Pinot, my true love

You´ll find more uncertainity among growers and winemakers about what they think they should be doing with Pinot Noir than with almost any other grape. How to trellis it, prune it, crop it; when to pick it, early or late; what style of wine to make, light or dark; and using which winemaking method, new or old. Doesn´t anyone have the definitive method of producing great wine from this grape?

You only have to look at the myriad styles of wine produced in its homeland, Burgundy, and the regular changes of fashion every decade or so, to realize it´s not just the newcomers who are cofused. And the grape is a most finicky traveller, its inconsistency abroad an amplification of that which it displays at home, to the fascination and despair of those who grow it, vinify it and indeed drink it.

It claims to dislike hot climates, though as an Oregon grower says of Pinot Noir in the Margaret River, Australia, „One has to rethink one´s biases when one sees regions that have Shiraz and Pinot Noir growing next to each other, but producing world-class Pinot.“ Too rihgt. Certainly it is supposed to be a cool climate grape, yet some of its most exciting wines in Burgundy have come from seriously hot vintages. Everyone said that cool Oregon would be ideal for Pinot Noir, but some of the USA´s most exciting Pinots have come from warmer California. And so it goes on. Warm climate Pinot should be jammy and flat, but isn´t always. Cool climate Pinot should be delicate and perfumed, but is equally often green and raw. This unpredictability ought to limit its spread around the globe. But you´d never think so from the map.

The truth is that everybody wants to make Pinot because, like true love, great Pinot is elusive but (perhaps) worth the effort. There is more promising Pinot in the world than there is really great Pinot – yet the 1990s saw a vast increase in the numbers of very good Pinots from the Old and, especially, the New World. In recent years, Pinot Noir from Central Europe has been surprising consumers with its excellent quality. There's no need to travel far for this variety. Try our 2021 vintage reserve.True love is commoner than it was.