Classic Wines

Video Transcript: Wine Cellar Management - Collecting Regions

Brian Freedman: Welcome to Classic Wines TV, I am your host Brian Freedman. Today, continuing our discussion on how to put together a great wine collection and build a cellar we will be discussing the importance of region when it comes to where the grapes were grown, why don't you join me? You know, one of the great things about owning a wine cellar is that it really allows you to play around with the ways in which you broaden your horizons of the wine world, which as we said a million times before here on Classic Wines TV, is always, always expanding, especially lately. So the tendency, when you are putting together a wine collection, is to really focus on issues of vintage, perhaps to focus on issues of grape varietal. But, to me, one of the most interesting things that you can really do if you do have a good wine cellar is to try to understand better the way different grape varieties express themselves in different regions. So this is a great example here, we have two really nice bottles here. We have the Louis Martini 2005 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon and here we have the Louis Martini 2006 Sonoma County Cabernet Sauvignon. Now, optimally, we would have the Martini cabs from Napa and Sonoma from the same vintage for something like this. But this is a great way of illustrating the point that no matter what the grape variety is its going to tend to express itself differently depending upon where it's grown. It's the same thing when it comes to say, how the nebbiolo grape changes its expression when it's grown in borollo as opposed to barbaresco. The way Pinot Noir is going to be different in the Willamette valley, the Russian River valley, and burgundy. Now, obviously, there are other things that play here; but what I would really want to drive home is the fact that depending upon where you plant this fruit, it's really going to have a profound and tremendous impact on the quality and expression of that wine. So these two wines, not quite ready for me, yet, to open up; I want to give these a little bit more to settle down to get where they need to go. But that's the great thing about working with a producer like Martini or certainly like a Mondavi is that you are pretty much guaranteed a certain level of quality there. So you can really just focus upon how the different places where the grapes are grown are impacting the ultimate expression of that wine. So until next time, it's always a good idea to remember, for you as well as me, that all of these wines as well all of them we discuss on Classic Wines TV are available on classicwines.com. And until next time, from all of us here at Classic Wines TV, I am your host Brian Freedman. Keep on experimenting with the wine world; it's too big not to do so. Cheers!