Alsace Grapes with Jean Frederic Hugel

UK Wine Show Show #408 Alsace Brapes with John Frederick Eagle Hello and welcome to the UK Wine Show. My name is Chris Scott and on this week's show we finish talking with John Frederick Eagle, the youngest of the Eagle dynasty, working in the massively important Hugo Winery in Alsace. John gives us a rundown of the different great varieties in Alsace. Von Daij Tadeev and Selection Grand No Val the sweet wines from Alsace and in the spotlight we look at the different parts of the great varieties. Hope you've all had a good week. My week's been pretty busy actually. I've been back into the swing of things, running lots of tastings, etc. Not too much to report from there. From the Vines Point of view we're going to be loading the Southern Hemisphere International Wine Spirit Competition results next week. So it's stuff to look forward to there. We've also released a top five wines. It's something new for Funder Vino every week. We're going to release the top five wines in a matter of what they are. And then a section on the top whites, top reds, top sparkling, whatever it is, and give a bit more detail. And they're going to be known as the top five wines for Funder Vino. Great to hear that Scotland's staying part of the UK. But without further ado, let's get straight into the news with Jane. Thanks Chris. Well first up this week Spain is being warned not to rip out its Venus treasures, whilst it restructures the wine industry. Last year Spain brought in a bummed harvest, whilst there were already large stocks floating around the world. As a consequence there have been Spanish wines knocking about for under £4 a bottle, which obviously doesn't make much money for the producers. Australia were in a similar position 10 years ago, if you recall. Spanish wine trends suggest that demand for traditional grapes such as iron and temperaneo is lacking, and consumers are looking for more crisp fruity flavours offered by Columbard and Shannon grapes, for example. The good news is Spain's now looking to be more market driven in its approach to the wine industry. Irene has one of the largest areas planted and divine in the world, but much of it is used to make Spanish brandy. Irene is certainly not a quality grape variety, but neither is Columbard, but there are quality white wines out there, Albrino is a great one, so it's not all bad. Next up this week Laua Valley wine producers are breathing a sigh of relief as the 2014 harvest gets underway, despite a cool august, with the warm September weather helping maturation of the grapes. Laua Valley producers have suffered at the hands of Frost in the last two years, some losing up to 50% of their production. So a welcome ray of sunshine is boosting their confidence for 2014. Excellent, we'll keep you up to news with snippets from the harvest over the next few months. Just let you know my vine in Twickers here, Twickenham is doing well. I had a really nice crop this year. I'll touch on that a wee bit in the spotlight, but the grapes are still a wee bit tart, we've had one bunch off and they were all some of them were nice for some bit tart. I think a bunch of starting to look good, I think next week will be the week for harvest at Twickenham of my my musket, that Alexander. What's the next story Jane? Well finally this week Redfold Vignades in West Sussex are the new kids, seemingly, on the English wine block. Last summer they launched their first release, a Shardonnay dominated classic Cuvé, but this week they're launching Unreal, named after an Angel, which is a blunt noir sparkling wine from the 2010 harvest, which is the space for Redfold Vignades. That's all in the news this week, but don't forget for more stories than these to go to our website at 3050.co.uk. Cheers Jane, another new wine here for the UK, all good news, let's hope they have a great 2014 vintage. Okay, let's move straight into the spotlight and as I said at the top of the show, we're going to be looking at the different parts of the vine. Okay, the next thing I want to look at in terms of the vine is its anatomy. Now a vine is made up of lots and lots of different parts. There's a trunk quite often, you'll see maybe you have some old wood there, and with it's got branches almost, you might get some buds, some tendrils, and some inflowing senses. So first of all, before we get into this, I just want to explain that a vine is actually a climber. Normally vines like to get into an infarist climber tree, get to the top, fruit and flower, and hopefully the birds will eat up the grapes and carry the seeds away and disperse them. That's what vines like to do. So what you'll find is, as the plant grows, it'll have a shoot. So the very first year that you have a bud, it'll burst and then there'll be a shoot going up of growth, and on that shoot you'll get all sorts of stuff. You'll get other buds, you'll get tendrils, and tendrils are long skinny arms if you like the vine, it likes to get hold of a tendril and wrap itself around something, and use that to hold itself up. It's going to try and get to the top of a tree, and it needs to grab hold of the tree to do that. So it has tendrils that sort of