Focus on Pinot Noir

Our latest ‘A Spotlight On’ series of tastings shone a light on Pinot Noir, here Aiden Schwarzer recalls an informative and eye-opening evening.

Pinot Noir is, for many wine lovers, something of a Holy Grail. The greatest, rarest, and most expensive wines are made of it, many of which are from a thin strip of land in Eastern France which has in turn spawned countless examples all over the world as winemakers and vineyard owners hope to capture a little of its magic. However, for all its greatness, Pinot is devilishly fickle – not just in being a tricky variety to grow well, but as a consumable experience. Our aim, over the course of about two hours, was to give everyone a grounding in the varietal and to explore some of its idiosyncrasies through a snazzy selection of wines from our list.
 
Pinot Noir can produce the most alluring perfume of all red wines. Even at its most basic, Pinot should offer up a host of ripe berry and cherry fruits and we often talk of woodland or forest floor fruits, which also takes us into the earthier and leafier side of the variety. With bottle age the fruits soften and earthier notes emerge, such as tilled soil, mushroom and vegetal matter… some of that probably doesn’t sound as appealing as it really is! Wines made from Pinot Noir tend to be paler in colour, with a light to medium body and lower tannin levels, but there are always exceptions to the rule.
 
It is a variety that really talks of where it is grown and how it is made - as a more delicate wine, it will show up any overt use of oak although the great grand crus of Burgundy are so concentrated and deep that they have a knack of gobbling up wood to barely detectable levels. The coolest and most exposed sites will yield leaner wines, often with a more savoury side; warmer climates produce softer and sometimes more full-bodied examples, but Pinot can become jammy and alcoholic when overly ripe.
 
Coming back to the mercurial nature of Pinot, we commented on ‘fruit days’ and ‘root days’ – a contentious idea that comes from biodynamic winemaking which has its own calendar that follows cosmic rhythms including cycles of the moon. Certain days are said to be better for sowing, planting, treating, harvesting, and tasting! While it sounds a little far-fetched, we’ve often discussed the idea of hosting a tasting that could test these theories because it comes up time and again… some wines just taste better on certain days… but we’ll leave that for another blog post!
 
We poured one of our best-selling wines for our guests to sup while we made our introductions - the Romanian Paparuda Pinot Noir, and we put it up against an excellent Bourgogne Pinot Noir from Domaine Bachelet-Monnot. Both are so-called ‘entry-level’ wines for their standing but are really so much more than that in reality! Paparuda showed exactly why it is so popular: attractive ripe raspberry, strawberry and cherry fruit, a touch of roasted oak and soft sweet spices. It’s an easy-drinking, soft and supple example that can also be served lightly chilled and it went down well. The Bachelet-Monnot wine felt much more serious, more structured for sure but still has a certain easy generosity, of plump deep red and dark berry fruits, with a savoury and earthy twist. This is a wine that is readily snapped up during En Primeur campaigns as a Pinot to drink on the earlier side although I think it really comes into its own with five, six or seven years in bottle.
 
From there we explored Burgundy in a little more detail, showing two wines from the same producer (Roche de Bellene) and from the same vintage (2020 – although I had meant to bring along the lighter and prettier 2021s!). Roche de Bellene is owned by Nicolas Potel and Bellene was the name for the town of Beaune during the Middle Ages. Nicolas is a renowned winemaker who grew up in Volnay where his father helped establish La Pousse d’Or as a leading Domaine in the village and Burgundy as a whole. As such, Nicolas has the biggest black book of contacts and as a negociant, he buys fruit and wine from some serious growers and producers throughout the region. Under his Domaine de Bellene label, he produces wines from his own vineyards – sites he has picked out for their old vines, and he works them according to biodynamic principles.
 
We tasted the 2020 Roche de Bellene Volnay Vieilles Vignes and it proved to be a typically chunky and, in part, muscular example, with a tight, deep perfume of red bramble fruits, and a rich textural feel, punctuated by spice. It might need a few more years in bottle to show its best, but it was a solid example and represented the northern Côte de Beaune nicely. Alongside was the 2020 Domaine de Bellene Nuits-Saint-Georges Vieilles Vignes, noticeably darker in colour, which is something I wanted to highlight as an indicator, denser in appearance and on the nose too. Crossing to the Côte de Nuits brings more blue/black fruits versus the Beaune’s redder profile, and the spicy elements had a softer earthier quality, the ‘gaps’ more filled in with that broader density. Both wines have plenty of time in hand.
 
Even though Pinot Noir is not one of the more tannic varieties, there is a certain astringency to consider, so we took a short break to tuck into some nibbles! We resumed with another pair of Old World examples, the newly listed (but from a beloved long-standing producer) Sancerre Rouge, Cuvée La Grange Dîmière, Jean-Max Roger 2020 and the terrific Oberrotweil RS Spätburgunder from Salwey in Baden. Here we explained that the climate and terroir in Sancerre is a good fit for lighter and more elegant Pinot, the warmer vintages providing richer and more generous examples, and with climate change, this will be an area to keep an eye on as a viable alternative to Burgundy. It certainly showed the leafier side of the varietal and had a beautiful bright pale ruby appearance, keeping to the redder and crunchier side of fruit. The German example, from the always warm and often hot Baden, was deeper in appearance with a tell-tale whiff of oak and something of the surrounding pine forests too – rich, wild, spicy, earthy. It wasn’t without elegance and finesse, but clearly it was more powerful and it proved to be a segue for the final three wines – all from the New World.
 
First up, Catherine Marshall’s ‘On Sandstone Soils’ Pinot Noir, from the cool Elgin Valley in South Africa’s Cape South Coast, not too far from Walker Bay. It is a beautifully balanced, nicely rounded and fresh style that offers a mix of cherry and pomegranate fruits, exotic woods and sweet spicing – a great perfume, a delicious mouthful, and very good value. And that label too! Most of the wines we had tasted came from limestone, clay/marl soils but this is mostly sandstone and showed a generosity in the wine without too much density or oomph.
 
The penultimate wine, Felton Road Bannockburn Pinot Noir 2022 from Central Otago, New Zealand, was on great form. It gave us a chance to talk through what a project like this is/was, how Nigel Greening set his stall out to work in an organic and biodynamic fashion and to drive towards being sustainable and more hands-off. They were New World trailblazers and continue to be standard bearers for quality Pinot Noir – it was a real treat! The 2022s are drinking nicely already, there is a certain ‘open’ quality to the wines, with a purity and lift, as well as superb definition. These could only be Pinot Noir – you won’t confuse them with any other variety.
 
Finally, The Hilt Estate Pinot Noir, representing the new wave coming out of California and this small corner of Santa Barbara, the Santa Rita Hills, which is almost marginal in terms of vine growing – a wild and exposed, especially cool sub-region that produces Pinot Noir (as well as Chardonnay and Syrah) of uncanny intensity and energy… you simply wouldn’t expect this to come from the USA!
 
Tastings like this can be challenging. There is a lot of information to take in and I’m one that can easily get carried away, chatting about the minutiae of things… but we do try and keep things light and cheeky, we have some good food to help things along, and it’s a great chance to line up some brilliant wines and compare them in a relaxed environment. Keep an eye out for more ’A Spotlight On…’ events. You can discover all forthcoming tastings and events here.