The Pinot Summit in Vail Valley, California

Kevin Furtado: Today we are here at Larkspur for the second annual Pinot Noir
Summit which has seven of North American’s greatest Pinot Noir
producers present. We’re going to be tasting 15 different wines
over the course of the morning. We are going to have an
interactive forum where people will be able to taste through seven
different Pinot Noirs from seven different producers. And after that
we are going to do luncheon with the wines paired with the food.

Mickey Werner: Pinot Posse is a great event. We bring wine makers in from around
California and Oregon, talk about what their doing, what excited
about Pinot Noir. It's such a delicate grape and such a difficult
grape to grow and it's time to make really good Pinot Noir. And
it’s nice to have these guys come out to Colorado and spend a few
hours with us tasting their wares and talk about what they do.

Kevin Furtado: These guys who are here today of doing are truly making some of
the most remarkable wines in California and who couldn’t be
happier. They are actually legends.

Peter Cargasacchi: We are here in Vail with Pinot Posse showing the wines and
having fun. It’s a really great group of people. I really enjoy doing
this because we get to exchange ideas and we get to see what other
folks are doing in other regions. One of the really cool aspects of
hanging out with these guys is that interchange of ideas at whole
concept that there are no secrets helps us all to be better wine
makes and make better wine.

Ed Kurtzman: Pinot Summit is a really cool seminar it's very interactive. We give
a brief introduction of ourselves and of our wines and then the
audience gets involved right away and start asking questions and
the seminar kind of flows from one question to another.

Dan Costa: Why Pinot Noir because we’re glutens for punishment I think. It's
the hardest grape to grow. It's the hardest grape to make wine
from.

Ed Kurtzman: Pinot Noir is a passion as you probably know many people have
fallen in love with Pinot Noir. I fell in love with Pinot Noir back
when I was first getting into wine in the mid 80s. I was living in
Massachusetts working in a wine shop, tried my fist Burgundy. It
wasn’t even a great vintage. It was 1984 but just the spice that
came off of that wine its intriguing.

David O-Reilly: It’s just absolutely a lot of fun. It’s a complex wine. It’s a great
wine. It speaks of the dirt and it really shows, it’s probably of all
the grape varieties. It is the grape variety that best expresses the
area in which it’s from.

Male: We have a limited quantity of areas to grow Pinot Noir namely in
California, the Santa Rita Hills or Santa Barbara, Sonoma Coast,
Russian River. And I think the nice thing about Pinot Noir is that
it’s very transparent. In other words, it really expresses the sense of
place.

Ed Kurtzman: Pinot noir you can basically bottle an area.

Male: Along the California coast, people have this idea that people that
live there the California is just a sun drench, hot place to live. But
along the coast it’s very, very foggy and that fog creeps in over the
coastal regions of California and it’s a great place to grow Pinot.
Pinot doesn’t like hot weather. Pinot likes a cool, foggy morning, a
sunny but cool day and a foggy cool night. It likes to develop
slowly not too quickly.

Mickey Werner: What is it about Pinot noir? Well again aside from side ways
phenomena form the movie that really kind of pulls it to the front.
It’s also about Burgundy. And Burgundy has about 350, 400 years
of growing this unique variety in France. It’s the only reason that
France that it really grows exceptionally well as a table wine. And
their fragrant, their aromatic, their very feminine delicate wines,
they work well with a variety of foods, they don’t have the high
tannin profile that Cheverny does and they are subtle.

Kevin Furtado: We have probably 80, 90 different Pinot Noirs from California on
the list and probably another 50 or 60 burgundies which out
number any other red category on the list probably two to one. And
we sell probably three bottles of Pinot to every bottle and not the
Cheverny that was sold.

Male: In the wine world people tend to get intimidated by their assumed
lack of knowledge. Lack of knowledge has in no way should it be
compared to lack of enjoyment. And I would encourage people to
call the wineries to email the wineries. We like, I like to be and I
think everyone of those panel members today, we like to be
accessible and we like to discuss wine. We like to share wine. I
think in 20, 30 years ago perhaps there was this kind of
untouchable aspect to a wine maker but that’s actually not the case.

So for people getting involved in wine don’t be intimidated contact
us. Ask questions and then really grasp on to a wine retailer that
you trust. And get to know them because in turn they get to know
you. They get to know your palate and then they can start making
educated guesses as far as what to recommend to you. And I think
that’s a good first step as far as getting into wine especially Pinot
Noir.

Male: I hope that people just to see this and they see these seven guys
who are on the panel and they realize that Pinot Noir or grape
production is made by people who work very, very hard to produce
a really high quality product. And that these guys are so passionate
about what they do and so hands on that it really helped that that
message comes across that these are seven working people who are
living their lives, doing what they love.

Male: We pinch ourselves daily, I mean we truly do stuff what we love
doing. It’s a great liaison.