Get to know your beer - Terroir: Pinot Noir Blanc

Pinot Noir Blanc is a wine made with Pinot Noir grapes, but without the skin and seed contact that creates that red tint you'd normally picture when you think of Pinot Noir. Without those tannins from the skins and seeds, the subtle unclothed expression of the grape is showcased —and this is actually how a lot of Champagne is made. With the Firestone Walker Terroir Project in the future, the whole team here has really been getting excited about the progression of this series, and can’t wait to hear what the public has to say about it. 

With the whole Alesong crew in tow, we hand picked about a ton of grapes at Benton-Lane Winery and then brought it back to our tasting room where our neighbors over at King Estate kindly let us borrow their basket press. The basket press allows you to do a super gentle extraction on the fruit to pull just juice and none of the tannin structure from seeds or skin that you would otherwise get out of a hard press. That juice was then added to our saison base that had already been sitting in French oak and after another 8 months of co-fermentation in the barrel, we were left with a beautiful tannin-less expression of the Pinot Noir.

This subtly nuanced beer/wine hybrid expresses rich berry notes with hints of pear, lemon, and baked apples. Notes of minerality and a calm saison foundation give this beer an ideal base to highlight that crisp Pinot Noir Blanc flavor. This wine grape-matured farmhouse ales is for sure one of the best evolutions of our wine hybrid Terroir beers! See you at the release!

Cheers!