James The Wine Guy (also known as James Melendez) is a wine reviewer, writer, and videographer who has created thousands of video wine reviews over nearly two decades. A former national wine marketing manager for a food and wine retailer, Melendez loves discovering new wines. He’s also a big fan of small producers.
In the past year, he began filming short-format reviews for Instagram and YouTube. These video shorts introduce the producer and his thoughts on the wine’s color, nose, and palate profiles. Melendez also awards scores based on a 100-point scale.
Here’s what he had to say about the 2021 Candide Estate Reserve Pinot Noir:
This is an estate reserve Pinot Noir, Chehalem Mountains, a ‘21 vintage. Here’s the front label and here’s the back label. Now the two clones on this Pinot Noir are Wadenswil as well as Pommard. This wine is 13.6% ABV, spends 12 months in 36% new French oak, and this is a $56 price point.
Very nice rich and bright red fruit character of Bing cherry, as well as raspberry notation, forest floor, spice notation, violets, and cedar. Fruit is at peak ripeness love the elongated palate, red-dash-black cherry, as well as freshly ground spices, red pepper, as well as red rose petal, and finishing off with a graphite finish. This wine is a 95 point wine out of 100 points.
Watch the video, here:
