Blind Tasting with Master Sommelier Jackson Rohrbaugh

GuildSomm Podcast

Master Sommeliers Chris Tanghe and Jackson Rohrbaugh engage in a blind tasting of three neutral white wines in Fall City, Washington. The ep

Key takeaways

• Jackson Rohrbast uses a process of elimination based on winemaking compounds like phenolics and aromatics to assist in blind tasting.
• The first wine, identified as Domaine Luno-Papin Muscadet, demonstrated how lees aging can create texture without heavy oak.

Main topics

• Blind tasting methodology
• Evolution of regional typicity

Notable quotes

Curiosity for knowledge to learn more that yes, intersected with taking exams and those things.

Conclusion

A deep dive into the technical and philosophical aspects of tasting th

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:05) Welcome back to another blind tasting episode of Into the Glass, the Guildsum podcast. I'm your host, Chris Tangy, Master Sommelier and Director of Education here at Guildsum. This month, I sat down with Master Sommelier and owner of Crunchy Red Fruit, Jackson Rohrbaugh, to pour him three neutral white wines. Jackson worked in some of Seattle's most iconic restaurants, including Canlis, before starting his wine club in what is now a brick-and-mortar shop in beautiful Fall City, Washington. But before we dive into that, be sure to check out all the latest content on guildsum.com with our latest updates to the compendium, including Asti Rosato, the New Columbia Hills ABA, Sherry Pagos, and a refresh on the Mexico entry. There's also an awesome article by Sophie Thorpe on the evolution of the British wine industry. Now, on to the show. Speaker 2 (1:01) Welcome back to the Guild Psalm Podcast. I'm Chris Tangy, Director of Education and Master Sommelier. I am in beautiful Fall City, Washington, which is about a half an hour drive east from Seattle. And I'm sitting here with Master Sommelier Jackson Rorbaugh, who is a Washington native. He owns a really cool online club slash store. and also opened a version, like a brick-and-mortar version in Falls City, which is called Crunchy Red Fruit. And Jackson and I have worked together several times in the past at various places, and I'm super stoked to pour him some fun wine. So, Jackson, thanks so much for being Speaker 1 (1:39) on the show. It's overdue. Yeah, it's great to be here. Love what you've done with the podcast and with just educational content in general, and excited to be here. Cool. So Speaker 2 (1:49) before we dive into the wines, which today's theme, by the way, is neutral whites. So we'll definitely get into some conversations about winemaking. But before we dive into that, I want the wines to temper a little bit. And then also I want to hear a little bit about your blind tasting journey. You and I have been studying for many, many years. You climbed the ladder just as I did. You worked at Canlis when you were going through the majority of that journey. How did you, A, find wine and B, like, decide to pursue the Master Sommelier diploma? Speaker 1 (2:26) Along that journey, I was working as a server, as a bartender, and I just got bit by the wine bug. And I just wanted to know all there was to know. I couldn't stop studying, tasting, learning. And that was formal through tasting group, but it was also just being really curious, buying interesting wines, classic sort of testable blind wines, but also finding things that were really interesting when I was in wine shops or traveling or anything like that. Just having curiosity was I think the most important part of my blind tasting journey. Curiosity for knowledge to learn more that yes, intersected with taking exams and those things. But the exam was like never really the end goal. It was always like, because I loved to taste new things, my palate's curious. And over time I developed this sense that I that I could like think with my palette and learn more using my palette as a, another, another sense, just like I love music. I was into bands and playing music and I still am like a huge music junkie. We have a huge vinyl collection here. And just like we use our ears to, to refine, to learn and to use that sense to grow in our understanding, we can do the same thing with our palettes. And at the time when you were discovering all of Speaker 2 (3:39) this, I mean, you're working for one of the coolest restaurants in Seattle, if not the country and like such a legacy. I mean, Canlis for those not familiar has been there for over 70 years and has invested in a serious wine program for a long time. Maybe not the entire 70, but way longer than I've lived in Seattle, which has been since 2005. So a lot of great sommeliers have come through there. Of course, Jackson, myself, Nelson DeKip. Chris Miller. Chris Miller, Shane Bjornholm, Rob Bigelow. Reena Bussell. Reena Bussell, yeah. Shout out, Reena. So many others. Speaker 1 (4:23) Allie Lanoue, current wine director, who came up in the program. Nathan Beam, Kyle Johnson, you know, Kevin Weeks. Philip Dunn. I have to say them, all their names now because if we leave anyone Speaker 2 (4:36) out, they'll be pissed. Speaker 1 (4:38) Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's too big. Okay. Speaker 2 (4:42) Just an amazing place to learn. Right. I mean, it was such a cool and still is a cool, cool culture there. Everyone's super passionate and takes it very seriously. And you have such a catalog of wines to. to try and, and, you know, all the right tools and everything like that. So yeah, it was a thing for both of us, really instrumental in our, in our journey. of becoming better sommeliers and better tasters because it's just, you know, as we all know, especially these days, it's so relevant. Like access to those wines is just insane. Right. Speaker 1 (5:13) Owners who support like opening things like, Hey, let's get wine open for the team. Here's your, like have a budget to open great wines and taste them with people, taste customers on them, but also taste the team on them. And that support from ownership down means a lot when you're in that position of wanting to learn and wanting to grow and having uh ownership group that is stingy and like anti-opening new things and anti-education not anti but just you know not as supportive of that is hard it's really great to have owners like the canless family who is like really like yeah open good wines let's what do you got That was instrumental to, I think, all of our education, for sure. It's not hard to do that. You just have to figure out how to pay for it, Speaker 2 (5:53) right? So you do that through your pricing and various smart buying decisions, et cetera. But it is an insanely smart investment because then your staff can really... speak intelligently about the wines from experience and you will see a boost in sales. 100%. There's no question about it. Speaker 1 (6:11) It pays for itself. Speaker 2 (6:12) Yeah. So if you're in a buying position and out there around wine and this is, you know, not the culture, I would behoove you to present some solutions to management, to ownership, to make that the culture because it is really, really important and will boost sales in the long run. Speaker 1 (6:31) During Speaker 2 (6:31) your... you know, evolving the skill of blind tasting, were there certain wines or regions or aspects of tasting that were challenging for you or on the flip side, easy for you and came naturally? Like we're all a bit different from a biological standpoint, right? Like we have different thresholds for different compounds and whatnot, but we also have different histories in terms of organoleptic experiences, right? So like... Maybe I grew up with something, you know, eating something on the regular, you didn't, et cetera. So is there anything that you found that was like really, either really challenging or really easy as you develop the skill over time? I Speaker 1 (7:09) spent a lot of time in Italy. I live there. I speak Italian. So I had a natural familiarity and comfort with that region of the world because I had just kind of been immersed in that culture and those wines before I even decided to become a sommelier. I think. There was already some ease just from familiarity there and from familiarity with the terms and the knowledge of like, you know, Italian wines taste Italian. They are very like almost require food because of their sort of rustic angular nature often. And I've had more ease with Italian wines because of that. I think getting into some of the more niche French regions has always been like, it took me quite a bit more like practice to. familiarized myself with Chenin Blanc and with wines from Alsace and with Pinot from Gamay in the early days. Nowadays, my struggle with the Gamay Pinot thing is almost like, okay, is this Oregon or is this Burgundy? Because the lines have become way more blurred with just how hot things can be in Burgundy these days and how ripe the wines are. So that's been more of a current struggle is like, okay, where is this Pinot from in the universe? Because it feels like it could be from anywhere. Whereas back in the day, Burgundy, you know, always kind of really tart and sour, even elevated vineyards and vintages would still have that characteristic kind of tartness. And that was that in the early days, learning how to taste Burgundy, that was a learning curve. And Burgundy was even cheaper when I started back in like 2009, 2010, when I really started studying wine, you could get a Premier Cru Burgundy for like 50, 65 bucks. And now that's like a good quality Premier Cru. You're north of 100 at least, if not. to 300. Speaker 2 (8:51) No, no. 50, 60 is like bourgogne rouge. Yeah. Bourgogne Speaker 1 (8:54) rouge Speaker 2 (8:54) for Speaker 1 (8:54) 65 bucks. Yeah. It's very