 Hello, welcome back to Exotic Wine Travel. I am your host, Matthew Horkey. Hi, I'm Shereen Tan. Welcome back to this show today. We have an exciting show because we are doing big balling, rolling, some high-money P&Rs. Before we get started, 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 guide, The Widest of Santa Barbara Call. Sipping Santa Barbara, Recommended Wines and Produce I'll put that up on the screen. Available on PDF, Kindle, and EPUB on Amazon. We poured, you know, I'm excited about tasting these wines. We used our Coravin Model 2 Elite. Thank you so much to Coravin for providing us a test sample to use. We haven't gotten through these episodes without it. And we're pouring into these beautiful Gabriel Gold Edition hand-blown glasses. I will have discount code up for Gabriel Glass Stemware at the end of the video. Are you ready to get started? Let's go for it. OK, Balling P&Rs from Santa Barbara County. The balling episode. Well, I say balling is because I told that to Shereen. She said, balling P&Rs would. I was like, what producer is called balling? So what I mean by that, in Santa Barbara County, $30 to $45, $50 US dollars, that is, getting you some really nice everything from Appalachian to single vineyard level P&R. When you start climbing over $50, you're talking about some of the cult producers, some of the big time wines. I mean, I think the highest P&R that goes there, maybe a C Smoke, C Smoke 10 is in the $100 range. So let's get into some of these wines. We have wines. These are all well above $50. And let's get started. Go for it. First of all, we have the Lumen P&R Praskeel Vineyard 2015. This is clone 667, only two barrels of this were made. 47 cases aged in 50% new hungarian oak, 50% neutral oak. We love these wines. Lumen is a project. Lane Tanner is the winemaker, one of the oldest independent female winemakers in Santa Barbara County. And crazy here, you already are loving this, right? They hit, on their website, this is only available to club members, I believe, rolling in at $62 US dollars. Most of the wines are $30. They say, drink this to 2030 and beyond. That is some big time claims. Let's give this a smell here. What do you think? I think all Lumen wine, it usually needs a while to open up. But I find the nose really interesting even at this point. I think you might like it a bit more right now because it's rubbery. To me, this is already smelling kind of like great Pinot Noir to me, because I love it's perfumed. It has the fall leaves notes, right? Lots of spiciness, annies, clove. Still get your red fruit. Let's give this a go. This Pinot Noir has some muscle. Yeah, this is exactly the kind of Pinot Noir I like. Why, it's big Pinot Noir, it's intense. It's so silky, it has a spicy finish. It's got crunchy, a city. This is really, really good stuff. Anything else you want to add? I mean, like what else do you? Oh, drink it 12 hours later. But I love this wine right now. It's just a beautiful weight in the mouth. This is fantastic wine. I mean, for me, 4.4 out of 5 on this, easy. Anything else that you want? Because you say this is the kind of Pinot Noir you like. Anything else? It's the structure. At the end of the day, for me, Pinot Noir, I joke around with people quite a bit. And I say that I like the kind of Pinot Noir that doesn't taste like Pinot Noir. But I don't mean it as a way like a Pinot Noir making Cabernet style. I just like Pinot Noir with this small tenons and very structured mouth feel. This is incredibly structured. This is brilliant stuff. Good job, Lane. Wow, this is- Did you just take a sip? Yeah. Okay. I don't care. Anything else you want to add before we move on? You want to save it for later? You want to switch me glasses? I'll write a proper tasting note. You want to switch me glasses? Okay. Let's get started here. Get started. Let's move on here. We have a producer that actually we did not visit nor taste from when we did our research trips to Santa Barbara County and she saw some of our articles and she actually reached out to us, Kimberly Smith from La Montanne wine. So I get to give her props for reaching out to us and taking initiative, right? And she was very responsive the whole time. Yeah. She's fantastic. She's, I think her and her husband own, I think a garbage disposal company in Lumpark. She wanted to get into winemaking because she wanted to know why wines were expensive. She was spending $50 for Pinot Noir. So she actually found Wes Hagen, tracked him down and he was her mentor for making wines for a while. She only makes a single vineyard lot, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and some other grapes as well. You ready to get started? Yeah. And Wes Hagen is now a J-Works winery. We're excited. So this is the, and these wines are not cheap. This is, we're going to go upwards by price. These are all different vintages. This is 15. This is 2012. We're going older La Montanne, John Sebastiano vineyard, which vineyard we really liked 2012. 