wrap around things. You've got leaves, obviously, and leaves are the generators of sugar, with their green chlorophyll. But you've also got a thing called an inflorescence. An inflorescence is an immature set of flowers. What happens is, the previous year, the buds form, and in those buds the previous year, the inflorescence forms, and that's all the flowers for that bud for the next year. Flowers obviously get fertilised and become grapes. So your bud has the sort of the grapes for next year being prepared. In actual fact, not all buds will produce influences, and it depends on how much sunlight the bud gets the year before, about whether it will actually grow it. I've got to buy them my back garden, and for the first couple years, it's actually on a north-facing wall, so it doesn't get a lot of sun. As a result, while the vine was getting up above the wall, it never produced many grapes. Last year, it finally got to the top of the wall, and I laid the shoots onto the wall to get lots and lots of sunlight. In this year, I've gone from one bunch of grapes last year to about seven or eight bunches this year, because it's had a lot, a lot of sunlight while it was at the top of the wall last year, which means that there's lots of weed influences in those buds, which means there's a lot more fruit. So let's have a look at what makes up a vine. Normally, if it's an avine, it might be on some wires and trilocin. So you'll have a trunk that comes up from the ground. Or you've got roots in the ground underneath, first of all, but then you've got a trunk that comes up for the ground. Now, there's two ways of making your vine work. One of them is to have what's called a cordon, which is almost like a branch. If you like, the trunk comes up, and you have a couple of branches out either side. And that's old wood. That's permanent old wood. You can tell it's got bark on it, all that sort of stuff. Then, where the buds have burst, you get shoots. But after a year, those shoots will harden up, and those turn from green into brown. And they're called a cane. Sometimes, you'll cut that cane down, until quite short, so there's only one or two bugs, and you'd call that a spur. Or you might just leave it as a cane, with lots of different buds on the cane. In a vineyard, normally you look at a vineyard, you'll see two general types. You'll have a trunk, and maybe some cordon with old wood, which is more than a year old, with lots and lots of bark on it. Or you might have a trunk with two canes, which are last year's shoots. Each of those canes will have lots and lots of buds on them, which hopefully go enough sunlight, so there's little influences in there, to grow into new shoots, and hopefully flowers next year. So, beginning of the growing season, first of all, you get these buds that were forming the year before, with the influences in their little immature leaves ready to rock and roll. And they burst. As soon as it gets warm, they burst forth, and the leaves come out of those buds, and you'll see the plant getting a shoot growing. The influences will unwrap, and you'll have tiny flowers, it's so small, with grapes, you can barely see them. And hopefully you'll get fruit set. That is, that the flowers will get fertilized, and produce seeds, and obviously grapes to protect those seeds. Those grapes will then grow and grow and grow, and when the seeds mature, ready to be planted out, the plant needs to tell birds that it's ready to be eaten. Remember, it's a climber, so it likes to climb to the top of the plant, and produce some grapes. It doesn't want the birds to eat them before the seeds are ready. So, the grapes stay green, and when they're really beaten by the birds, i.e., the seeds are viable, and they're continuing to be plant, they change color, and that change of color to red is called veraise. The grapes change color. The grapes are ready for the seeds to be planted, so the birds can see the red grapes, and it's coming along, eats them, and hopefully eats the seeds as well, whole, and then swallows them, and then the seeds pass through the bird, and come out the other end, flying away miles away, and that's how the grapes disperse their seeds. They do it by getting birds to eat them. Now, you might say, "Well, I see sometimes see green grapes, white, you know, made for white wines." That's true. That's a mutation. Originally, all grapes were red, and then they got a mutation that turned them from red to white. For example, Pinot noir mutates quite regularly into Pinot gree, and Pinot blanc. They're all basically DNA identical to Pinot noir, but you get a white version, or a slightly gray version, for Pinot gree. Just because the seeds are viable doesn't mean that the grapes are ready for making wine. Usually, after veraison, it takes about another month, because during that time, what's happening is the vine is trying to make the grapes more and more attractive to birds. So it does that by spending more and more energy by making them sweeter and sweeter, full of energy. So the sugar levels go up after veraison and the acidity levels go down, getting ready for some nice, we want grapes that are really super sweet so you can get the alcohol