Meat Fish Wine have just launched their Wine on Wednesdays evenings to showcase their extensive wine collection (they hold over 650 wines) and the We Know Melbourne team were lucky enough to attend the Pinot Noir evening last night.

Set in the beautiful space of the Meat Fish Wine restaurant, the class was held in one of their private function rooms with views over Russell Street. Keeping the class to a small number of people (a maximum of 10 people), the evening was cosy and intimate with a fun, social feeling to the room.

Gavin, the director of Operations of Apple & Pears was our wine teacher for the night and he started us off with a 2015 Bird in Hand Sparking Pinot Noir from Adelaide Hills (which was our favourite wine of the night). We didn’t even know that a sparkling Pinot Noir could exist, and that’s what Gavin wanted to show us – Pinot Noirs don’t always have to be that real masculine flavour that we’re used to, they can be a versatile grape producing feminine and floral flavours.

Taking us through a short presentation, we got a brief overview of red wine making before learning all about the ‘notorious’ Pinot Noir grape. Some interesting facts we picked up were:

• There’s over 1000 different clones of Pinot
• It’s notorious because it’s a very difficult grape to grow with over 1000 different clones of the grape.
• The grape is suited to moderate to cool climates as it ripens early
• The grapes almost look like mulberry in very tight bunches

After the short presentation, we then moved on to the fun bit, the wine tastings. We moved through 6 different wines from all corners of the Pinot regions, including New Zealand, Oregon, Burgundy, Yarra Valley  and Mornington with the wines ageing from 2011 through to 2015.

Gavin kept the class fun and interactive making us pick which year and regions the wines were from. We were asked to write down our tasting notes, from the appearance, aroma and taste before giving each wine a score out of 20 to pick our favourites.  We learnt its 3 for the looks, 7 for the nose, and 10 for the taste – thanks Darius for the tip. It was always fun to see the different favourites with the Martinborough Escarpment from 2012 being the clear favourite, picked by 4 people in the room (also the most expensive wine we tasted). We also learnt that everyone has different tastes and as Gavin said, supposedly women are better tasters than men, often more likely to pick up more flavours.

Overall, we loved the wine evening, it was a fun way to get to know new people in an intimate setting, while also learning and expanding our knowledge of the selected wines. Even though our class had only 8 people, each person brought something new to the table. The mix of people included true wine lovers, a wine wholesaler, a sommelier, and wine novices (including us).

The wines we tasted included: Box Stallion ‘The Enclosure’, Mornington Peninsula; Blind River, Marlborough NZ; Escarpment Martinborough NZ, Union Wine Company Underwood, Oregon; Chanson Bourgogne Rouge, Burgundy France.

The next Wine on Wednesday evening is on 3 February 2015 and will take you through the Semillion wines. Each course will discuss the origins of the grape, aliases, what it looks like, where it grows, climatic and geographic considerations and how much of the grape is in production.  We will take a brief look at different production methods and conclude with a guided tasting of six wines that typify the varied styles of each grape variety from Old World to New.

Book your ticket here.

Where: Meat Fish Wine, Melbourne.