Yeah, you'd be surprised if you put sweet wines, dessert wines in your fridge after opening them. First of all, they're hyper concentrated with high acidity and lots of sugar, but also you have to have a fair dollop of sulfur in here to keep things from going awry re-fermenting. So you open a Sauternes, two months later it might be perfectly drinkable. Well, yeah, but nobody has that kind of self-control. Speak for yourself. Yeah, no, I can't even keep... I don't know, I'm trying to think of an example. All right, so I do want to... Next question. Anything with alcohol in it? Well, while we talk about sweet wines, Noble Rot was mentioned for this, which is another way of concentrating sugars to produce sweet wine, famously like they do in the Sauternes region of Bordeaux. Soturn, can you name two great varieties used to make Soturn? If you can name a third, that would definitely be a bonus. Yeah, you might see like maybe one, two percent. I know one. Floral. Super aromatic. Pretty. Anyway. Roger, what do you got? I don't know. You get a point for each one you get right. No, a half point for each one. No. Nope. Sauvignon Blanc? Yes. Yes. Half point for Roger. Sauvignon Blanc. Sémillon. Nice. Are you talking about a third? Mm-hmm. Vignette? No. I also had Sémillon and Sauvignon Blanc. What's the third one? Muscadet. Which is not Muscadet or Muscat. Correct. And you guys want... Wine wants to know why they don't have any friends. Well, the thing is you don't have to know any of that to enjoy a lovely sauté. So, sauté, as I mentioned, made by that botrytis scenario developing on the grape skin, puncturing little hole. You need that humid environment, damp misty mornings followed by kind of warm sunny afternoons to dry it out so it doesn't become gray rot. So it's just the perfect conditions that you need with these grapes that will get this noble rot puncture holes and thus evaporate and concentrate sugars. So, anyway, all of that is to say Sauvignon Blanc and Sauvignon, Sauvignon bringing a lot of acidity, all the aromas that we associate with Sauvignon Blanc, Sauvignon adding this kind of waxy stone fruit weightiness to the Sauternes. Big fan of the noble rot wines there, Pat? Yeah. Yeah? Pat can down a Tokai when he wants to. Okay. His Tokai barrels, remember? Right. He just raised his eyebrow at me like this. We have two more questions, one with a tasting that we'll finish with and one with no tasting, so we'll do that one first. Name a wine region, and I'll tell you where it is to help you out here. It's in Sonoma, a wine region in Sonoma whose boundaries were drawn according to the average wind speed during the growing season. We've talked about this on the podcast before. This is a phenomenon known as a wind gap, which happens where there's differential pressures and cool air, ocean air is sucked in at a very high rate of speed. I know we have talked about this before. I know we have tasted these wines before. I don't remember the name, but it's something gap. That's right. It's something gap. I'm just going to scribble this out right here. Something gap. What is a gap? It's just south of the Russian River Valley. Precisely. So if anything, I should get a half bonus point here. No points right now. I know where it is and I know half of the name, but I don't know the important part of the name. If you can name the most widely grown varietal there. Pinot Noir. Yes. Of course, it's Sonoma. Of course, it's Sonoma. There we go. Well, there's definitely some Cerrogrone there. The answer, I know that no one got it, but is the Petaluma Gap. Another one that's- Birthplace of Laganitas. It's defined by an eight mile per hour wind, how they drew the boundaries. You'll know this one, the Van Duser Corridor up in the Willamette in Oregon. Not a specific number, but drawn, again, according to the wind speed coming out. Can you imagine if you have a property on the border, you're like yelling at your neighbor, you're like, suck it, slow wind, how's it over there in the stagnant air? I mean, if you go even further south in California where things can get quite warm if you're inland, you have the Templeton Gap in Paso Robles, which keeps the west side super cool. I get a lot of my irregular slacks from the Petaluma Gap outlet. Fall into... and of course in France, you famously have a huge wind called the Mistral that blows down from the north to the Mediterranean. In the Rhone Valley. I mean, the cool... We've talked about the Mistral on the podcast before as well. Yeah. These are important to alleviate disease pressure so you're not going to get any rot. Yeah. I was going to say it keeps the rot away. Gray or even noble rot is not going to happen. It actually physically blows insects away. Yeah. And it also can... I mean, at its worst, at its height, it can shut down the vine leaf stomata and really delay ripening in the berry. And by slowing down that ripening process, right? You're accumulating sugar at a lower rate, but you can develop more complex flavors as a result and retain more acidity. Yeah. So the closing of the stomata is literally stopping normal respiration of the plant. But anyway, we do have one more question. I do want to see where we're at on the scoreboard. So what do we got? I have eight. Greg has seven. Roger has five and a half. All right. So this is our equivalent of double jeopardy. All right. So you get to bet. Oh, wait, is this final jeopardy or double jeopardy? I don't watch Jeopardy. I don't know. It's one of something where you can bet however many points you want to bet on this. But do we get the category first? No. What? And it's not like final jeopardy. It's it's it's we're still in wine regions. OK. Category wine regions. Well, what are the scores again? Eight, seven and five and a half. All right. So write down how many points you want to bet. You have to show me to the end. Are you ready, Greg? They're small numbers. I wrote down a number. Roger? Yeah. All right. Which Italian wine region is known for producing Amarone? Is that it? Yeah. Where does Amarone come from? What Italian wine region? I didn't vacation on that part of Italy. I wrote this one for you. It's literally in the name. It's an easy one. There's more that comes after Amarone. It's not in that