levels high enough. So the grapes will ripen up, their sugar levels will ripen up. Not only that, you'll get some physiological ripening as well. In fact, grapes actually go through two types of ripening. There's that sugar ripening process and a physiological ripening. So sugar ripening, as the sugars go up, these acidity levels go down, they get a lot sweeter and easy to eat. The physiological ripening though, that's associated with things like the skin, the color, the color of the seeds, the tenons in the wine, the tenons get less stringent. So with physiological ripeness, you get the changes in the things like the tenons, they get less stringent, the color gets a bit richer and you'll get more flavours developed in the grapes, hopefully. Often this is driven by exposure to light and warmth, but sugar ripeness is driven also by sugar and warmth, but also with the size of the leaf canopy. The more leaves you've got, the sugar machines in the vine, the more sugar you'll produce and therefore the sweet of the potential grapes can be. The problem is, if you've got a massive canopy, it might spend a bit of time writing up the sugars but it won't focus on things like the physiological ripeness. So you don't want necessarily have a canopy that's too big because it won't spend any effort making sure the grapes aren't too stringent, they're not got much flavour or all that sort of stuff. So you want to make sure the canopy is enough so you can ripen the sugars in the grapes, but not so much. They think, oh, I'm going to get really big and focus on getting really big. It doesn't put any effort into making sure the grapes taste pretty good. They lower the stringency, they produce more colour, they produce more flavour. Okay, that finishes looking at the different parts of the vine and trying to get out here around that. We're going to continue with this video cultural theme for quite some time. I've actually already recorded it. It went for about an hour 40. So we're going to chunk it up into snippets like this and listen to that. Just for the interview, we've got a, we, Ed break, as usual, just to quit reminded that we're still recruiting and the role is for one of our wine consultants, they're the people who run the wine tastings for us. Mostly private work and a lot of it's on set days as well, but you will end up doing some corporate work once you've done loads and loads of private tastings, et cetera, and got you head around how to run our events. We are looking for people who've got the equivalent of WST level three or equivalent. They must have a car and as I said, it is part-time work. We're looking for people in leads, Norwich, Southwest and Scotland. I mentioned last week that we may hold back on Scotland while they voted no, so it's all go. Don't forget that Christmas is coming up and we're starting to take our bookings to Christmas. We don't get much before the August holidays, but as soon as the August holidays comes around and September starts rolling in, people start booking up their Christmas events. So if you are thinking about doing event for Christmas, hopefully you are, I do consider doing a wine tasting with us. We do a number of different types of events. If you're trying to instate a whole troops of the company, so to speak, something like our interactive wine tasting challenge is absolutely heaps of fun. It's normally run throughout a three-course meal and it is loads of fun. You won't necessarily learn so much as you do at the UK Wine Show, but your guests will learn a reasonable amount, but it's more fun. We've got rounds like, sing the next wine and all-blind and full-tasting. Oh, it's just, it's a good laugh. The interactive really works for groups of about 25 to 30 up to about 50 to 70. If you're a small team, we do a lot of corporate tastings where prices a bit more low-key, about 30, 35, 40 pounds per person. The tasting's themselves last about two hours and we usually run them before a meal rather than through the course of the meal. That way you can sort of do the tasting, get a bit more relaxed into it and then have a lovely chatty meal afterwards. Works quite well. Sometimes you do it after lunch, sometimes before lunch or sometimes in the evening. So do consider it, particularly the interactive of bigger groups and for smaller groups, one of our corporate tastings like our Christmas corporate silver, Christmas corporate gold, et cetera. I mentioned at the top of the show that we were doing a new top five wines. So this week I'm gonna give you the top five wines according to us at Findervino. Coming in at number five is a white wine, Wolfblast Gold Label Shardonnay. It's 13 pounds a bottle at Asda. It got a masters from the drinks business. Now a master, the drinks business do their awards as master, gold, silver, bronze. So a master is a bit like a gold outstanding for other competitions. Coming in at number four was Hidalgo's Legitina Manzanilla. That's a Spanish sherry, quite a light style sherry manzanilla. They're a bit like a Fino sherry. And that's at eight pounds 49 at Majestix. It got a gold at the International Wine Challenge. At number three, Katnoux Founders block Cabinets Savignon from Kunawara, 2010 Australian. That's 11 pounds 99 at Waitrose. And that got a master again at the drinks business awards. I've actually bought a case of that wine and it is absolutely delicious. And for the money, it is a good value. If you're looking something a bit cheaper, still good value for a bit cheaper. Our number two wine at six pounds is the Coru Savignon Blanc from Nelson. Nelson's right side, Malbra in New Zealand, 2012. That got a gold at the International Wine Challenge and it's at Asda for six pounds. Now this is a sort of mainstream brand. I think this is one of Asda's own label wines 'cause I couldn't find much information about it. But I did read a lot of the comments and it does sound pretty good. It also, the International Wine Challenge sort of give awards for what they consider to be the best value wines. And the Coru Savignon Blanc from Nelson definitely did quite well there. And the top wine according to us is the Jacobs Creek Reasling Adelaide Hills Shardney. That's available at Tesco's for $9.99. It got a master at the drink business. So Jacobs Creek Reserve Adelaide Hills Shardney was the top wine in Findervino at the moment. Now we have only included the ones that have been entered in competitions and we've only included high street retailers in this. We do have other retailers. For example, 3050s and then we've got some great wines. But I didn't want to push our wines for the top five on to just give the mainstream retailers a run for their money, so to speak, and use the main competition. So I haven't included Ned Haley's results either in these top five wines, because not everybody subscribes to Ned Haley's reviews in Findervino. OK, let's move on. And the next step we've got to interview with John Friedrich Hugo. John talks to us about the different great varieties in our sass. And he also gives us an overview of those lovely sweet wines from our sass. Let's have a listen to what John has to say. Hi, my name is Chris Scott, and I'm here with John Friedrich Hugo. How are you, John? I'm very well. Thank you. What we're going to do today is we're going to talk a little bit more about the wines of our sass. And maybe look a bit more at the sort of the great varieties grown our sass. And perhaps sort of though, the unique names our sass used for this sweet wine. Sure. Absolutely. The Von O'Chartie van Selection Grinneau, which you cannot miss. OK. I suppose one of the things about our sass that's a bit different to a lot of wine regions and Francis, that even before France got a bit modern with them, they're labeling-- it used to be illegal to write their name with a great variety on the wine bottle in most places in France, except for our sass. Absolutely. What was the reason for that? The reason for that was that we have a more German inspired type of grape. So we have grapes that were grown nowhere else. And the blends were slowly, slowly reducing. And we had definitely a more modern approach, in my opinion, because we were the main markets for our wines. We had the Anglo-Saxon markets where single grapes were really starting to perform very well. Alzaz, the whole system of Alzaz, has been designed pretty much after the Second World War. So we were able to start from scratch. See, I always think of it, and this might be wrong here, but if you buy a reasling, you know that you get what to expect. Of course. If you buy a giver that's traminer, that can be a completely different beast. It's a total different animal. And to just have not put the name of the grape on the bottle, it would mean that you know, and would never know what they're getting. Whereas you buy Bordeaux. You might have a bit more Merlot than Capsaver, a bit more Capsaver Merlot, but it's still a Bordeaux-y style of wine. And you trust the Château. You trust the Château. You buy a Château much more than you buy Saint Julien or Saint-Émillion. Well, sometimes. You think it was more of a marketing decision. Yes, of course. Bordeaux is all about brands and burgundy has two grapes, one red, one white. Alsace has seven different grapes, plus thousands of terroirs and different soils. So it's a challenging piece. So, OK, so putting the grape variety on there's all been something that's been happening for 50, 60 years now. What are the key grape varieties in Alsace? I should start with the four noble. The four noble grape varieties, which are recently obviously, give us traminer, Pinot gris and musca. And then the others, Pinot blanc. Pinot noir, which is the only red grape grown in the area. Silvaner. And then you have the others. You find a little bit of chassellar. You find the oxerroir, the clefner. So. Oxerroir, it's quite interesting. We have seven grapes only talking about the most famous and the most widely accepted. What would I typically expect now? Alsace, reason to taste like. Dry, mineral, elegant. I'm really biased. It's my favorite grape. My personal favorite grape. Are they always dry? If you taste an average Alsace Riesling, you're going most likely to have a dry wine. Then of course there is Von Nostar Div, there are some selection granob which are extremely sweet wines. But any random Riesling you have a very high chance of