 What makes wine so special anyway? After all, it's just fermented grape juice. We're going to talk about it in this video. Oh, hello. Welcome back to Exotic Wine Travel. I am your host, Matthew Horky. This is kind of a special spin-off series we're doing because we are actually locked down in Zagreb, Croatia with everything that's going on in the world. So we're going to do, this is the second episode in a weekly series that I'll be doing, share thoughts, pose questions, get feedback from you about the wine world during these difficult times. So, you know, since we're locked down, well, we can only go out for groceries. I'm going to keep it real. I'm not shaving. I'm all scruffy. My hair is a little bit long. I tried to get a haircut before everything went crazy. Nobody would accept me. So as this series goes on, hopefully the world clears up sooner rather than later, but maybe you'll see my hair start to go crazy, or maybe you'll see me, see it bother me so much that I just buy a buzzer and just shave everything off and then I'll look really, really funny. So why is wine special? I have a bottle here actually that we, that I drank, that we drank during this kind of lockdown and it brought me back to why wine is so special to me. So that's what I'm going to share with you. To a lot of people, a vast majority of the population, wine is not that special. It's just another alcoholic beverage. I've seen even people in the profession where I don't know if wine is even that important to them. I think just getting, just drinking, just having something to drink, maybe just to get a little buzz. That's the most important, but I'm going to share with you why this bottle is so special to me. We have the Domain de la Rocher by Jacquez Tataschiore. I think I've been pronouncing right this. This is the Les Maguilles, Neuchâtel. That's the Appalachian from Switzerland. Neuchâtel is named after the town and the lake. It's just, it's on the west side of Switzerland, just north of Geneva and Lake Geneva. This is 100% Pinot Noir. So why is, why is this so special? It was a gift actually to Cherine from a friend and she was nice enough to share it with me. And it's just Pinot Noir. What makes that so cool? Drinking this is what brought me back to why I love wine in the first place. Just to give you a little background about myself actually. When I was an undergraduate student, I was a geology and chemistry major, taking a lot of geology classes, a lot of meteorology classes, weather pattern, climate, and then also chemistry. And then I actually switched. I took some pre-med courses, ended up going to Chiropractics College, but still can't take the chemistry and the geology out of me. So that's why I think wine is so fascinating. Ridley talks about, there's the geology or the geography where the wine is from. There's the chemistry, the whole winemaking, and I think that's what's romantic. In wine, I think you see a lot of obsessive personalities. When people are passionate about something and they really get into it, that's something that I do as well. So this new Chateau from Domain de la Rocher, this is supposed to be one of the most sought after, hard to get, Pinot Noir's in Switzerland. But drinking it, it's not a New World fruity Pinot Noir. It's something with a little bit, it's something with more leather, more earth tones, has subtle layers. It's not so explosive. You really have to think and think about this wine, look deeper. It's not just about hedonistic pleasure. So here's the thing. It took me to a place, even though we've been to Switzerland, we were in Switzerland a few times last year. This kind of just drinking this made me actually look up where New Chateau was. I didn't even know where it was. I've been to Lake Geneva, I've been to the vineyards on Laval. I haven't been to New Chateau. It made me look up about the town, the lake. I had to look about the pictures. I had this kind of romantic idea. It's this far-flung place on the planet in the tucked away corner in Switzerland right across the hills from the Jura. So it really took me to a place. And then number two, it really made me think. So I think that's what us hardcore wine geeks find so fascinating, a story, a big story. It's either got to be about a place, a geography, a grape, or in the new world sometimes where they don't have some history traditions about a family, what they've overcome, what they're trying to do. Because at the end of the day, fine wine is more of a luxury product. I mean, how much of us really do need a 25, 50, 100, a thousand dollar bottle of wine? It's not really a necessity. You can get good drinking wines under that price point. So it's a story that really, I think, makes wine truly special, like any high-end product. So what makes wine special to you? I just shared what makes wine special to me. I'd love to hear what makes wine special to you. Put it down in the comments section below. I'll be responding to comments. I have a lot of free time during this time. So what else are you going to do? And if you like this video, please subscribe to our YouTube channel, Exotic Wine Travel. I will see you at the next episode.