 Hello, hello, welcome back to Exotic Wine Travel. I am your host, Matthew Horky. So you can see I've got the glasses on today. My eyes are a little tired. I had a long night last night, but I'm still ready to shoot some videos. Exciting night last night. I got to see, I am back in Michigan. So I haven't been here for a few years. I want to see the Detroit Pistons play. My friend got us the tickets that we were third row up from the court. It was awesome. I got a chance to see Anthony Davis live New Orleans Pelicans, but it was a long night afterwards, but I'm still ready to rock and roll. So we're back here with white wines from Santa Barbara that include the grape Pino Blanc. So just before we get into the video, I want to let you guys know that this video has not been paid for in any way, shape or form. But if you do like these videos, if they add value to your life, check out our downloadable guide of the wines of Santa Barbara. Sipping Santa Barbara, recommended wines and producers. It's available on Amazon Kindle. It's also available as a PDF and via EPUB format. So I'll put that on the screen, check it out here. We're ready to get going here. I have a couple of wines here. I just took, extracted them with our Corvind Model 2 Elite. Corvind was nice enough to give us one of these test models to use, which is awesome. And I poured them into these beautiful Gabrielle Glass Gold Edition. These are lighter than the Zalto Universal. Very cool glasses. I will put actually a discount code for Gabrielle Glassware up on the screen towards the end of the video. We are not affiliates of Gabrielle Glass. It's just a nice offer for you. Okay, let's get into the wines today. Pino Blanc. Pino Blanc may be a grape that people maybe aren't as familiar with and people are more familiar with Sauvignon Blanc Chardonnay. Pino Blanc actually is originally from Burgundy, not used there anymore. Some of the best Pino Blancs I've had now are from Trentino, Alto, Adigé in Italy, although there's some great ones in Alsace as well. And we have a couple of examples here from Santa Barbara County. Santa Barbara is all about Chardonnay, for the most part. That's one of the big name grapes, big ticket grapes in the area, but there's lots of other grapes there being made as well, including these two examples. And I'm ready to give them a try. So let's get started. The first one we have is the J Wilkes Santa Maria Valley 2015 Pino Blanc. Big producer here. The Miller family owns J Wilkes. They also own a big portion of the Biennacito Vineyard. Wes Hagen is the winemaker. He was formerly actually the winemaker at Clos Pepe. Really influential guy, drew up a lot of papers for a lot of the aviaries in Santa Barbara County, including Santa Rita Hills. So let's get started here. This is fermented all in stainless steel, $18, 91 points wine enthusiast. So on paper, it could be a pretty darn good wine. Let's give this a smell here. The thing I've hate about wearing glasses is it's hard for me to smell the wines. This is actually, wow, this packs a punch way above its price point. Maybe I'll put these off for a little bit. Pino Blanc is, you know, it's known to have Chardonnay-like flavors with a little bit less acidity. We're here, I definitely get some pineapple caramel meal. I definitely get some yogurt flavors from the nose. Quite expressive, bright nose, has some electricity to it. Kind of zesty with a little bit of a citrus peel. It smells really good. Let me give this, I'm really excited to try this. Wow. Whoa. I'm so funny because some of the J Wilkes wines in the past, I haven't been as high on, but this I think is really beautiful. It is medium-bodied white wine. It has Chardonnay-like flavors that doesn't have highest acidity that can come with Chardonnay. But it's got this kind of electric feel on the palate. It's got lots of energy. This is really a beautiful wine. Beautiful, some white pear flavors, long finish. You don't get any wood influences. This was made in all in stainless steel, I believe. It'll detect a lot of wood anyway. I'm 4.2 out of five on this wine. For $18, I mean, excellent wine. This is a wine you definitely should seek out. I'm very high on this wine. Good job by Wes Hagan. I think this was his first vintage at J Wilkes. Nice job, Wes, nice job. Let's move on. We have a legendary producer from Santa Barbara County, Obon Climat from Jim Klendeman. He is the winemaker. This is his Hildegard 2015. This is his new vintage. I'm excited because we have lots of Obon Climat wines we will be tasting on the show. So you have to stay tuned, especially the new vintages. This wine is actually a blend. Now listen to this blend. Pinot Gris, known as Pinot Grigio, Pinot Blanc and Alagon. He actually made up this blend because it was the original blend and the Burgundy Grand Cru Vineyard Quarton Chardamon. If I see if my French is bad. This is barrel fermented in all new French oak. Let's give this a smell here. This wine, vintage after vintage, gets massive scores. You're gonna see it has a nice golden color. A little more, definitely a little bit more golden than the J Wilkes Pinot Blanc. A little more viscous in the glass. Definitely can tell that it's been aged in wood. The wood comes on pretty strong here. So you have to know what you like. It's so funny. Lately, I haven't really enjoyed oak in my reds, like big oak-y flavors, but I love it in my white wines. I don't know, that's what my palate's been at lately. There's definitely some oak, vanilla. Really, really beautiful white and yellow peach flavors, a little bit of pineapple, white tea note going on here. This smells very complex. Let's give this a little bit of a go. Big, rich, luscious white wine. It's not gonna be very buttery for people expecting a big butter bomb chardonnay, but it is big. It's got wood. It's got palate presence. Although it is woody, the fruit flavors just punch. I mean, it literally blasts right through the wood. This is very, very good stuff. $35 for this hildegard. This is from vineyards in the, this is from being the CEDO vineyard, actually. I'm pretty high on this too. I say I'm also gonna go, hold on a second. Well, 4.3 out of five outstanding wine, both outstanding wines. You gotta know this is for something a little bit, less woody, leaner, not super acidic. So people that are bothered by acid are not gonna be bothered by this. This is woody, big, bright, tropical fruits. I really like this wine. I like it a lot. Good little episode. I only had two wines for this episode. Like I said, there's a lot more to Santa Barbara County than just chardonnay for whites and Pinot noir for reds. There are definitely grapes like Pinot Blanc. You should check out. There's Riesling grown there. Some Gruner-Veltliner. Sauvignon Blanc is doing fantastic. I've also seen some Vermintino, some Malvasia. All different types of grapes, so check it out. I'm gonna put the discount code for the Gabrielle Glass up on the screen right now. You get 15% off the Standart Glass or the Alpha Decanter. Check it out. If you like this video, check out our guide. Again, to the Wines of Santa Barbara, sipping Santa Barbara County. Check out these two producers. I'll put their links in the description box. So guys, if you like this video, please subscribe to our YouTube channel, Exotic Wine Travel. I will see you at the next episode.