having a dry Riesling. Do they write on the bottle Von Jav's tar div? Yes. And if it says that, because Alsace, that's sort of like a late harvest, that late harvest could be dry or sweet, couldn't it? Could be, but at that at the level required for Von Nostar Div, you are most likely to 100% certain to find a really gorgeous sweet wine in your bottle. Okay. And selection granob, that's. That would be the French equivalent of a barren houselizer or a trocken barren houselizer from Germany. So always going to be sweet. So 100% butcheredized grapes and sweet wine. So if I boil downstairs Riesling as long as it didn't say Von Jav tar div or a selection granob, no bowls. It'll be dry, but if it says that, it'll be sweet. Yes, absolutely. Perfect. Alright, Givert's Carmona is another big grape variety from Alsace. Again, there's only place in France that I know that grows this musket style grape variety. And Alsace is probably. Als Riesling is one of the most planted white grapes in the world. Givert's Carmona is probably one of the least planted and Alsace great specialty. What would you say about Alsace, Givert's Carmona? It has spices like no other Givert's Carmona in the world. It's probably the area where the fragrant and the aromatics of Givert's Carmona express the best. We have long growing seasons, we have dry climates, and at the same time we can get 100% ripeness on the grapes. What sort of spices are we talking about? Well, we are talking about ginger, we are talking about anise and cinnamon, so we are talking about those gorgeous sweet spices. Carmona. And usually you'd expect the alcohol with Givert's to be quite high anyway, because. Yes, very often. It's a grape which ripens very fast, so you'll easily end up with a wine with the high alcohol or high residual sugar. Yeah, yeah. And normally the acidity I find with Givert's is quite low-worse. It's always a little tricky to keep Givert's with high acid balance. You have to pick a little early. It's something like a reason. It's just reasoning, exudes acidity. You know, it's like. Reasling is balanced by nature. When you pick a reason, you wake for ripeness. When you pick Givert's, you keep a very close eye on the acid levels. Yeah, exactly. And if they drop, you pick immediately. One of the great varieties I really enjoyed recently was I was in Baden, which is just over the road from Alsace. And it's baddened, like, must be. It must be on the other side of the Rhine River, is it? It's exactly on the other side. A little further north, Baden would be. yes. Baden, Viotenberg, it's right there on the other side. One of the wines I'm. Was a Graal Begoongda or Pina Gure? Pina Gure, absolutely. Same thing. I really liked that style. It was quite different to maybe the Pina Gure, you might expect, mentally. Absolutely. Pina Gure from Alsace tends to be a bit more textured. Do you want to just describe a bit more of what an Alsace Pina Gure or. You very often have this flinty peachy character, this yellow fruit stone fruit character, and very often the best way to enjoy a Pina Gure would be after five, six, ten years of aging, where it's. when it starts to be a little more smoky, a little more flinty, have this mushroomy, soily character, that's when a Pina Gure is ready to drink. Oh, so you do get a bit of mushroomy aging characters coming? Oh, yes. Yeah? That's why I generally recommend Pina Gure with salted mushroom. Oh, okay. That's a gorgeous, gorgeous pairing. All right. Okay, that's pretty good. I used to be called Tokai, didn't it? Tokai that was. Tokai that was us. And that was Pina Gure, wasn't it? Yes, that was Pina Gure, and which is normal in my opinion, but we gave the Hungarian guys their great back. Because it was all Tokai region. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what was the reason, was there a band fight there or.? When Hungary joined the European Union, they stopped using the name Konyak, which makes sense. Yeah. Because Konyak is a region. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they asked us to stop using the name Tokai, which makes sense, because Tokai is in the region. Yeah, yeah. And we're happy with that. We sow sales decrease a little bit, but it's meaningful. It makes sense. Yeah, yeah, okay. Now that's fine. What other big great varieties are there? Is Silvana? Silvana is planted less and less. It's used for many blendings in many areas, especially in Germany. So what do you use Silvana for? Is it just one of those grapes is a historical grape that's going to lose? It's a grape, mainly to enjoy young, because it has a nice fruit when it's young, but it rarely to never has the depth and the personality to compete, for example, with a reason, which is just obviously one very noble grape. Would you plant Silvana in the same place as you'd grab a gavet or a reason, or.? No, definitely not. If I personally had choice and I had a good location, I would plant a reason. Okay. If I had any clay soil, I would plant gavet from inner. Then if I have enough gavet from inner and ristling, I would probably plant Pinogri. If I'm in the mood, I would probably plant Musca on the Great Terwa, which is exactly what we did. We actually planted some Musca on the Shunobur, and if I still have a little bit of room, maybe I would plant a little bit of Silvana. You know, right that yourself though? It's just a matter of focusing on the grapes that you find the most interesting. In the family, we definitely considered the ristling Pinogri, Gavet from inner and Musca, the four of them, as being the most noble. Okay. But Silvana is just something you're not really that interested in. We use it. We definitely use it, but most of it is used as a blending grape. We use it for about 40% of our most popular wine, which is the genty. But otherwise, we make a very, very small bottling of the straight Silvana. It's a gorgeous wine, once again, to drink young. But once the wine, it's probably one of the only Alzaz grape that has an expiration date. You know, a bottle of ristling can age for 100 years. A bottle of Silvana should be enjoyed within the two first years of its life. Okay. You mentioned Musca, which is interesting because a lot of people say Musca and Gavet's tramina, they're virtue of the same family. Well, they are the same family. They're very aromatic. They're very aromatic, yes. Probably Musca is a little more floral than Gavastramio. Gavastramio is probably more fruit and spices oriented. And what's interesting with Musca is that in Alzaz, it's mainly the vinified, completely dry. Always dry. Always dry. Yep. So, very nice, it's actually a very nice wine for Asparagus. The season is just finishing, but white Asparagus, which is very popular in Alzaz, that's my go-to wine when it comes to pairing with Asparagus. But it's not very widely planted, those are. No, it's a very demanding grape, very, very demanding grape. In what way? Very sensitive during the blooming. You can lose half of your crop just in a week of rind during the blooming. Let's call you a hidden, digging it, let it and checking. It's extremely sensitive to color. Yep. And in addition, the skin is very thin. So, rot and rain would just ruin them. Okay, so, but you don't get very wet in Alzaz, hopefully. But if you do, you just lose your crop of Musca. Okay, so it's not really a grape variety that you want to have a big investment in. You cannot build something on Musca. It's just the bonus grape. If you have a good Musca, that's why we planted a tiny bit of Musca on the Shunambu. We're hoping to make a late harvest of Musca. We haven't produced one in a long time. Where's the Shunambu? The Shunambu is one of the most famous areas for reasling, south-facing with limestone soils. It's right in the center of Alzaz. Oh, okay. Right in the middle. It's one of the name vineyards. It's one of our main vineyards. We are 100% located in Rigvia and it's our most celebrated vineyard. What about Pinionwara? There's a wee bit of Pinionwara in Alzaz. I must say, I haven't drunk a lot of it myself, if any. Well, one or two maybe. It's a delicate matter, Pinionwara. It's definitely improving. And there are some gorgeous Pinionwars in Alzaz. But it's still a grape, which is extremely demanding in terms of ripeness. And as much as reasling and give us from here, do not have the same sensitivity to a little bit of rot or rip or rain. Sometimes, you meditate and ruin your crop of Pinionwara. So Pinionwara is definitely improving in Alzaz. But as we are quite far north, we still need quite a warm vintage to succeed really well with Pinionwara. And do you think it's something that might improve with a bit of global warming? Or do you think it's. It already is. It already is. Our good ventages of Pinionwara are definitely coming closer. How do they taste, compared to that burgundy? Are they heavier, lighter, red fruits, black fruits? They're definitely red fruits, very cherry-oriented. And of course, we don't have the terwars and the klima that burgundy has. And we don't have, especially the experience and the history that burgundy has with Pinionwara. So burgundy is our go-to reference when it comes to Pinionwara. But we cannot say we produce burgundy style Pinionwara because burgundy is more than a style. It's just what it is. That's an interesting grapefruit. That's it. Because you don't see a lot of that. I mean, like, how says you say it? Yes. All the other grape varieties, the new world grows. They're grown everywhere. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pinionwara is a bit in badden. I saw it in badden. Yeah, Germany produces a fair bit of Pinionwara, but other than this, it's not a widely planted grape. What's that? Probably because Riesling, which has probably the same kind of characteristics, has taken most of the exposure. That would be my opinion because it's a grape that I really enjoy. And what can be interesting to know about Alzaz Pinoblanc is that not only can Pinoblanc trade Pinoblanc be called as it is, there's also a second grape, which is allowed to be vinified as a Pinoblanc, which is oxaloid. Yeah, that's because that oxaloid was grown in burgundy as well, isn't it? A little bit in burgundy, but especially In Champagne, it produces the Grido Toul, a bit in Champagne, but it's the wine that produces Grido Toul in Lorraine. So it's mainly planted in Lorraine, Northern North, even for the North. Oh my goodness, me, okay. It's a very, very tiny wine area and they do grow some oxerroa and in Alsace we take, we've taken over oxerroa and we blend it with the Pinoblan. So a straight oxerroa even can be called Pinoblan. Why is that? It's one of those strange wine things. Okay, all right so you can name it oxerroa Pinoblan in Alsace. Absolutely and our Pinoblan is a blend of 50% of Pinoblan and 50% of oxerroa. Okay, well that's interesting isn't it? And there's no problem with the rolls or anything like that. It's one of the areas where you're allowed to cheat a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. Well it's not cheating if you're allowed, right? No, no, no, no, no, it's as long as it's all written up in the rules and that's what it says. Yes. It's when you start throwing in things like all sorts of stuff and trying to call it something else. In terms of style, Pinoblan to me what I've had it, it's mainly been like I've had it for bad and it always reminds me of some of yellow pears and that sort of thing. That's similar to the thing in Alsace. Alsace is probably Pinoblan is vinified with a little more purity. We have a big tradition in Alsace of vinifying our wines without any addition of ox. There's no oak influence at all. I know the Germans like a tiny bit of oak influence on their Pinoblan. Many of the producers do produce a Pinoblan very often in the first cast that they use. The first time they use a cast, they often use it for Pinoblan. Oh, okay. And in Alsace it's either stainless or completely neutral oak. Okay. So also much more reductive wine making and less oxidation during the process. All right, lovely. And I just finished up with, I just wanted to cover those two sweet wines with talked about them on and off already. Yes. But I just wanted to, in my own here, because I struggle with exactly, you know, German, Auslays, Trockenbein, Auslays, all that sort of stuff. I've got that down pat. Yes. An Ausace because you've got different names. It seems to be a bit more tricky for me. Don't go through the two two two varieties or sweet naming conventions. Sure. So Vendonch Tarniv, which literally means late harvest, our grapes harvested later as the name, as the name can tell. And they harvested with higher potential of alcohol. So higher sweetness in the grapes. Plus, very often the concentration that you can get from dehydration increases also the aromatics. And increases the acid levels. So it concentrates the acidity. Oh, you get higher acidity levels as well. You can get higher acidity compared to grapes picked at the same time without dehydration. Obviously, because acidity reduces. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. So it's getting, so it's concentrating. It's it's only it only comes from concentrating of the of the of the most and of the juice in the in the berries. So it can come from botritis or the noble rods as we call it. Or it can come simply from dehydration from the winds and sun. Okay, so you get a bit of dehydration. Okay, that because normally late harvest, the grapes don't have to necessarily be dehydrated. It's it's not necessarily the case, but it's dehydration is what is going to concentrate the juice. So of course, the wine is going to build up some more sweetness, but it's mainly from dehydration that you're going to get really the higher potential of sweetness. Okay, and the second style of sweet wines. Selection the ground up. So selection of noble berries. Yeah, it's 100% botritis and these berries are almost 100% dehydrated. They are nothing but sugar aromatics and acid. It's it's very often you are amazed by the sweetness of the grapes as you as you taste them. You can taste them. They're they're raisins. They're literally raisins. And we go through the vineyards and select only the bunches or sometimes even the berries that are the most dehydrated. So you you have to imagine people walking around with pockets, big large pockets. Yep. And just grabbing the berries one by one, just to produce the most sweetest delicious nectar possible. Perfect. All right, then I think we're going to wrap it up there and let you keep going. Thank you very much for your time. My pleasure. Thanks. Cheers, bye. Okay, that pretty much ends the interview and the show this week. Just before we finish off, just a quote. Just before I have to give you a bit of background. If you're overseas, you may not know that Bucfast is a British wine made in Scotland. There's a subtle difference to English wine and British wine. English wine is made from grapes grown in England. British wine is made from grapes grown anywhere in the world, but the alcoholic fermentation occurs somewhere in the British Isles or in the UK, so to speak. So here we go. This is why I think really Scotland voted no. Don't blame it on the sun, shine. Don't blame it on the moon, light. Don't blame it on good times. Blame it on the Buccy. Until next week, cheers and good drinking. The UK wine show is a weekly podcast brought to you by 3050, the wine tasting company. The show is produced by Chris Scott and the news is read by Jane Scott. To listen to other shows visit UKWineShow.co.uk. Thank you for listening.