68 US dollars. So we are not playing around. You are a big fan of this vineyard, right? This is darker in color, I feel like the lumen. Let's give this a little bit of a go. I'm really excited to taste these La Montanne wines because they are not scored by professional critics very much. I know she has a tasting room in the Lumpark wine ghetto. Let's see what she's got, Kimberly. Let's see what you got. Very Senorita Hills-y to me. Cherry, rhubarb for me. Little bit of spice, a touch of wood, but wood done, right? Anything else you want to add on that? The food is very focused. Anything else? Ozzy. More fruity than this one. More, a little more powerful like Senorita Hills is. Let me give this a little bit of a go. What you think? I like it a lot. The tertiary notes is beginning to come out. Yeah, I'm even getting a little bit of tobacco-ness. Just a hint in the mouth. Love the silky mouthfeel. So silky. Big, this is definitely more fruity. Senorita Hills is often, I think, more fruity. The Pinot Noir, to me, is a little bit more fruity. This has structure, it's plush, it's big. I think I'm pretty impressed with this. I'm 4.3 out of five. I think this is very good wine. This is a kind of wine. She doesn't get scores from critics. Easily gonna score 92 points, something like that. Anything else you want to add on the John Sebastiano Vineyard? John Sebastiano Vineyard, typically, has very good clarity of fruit. This is the phenolic brightness that you really get in their wine. That's good stuff. I'm pretty impressed for Kimberly, especially if you've heard of not coming from a wine family, winemaker background. Our first vintage was only 2010, actually. Let's move on to her 2014 La Montanne Kessler Hawk Vineyard. 2014, this is a whopping $75 US, so she is not playing around. You have a lot of space, you know. Sorry. Once again, with her wines, you're going to get a little bit more intense color. Let's give this a little bit of a go. For me, this is a lot of cranberry and cherry. Anything else? Freshly-tilt soy. This, to me, is a lot. The nose is intriguing me more than the John Sebastiano. John Sebastiano was all fruit for me. This is more earthy to me. This one is more earthy. What are you liking more? I haven't tasted it. It's just aroma. OK, let's give this a go here. Ooh. I see what Sirene said. She's a little bit harder than me on Pinot Noir because she's a Pinot Noir critic. Wow, the finish is beautiful. It's really good. The finish almost tastes like a rose syrup. Very intense. Structure, like a little bit of menthol-y or some kind of peppermint to finish. This is really good, really earthy. I wonder if she uses whole clusters. The tannins are pretty biting. Yeah, the tannins are biting, menthol finish. This isn't a huge Pinot Noir, but the earthiness, everything earthiness is coming through for me. Perfume, lungs, kind of peppermint-y type of finish. I am pretty high on this wine as well. I think I'm about 4.4. I'm about equal to Lane Tannins wine. What do you think in terms of quality? All good wines. I would say that this is the wine, these two other wines that I can drink today. This I would definitely have to sell it for a while. But I'm more intrigued by this because of the earthy aroma that is dominating. Yeah, I think this is really good stuff. Especially because Lane Tannins, a lot of pedigree have been making wine for a long time. Canberra Smith, a fairly new gal on the block. A nice job with these wines. I agree. This is so structured and earthy. I want to see what this will become. How long you think before we pop it open again? Three years? Three, four years? Okay. That said, even though we keep saying that it's earthy, most importantly, it has a lot of fruit to back out the earthiness. I mentioned that because I don't like full-fledged earthy Pinot Noir. That's a no-no for me. So, you know, big baller Pinot Noir, the wines were very good. You know, is it worth your money? That's up to you to decide. I think these wines are pretty darn good. So right now, guys, I'm going to put the discount code for the Gabriel Glass up on the screen right now. You get 15% off the Standart Edition, which is the Machine Blown or the Alpha Decanter. I will put our guide to the wines of Santa Barbara up on the screen. Anything you want to add on the big baller Pinot Noir? No, that's all. So guys, if you like this video, please subscribe to our YouTube channel, Exotic Wine Travel. I will see you in the next episode.