[MUSIC] Now let's move over to our red wines, can't wait. I'm going to go ahead and rinse which I should be doing after each wine. [SOUND] Let's go ahead and start at the beginning for the first couple of categories, clarity and color we can look at these wines kind of comparatively side by side. I'll bet that your wine exhibit the same color differences as mine do. These are kind of classic differences. Remember the wine in my left hand on your right is Pinot and the one in my right hand, on your left, is a Cabernet, and they couldn't be more different in color. The Pinot is kind of a classic garnet, medium or medium minus garnet red. And the Cabernet is more of a purplish ruby red but wait a minute, I got so entranced by the color I forgot to look at clarity. The clarity with reds is a little more difficult because obviously there's, the pigment in there is masking your ability to see clarity, see clearly. But go ahead and hold these against the white background. Actually, I am going to move my little tasting sheet, which has some black printing on it, and see if I can see it. Yes, no problem with the Pinot, I can read very clearly, and so can I with the Cabernet. Not quit as clearly, but enough to tell me that these wines are both clear or in the case of the Pinot even maybe brilliant. [SOUND] I had already given these a quick sniff for condition, but I just wanted to double check. Let's go ahead and focus on the Pinot noir now. Be sure to taste yours is right along with me. [SOUND] Well [LAUGH], I'm very lucky, that I bought this particular Pinot, this has a couple of the classic markers for Pinot noir. At least classic markers for me. Namely strawberry jam which is one of the elements we used in our earlier component standard preparation. But also pencil lead. [SOUND] Pencil lead? You remember pencil lead. Sharpening a pencil. And what is pencil shavings have in it? Pencil shavings are made of that aromatic cedar wood plus also that kind of earthy graphite smell and this Pinot noir has all of that. [SOUND] It's got strawberry jam, I could put it on my croissant and it's got pencil shavings. [SOUND] Little bit of black pepper. There's some other berry fruit in there as well, no raisins or prunes, this is not an overripe wine [SOUND], but it's a very nice delicate kind of a berry softdrink or a [SOUND] maybe almost a little bit of it cherry cola kind of a smell to it. [SOUND] Fantastic. Now I want to take my first sip and think about sweetness and acidity and of course now since we've move on to our red wine, I'm going to think of about bitterness as well. [SOUND] Sweetness? Nope, dry. This wine is dry. Acidity? Yes. There's some really, really nice supportive acidity there. Not as much as our Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc had, but more than I would expect in a lot of red wines. And that's actually a plus, that acidity in this Pinot noir will make it a really good food wine. What about bitterness, tannins? Yes, there are some and remember this is the first red wine we've tasted in our flight. So, don't be startled by the fact that there is bitterness in it. There supposed to be bitterness in it but let me take one more taste. [SOUND] The bitterness is very soft and very balanced and very drinkable, it's not a lingering bitterness. Bitterness does tend to accumulate on your palette. If you take taste after taste after taste of the wine, the wine will seemingly be more and more bitter with each taste. It's not of course. It's the same amount bitter. But bitterness builds upon itself. So when tasting red wines, it's even more important to always remember to rinse. [SOUND] Well I rinsed prematurely, because now [LAUGH] I want to go back and taste it one more time, and think about those aromatics and also think about the finish of this wine. [SOUND] The aromatics on the palate are kind of like a medley of all the aromatics that I smelled orthonasally. I get the jamminess. I get the red berry notes. Also as I was flipping my tongue around, I remembered to assess the body of this wine, which was medium, maybe medium minus. A little bit on the lighter side of medium. By the way, with the first two wines, we did not mention body. The Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc was light body or like plus. The Chardonnay was definitely medium body. Interestingly enough, the Pinot was slightly lighter in body than the Chardonnay was, so I would give that maybe a medium minus. And then what about the finish on this Pinot? The finish is lingering, maybe not quite as long as the Chardonnay, so if I give the Chardonnay a medium plus finish, I would give this a medium in duration finish. Now let's move on to wine number four, our Cabernet. >> Want to rinse it? [SOUND] >> [LAUGH] That's nice. [SOUND] So of course you're tasting your Cabernet along with me and I certainly hope you chose as well as I did. This is a lovely Cabernet. It's got more of a brusque or woodsy note, or forest note, than the Pinot noir had. [SOUND] I'm smelling some kind of pine or fur tree in this wine. [SOUND] There's a little tiny bit of a vegetal note. Sometimes Cabernets have a very distinctive green bell pepper note. This one does not. But there's something in the background that I would call veggie or obecious. [SOUND] There's some black fruit and red fruit notes. There's also a really nice background coming up as I'm standing here working this wine a bit, there's a background note coming of vanilla. [SOUND] Yeah, there's some vanilla and some like dark brown sugar notes. So this wine is definitely seeing some wood age. [SOUND] Now I'm going to go ahead and taste it, and even though it sounds a little silly to say this, I'm going to look for sweetness. One never knows these days. I'm going to look at acidity and I'm going to look at bitterness. [SOUND] It's not sweet. It's definitely a dry Cabernet [SOUND]. The acidity is significantly less than the Pinot but still is adequate. Red wines are seldom higher acid unless are grown in a cooler climate and this Cabernet is no exception. It's, I would say adequate acidity. I would rate it moderate acidity. Whereas the Pinot noir, remember I said moderate plus [SOUND]. What about tannins, what about bitterness? Well having just taken one sip of that Cabernet, I can already feel some residual tannins in my mouth. Remember the two sensations, bitterness and astringency are different. Bitterness is a basic taste that we taste with our taste buds. Astringency is a mouth feel that comes from the tannins in wine binding up our saliva making, our mouth feel temporarily scratchy or dry. So there is a bit of that in this wine, but not enough to be bothered some. I would say that the tannins in this wine are moderate plus. [SOUND] To tell you the truth, what the tannins in this wine make me think of is, food. [LAUGH] And if you have a very tannic red wine, it's not a problem if you can put the glass down and take a bite of whatever you are eating, and then chew that up and swallow, and then pick the glass up, and take another sip. Which I will but this time I am going to think about retronasal flavors, things that come right through the palate that I smelled upfront in the nose. [SOUND] All of the fruit and vegetal notes that I smelled up front sort of come together as a melange of kind of woodsy dark berry notes, there is a little bit of a blackness almost like dry leaves perhaps in a good way. The vegetal or the beauteousness is coming through as almost like a bay leaf note in the flavor by mouth. And so, again as I'm standing here talking to you I can think the finish of the wine is a short, medium or long. And it's a longer medium finish, it's not going on forever and ever and ever. It's a medium plus, plus in my notes. It's still there even as I stand talking to you but now it's starting to drop off. So, medium plus, plus, in finish and so I'll go ahead and rinse. [SOUND] Boy I hope you had as good a flight of wines as I did. If you talk to your shopkeeper and get some guidance about what to buy, they can generally steer you towards some really lovely wines. And of course now you have complete tasting notes that you took along with me. Once we're finished here, please go back and taste through your flight again. As wine sit in the glass, they tend to reveal more and more and more. These wines are a little on the cool side as I poured them, but ten or 15 minutes later, they've warmed up and they may show you things that you didn't even smell on the first time around. So don't ditch the wines quickly, keep them and run through them again and just confirm your notes. I know some wine tasters are particularly wine critics, who taste wine for a living and write about it, who will actually make sure that they taste that same bottle of wine the next day and some even the day after that, just to see what additional aromatics are going to come out. Wine sort of unfold slowly particularly reds, they sort of reveal themselves to you in layers. So don't be too quick about your tasting. Go back, look at your notes, confirm what you smell than tasted in your initial notes and see if there is anything more to add. So have fun with this. I certainly did.
