In the fantastic 2007 Pixar movie “Ratatouille,” there is a scene in which a jaded food critic and antagonist, Anton Ego, takes a bite of food and immediately is transported to his childhood.

Scenes like these play out when great food is to be had, food that makes us think and takes us back to a time and place. The effects of great wine are no different.

Pinot Noir as a varietal is considered arguably the greatest among wine geeks, in terms of being a conduit of the earth and region it came from, or terroir (a French term meaning a sense of place) for short.

An extremely finicky grape to grow due to its thin skin that can result in rot, Pinot Noir often elicits this sense of nostalgia and makes wines with more cerebral adjectives than any other.

Unfortunately these encounters can be rare, with much out there being disappointments with too much acid, a mean and ungenerous showing of fruit, and too often a price tag unfriendly to a student’s budget due to its difficulty in farming and higher demand than supply.

Our first wine of the evening, the 2012 Duck Pond ($15) from Oregon worryingly rose to the challenge of Pinot Noir’s unreliability in delivering a fine drink. Slightly reductive with only some basic primary fruit aromas to be found, it was mostly a stingy muted nose that intense sniffing could not placate. Though an inoffensive wine, a slight tannic bitter finish raised some eyebrows.

The 2012 Iris, also from Oregon, was better with some nuttiness on the nose, balanced acidity, and hints of black pepper with decent varietal fruit character. At $19 it’s fairly representative of what one would pay for Pinot at this price point, although better ones are out there.

The surprise and best value of the night, the Pepperwood Grove from Chile, is a non-vintage (meaning they blend wines from two or more years) cheery example of what good Pinot can be when cheap. On the nose, a bright strawberry jam-jelly with clove-like spices coming through on the finish. Silky tannins make this wine incredibly accessible, and for $6.50 it’s a remarkable steal.

Burgundy is the spiritual homeland for Pinot Noir and the house of Joseph Drouhin has been making wine since 1880. The Burgundian monks for centuries classified vineyards for quality probably because they were just drunks at heart. Generic Burgundies have fruit sourced from all over the region with higher classifications bearing grapes only from a smaller subregion, village, or specific vineyard plots.

The 2011 La Foret (The Forest) was a generic Burgundy, which is kind of like saying it’s a Washington wine as opposed to a Columbia Valley wine.  On the nose it’s a forest floor followed by simple red fruit aromatics and a slight tannic finish. La Foret is very French in style, not very fruity, offering earthier undertones ($18).

A level up in classification was the Côte De Nuits-Villages referring to the villages in the northern half of the area. This was the wine of the evening that took me back home to Singapore with an exotic nose of star anise, soy, cinnamon and clove – spices my family would often use in making chicken stew. An elegant body with jammy licorice-like flavors, it was the most intriguing wine for me. At $22 it’s pushing the limit for a student’s budget, and not everyone may enjoy this flavor profile, but it is reminiscent of warmer days and for a moment, winter had not yet arrived.

The last and most expensive bottle was the 2011 Vosne-Romanée, a village where some of the most expensive wines in the world are made. A sesame-oil nuttiness hits you followed by an almost meaty “corned-beef juice” as a fellow taster described with a fine body of balanced acidity and tannins. A respectable $50 but no one’s jumping for the bottle.

Perhaps if this seems like a bit of an anticlimax, don’t despair. The fascinating thing with wine is that pleasure awaits in myriad price points and styles. Although there is often consensus on what is considered a “good” bottle of wine, ultimately it is up to the individual to say whether they enjoyed it or not.

For all the bickering and discussion over what makes a wine good, at the very least you’ll have a good time getting to the conclusion. Now pass the bottle.