New Vintage !-Trader Joe’s Reserve Santa Barbara Pinot Noir 2024

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Hey welcome. Domain Dave here for cheapwinefinder.com. Like as always, and we've got another value price wine today. This wine is basically a new vintage, and we'll talk about vintages in a minute, of a wine that uh Trader Joe's has had around for a while now. It's the Trader Joe's Reserve Santa Barbara County Pino Noir 2024. $9.99. Santa Barbara is about 100 miles north of uh Los Angeles. It should be too warm to really grow grapes there. I mean it's Los Angeles can get 100 degrees. But uh geography is on their side. Uh it's not a peninsula or anything, but if you look at the map, it kind of juts out on kind of like a triangle, which allows really cold Pacific breezes to come blowing in from the south, the north, and the west. And then they have mountains there that kind of hold it all in, the fog and everything. So it turns out that a place that should be too warm is actually cool enough, and you need cool weather for this to grow um in a noir, which really loves cool weather, cool long growing seasons in uh Chardonnay. Well, this is not a Chardonnay, but that's they do more than that. Up in the mountains, um where it gets warmer, they do a lot of um Italian and French grapes that are kind of interesting. But out where it's cooler, that's where the Pinot Noir and Chardonnay is. We'll take a sip. Pretty good. Um here's the thing about vinegar's. Used to, you know, I I used to see it all the time like uh in Bordeaux. Oh, 2007's a good year. I don't think it actually is. And stay away from this, and they were actually talking about, for the most part, um wines that you're gonna put away for 10 years or more. Because there's no if it's a bad vintage, if the vintage didn't didn't really work out well, you don't want to waste your time cellaring those because you have no clue what they what's gonna end up in ten years. So you really want to concentrate for that and the good vinages were good good wine, make a good make a good wine that'll that will last a while. California, you know, other than local events that would happen, you know, year to year, but generally speaking, actually the whole West Coast, every vintage was about the same. The weather was the same, rainfall the same. It could be here and there differences. But now you can get spikes in heat, you can get cold weather, you can get um thunderous rain go pouring down, you can get no rain at all for years. I mean it's vintages now mean something. It never was that important for value price one. You know, it is, but it it's it was always more for people who are gonna pay a large uh sum of money for their bottle. Because you want you want the best grapes that were you know made in a complimentary style. I mean, you when you're paying ten bucks for a bottle of wine, it's okay. I mean, you know, such as it is. So, what do we have here? Uh we got Santa Barbara uh County. There's uh Santa Rita, there's Santa Maria, there's a bunch of different sub-AVAs that are very well known for um for Pinot Noir inside of Santa Barbara County. And this is not that. This is from well, at least all we know is it's from more than one of the sub-AVAs. We're not sure where they're from, and they're not, you know, there's a bunch of them, and it doesn't have to be from one of the high-end ones. It could be, or they're all pretty high-end, but it doesn't have to be one of the fancier ones. You're gonna take another sip. But this is kind of a blending of Santa Barbara County, which is fine. Uh, Bozano and Company um was made a bunch of um wines for Trader Joe's. They do bulk wine, they do store brands, they do a bunch of things. They're out of the Central Coast. Uh check out their website. You can if you're into Trader Joe's wine, check out their website and they got pictures of some of the wines that they do. So you might find some favorites there. But they're they they know the central coast. There's grapes available right now. I don't know if this is uh from it might be because this is a wine that's been every year. So this might be a uh they've been making this wine. This might be a wine that they have uh contracted growers so they have a steady supply. Rather than, you know, a uh no, rather than this is a $25 wine selling for $10. I don't think so. I think this is just a good wine that costs $10. Yeah, I like it. Um as it's opening up, it's smoother and rounder. It's 14.3 on the alcohol. You know, uh back in the day, I'm talking about 20 years ago, 12.5. If uh Pinot Noir is over 12.5, it's like, oh no. Well, those days are long gone. Even in France, it's hard to get that. And um 14.3, the more alcohol it tends to be the more body, and a Pinot Noir is at its best when it has a lighter body because then more of the flavors and textures show through. It's just one of those grapes. There's certain grapes like uh Cabernet Sauvignon can hold more alcohol and and have more boom to show everything that's going on. Now, Pinot Noir, it's kind of like Pinot War is a thin um skin grape, and everybody's not, so you're not getting as much chemicals and tannins coming off the uh skins, so it it needs to be handled different. 14.3 little high, but I'm saying it's okay. I'm saying it's I mean, um a good winemaker can take care of things, and it's this is a really nice $10 wine. Really sippable, it drinks well, it's got enough interest to keep you going. I mean, it's it's it's not just a fruit bomb or anything like that. There's there's substance to this bottle of wine. At 10 bucks, that's pretty good. So there we go, we got the Trader Joe's Reserve Santa Barbara Pinot Noir 2024. It's a good wine, it sips really well. And especially in Chicago, the humidity has been so ridiculous that sitting outside and drinking hasn't been a thing. But it's about to happen. And this is a good wine on a fall night because it's got some cherries and uh some really nice flavors, vanillas, and maybe some raspberries, and it's something that will drink well on a cooler fall night. So keep it in mind, audios, keep it cheap. This is Domain Day. We got a couple more wines coming up for you. I'm gonna take a break and go out to uh Sonoma in a little bit, but until then we'll have some more for you. So adios, keep it cheap.