word. Right. Interestingly for Pat, same root word as Amaro. Amarone. Northeast Italy. Great variety is predominantly Corvina. Along with Rondonella and Molinara. Knock it off. I'm wrong. I have Piedmont, that's northwest Italy, right? Yeah, and he bet eight points, so Pat is to zero. Well, because whatever, I'm not a wimp. I bet all my points too. Good. And? Valpolicella. Ding, ding, ding. Oh, that is not at all in the word Amarone. No, it's Amarone, it's Valpolicella. It's literally called Amarone. I had Piedmont crossed it out and then I just made up an Italian sounding word with a Romaro and wrote Amarosana. That's way better. I'm sorry, I may have misled you with that. It is part of the name, but it's not part of Amarone. How many points did you wager? One. You got second place, Roger? That's fantastic. All right, so coming around to end our trivia is Amarone from Pra, a grape producer. I love their wine. So Brunello di Montalcino is not Brunello, it's Brunello di Montalcino with capitals and everything, right? Yes. Yes. Brunello is the grape variety, Montalcino is the place. You don't see a Brunello that doesn't say de Montalcino in all these eyes. Well, yeah. Well, so Amarone di Valpolicella, Valpolicella is like the lesser grape from the area. So have some pride. It's not a grape. I mean, the lesser bottling, the lesser. Amarone is the wine. Right. Amarone is the style. Well, you can also get a bottle that just says Valpolicella, right? Yeah, but that's a different. Yeah, it's a different style. And I'm thinking a repasso. Yeah, well, they're in between. So Valpolicella, the region. I'm going to stop talking before I show that I don't know what the f*** I'm talking about. I know you couldn't. I'm just trying. You accidentally sink the nine ball. You won the game. It don't matter. That's nine ball. So Valpolicella is the region. Amarone is the style and Repasso is the style. And a Valpolicella just is much less expensive. Is a basic Amarone bricky kind of color to it. It's a basic table wine from the, well, it doesn't have to be basic. I mean, there's a Valpolicella superiori. How, what's the? 2016. Oh, so this is kind of old. So with Amarone, again, the dominant great variety being Corvina, but as Chris mentioned, Montanella and Molinaria are used as well. And it goes through this drying method. All right. A passimento. And they're going to dry it, these grape clusters for like 100 to 120 days before they vinify. So that's concentrating, raisinating that fruit. And so we're getting as a result, and this is why you pay a lot for the wine as well, because the press is really low. The juice you get from those berries, you're getting wine that by law has to be over 14%. Often will have some sugar. All right. And then the law dictates this by your total acidity in the wine. You're looking at a pretty big wine as a result when you get to this Amarone. So this always puzzled me, because it's kind of like another way of getting extraction or increased sugar in a grape, just like the ice wine or the noble rot. But it's never to that extreme level or rarely to that extreme level. Oh, it is to that extreme level in certain examples. Yeah. There's actually something called... But it's such a tannic dry wine. Right. But there's also something called Recciotto della Valpolicella. That is not an appetizing name. But that's the sweet version of it. That's the sweet version of Amarone, basically. No wonder it didn't take off. You know? Soft turn. Sounds beautiful. Recciotto. So we're back to this raisin question with Roger. But here it takes place off the vine after harvest rather than hang time, right? So in temperature... These days, temperature will control the rooms, fans, plastic bins, in the old days straw mats. In France, there's a Vin de Paille, which is straw wine, desiccated wines that are laid out on straw mats. And a lot of times, they're sweet wines. But here, big, bold thinkers. Yep. And if you like Amarone, but again, it's high tannin. It's a really great entry point honestly for New World cab drinkers to get into Italy because of the alcohol and the fruit concentration and the tannin. It's a big boy and it's right up front. It's a big wine. It can age. It requires by law two years of aging, but they'll do quite a bit. And this is also seeing a lot of bottle age. But if this kind of, it's upwards kind of $60, $70, if this is a little out of reach, which it is for most all of us, that repasso style that was mentioned earlier is kind of this friendly middle ground where they take some of these skins that are left over after they press these raisin skins, right? And they have their juice. Rather than discard them, there's still a little bit of yeast still left in those skins. They put it in to kind of basic Valpolicella wine and it starts re-fermenting again because of the skins that were transferred. And that repasso is kind of... They repass it. I have no problem with this. It's all of 20 to 35 bucks or so. And they range in style from kind of slightly muscular Valpolicella to what people sometimes refer to as baby Amarone, where you have a lot more of that dried fruit character richness. When I was a wine consultant, I was the drug wine and Spanish wine because they were right next to each other in Highland Park. I was the guy for that. But at the end of my tenure, Tony moved me to Italy Misc. And sadly for Amarone, it was on the other side of the wall from the Berdellas and everything Tuscany. The color on this is amazing. It's like the textbook garnet. Look at it next to a picture of a garnet. With a little bit of like a... Yeah, you're right. With a little bit of like more brick at the edge, but... Yep. Are we done? Is it over? We are done. Yeah, quit while I'm ahead. I'm really, really sad to announce that Greg won. So first place to Greg Versch, second place to Roger, third place to Pat. I mean, I was in first place until the last question. You showed well. And we know that you're this, we, ice wine expert. We found that out, so. Yeah, I mean, you nailed that temperature. Neither can I, Chris. Well, you know, I've read about it before. Hopefully you all enjoyed Plain Long on your car ride. Until next time, I'm Alicia. I'm Pat. I'm Greg. I'm Roger. I'm Chris. Keep quizzing. And... tasting.