Sonoma County Vineyard

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Pinot Noir

Generally speaking, I don't enjoy Pinot Noir. There, I said it. Ridicule me if you must, but it's a wine that for many reasons I have issues with. I will explain those in greater detail below. But every once in a while, I come across one that I think is outstanding. Today, I was introduced to one of those.
First, my complaints / issues with Pinot Noir.

The Sideways Effect
Americans, as a whole, are lemmings and the movie Sideways is an excellent example. This movie single-handedly moved Pinot Noir up a couple of notches on the national consumption list. But it goes much deeper than that. Following the movie, the grape's demand shot way up leading many grape growers to rethink what they were planting and growing. The movie also beat the Merlot grape to a pulp (literally). As a result, a good part of those grape growers grafted their vines from Merlot to Pinot Noir. The problem with that? Pinot Noir and Merlot don't usually thrive in the same climates and soils. This lead to many acres of Pinot Noir currently planted in areas and regions that just don't create good wine. Bummer.

Pinot Noir is finicky
Plant Pinot in a climate that is perfect for it (cool, foggy and even windy) and it will grow extremely well. Sure, you have to worry about mold, bunch rot and mildew like most other grapes, but in the right climate it works. Where Pinot is finicky is mostly on the way to the winery and in the cellar. It's a thin skin grape and can be damaged easily during the transportation process. So, the closer the winery is to the vineyard the better. In addition, the cellar is a place where many things can go wrong. Generally, Pinot Noir is handled differently in the crushing, pressing and fermentation process.

Many winemakers will de-stem the grapes and drop them whole berry into stainless steel tanks. The pressure of the grapes on top of each other cracks their skins and allows the juice to be extracted. Then a cold soak happens. This is extra time on the skin and can be anywhere between a few days to a couple of weeks. The thinner the skin, the shorter the time because it takes less time to extract the colors and flavors you're looking for.

Ok, so now that I've gotten too technical, here's the problem. Because demand has increased so much, the proper time and care isn't being taken in the cellar. It's quite sad because no wine should be treated that way.

BUT, everyonce in a while there's a Pinot that I taste that is truly amazing. It has all the right qualities I'm looking for in Pinot: Cool Climate, good winemaking techniques and all these amazing flavors.

This one was opened by a friend today and I immediately enjoyed it. It only got better with more time in the glass....


And the back....At $42 a bottle, it's not cheap, but it's certainly not expensive for Pinot either. It's really easy to get above $50 and not uncommon to see $75 for bottles of this grape. There is a lot of inconsistency though. With some grape varieties there's a decent scale of more expensive, better qualities. But there seems to be an exception with this type of wine.

This wine had a killer nose of black cherry, blackberry along with some forest floor and mushrooms. In the mouth, the wine coated my tongue like cream cheese on a bagel. It was intense - I had to sit down. Then it followed with this amazingly long finish, uncommon for most of the Pinot's I've tasted.

All in all, I haven't given up hope. But Pinot remains to be a tough grape for me to get behind. I do think the food pairing opportunities with it are quite broad and chef's and wine buyers for restaurants definitely use that to their advantage. I can't say that's a bad thing. I will continue to look far and wide (in and out of Sonoma County) for good producers of this grape. I know they're out there.

Cheers!

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