The 18th of August is International Pinot Noir Day and I always like an excuse to extol the virtues of this magical varietal. I’ll run through the basics: character traits, what you can expect to find in wines from certain regions and different price points, and why it’s a bit of a labour of love – something you must keep working at!
Pinot Noir is a relatively thin-skinned black varietal and while this is not a rule of thumb, it’s a contributing factor to Pinot’s lighter body and typically paler appearance. It’s a delicate grape that ripens on the early side, like its partner in crime, Chardonnay, and so it can be susceptible to spring frosts as well as late summer/autumnal rains, which can bring disease and rot pressures. It produces its greatest expressions in cooler climates (so long as you can avoid the aforementioned pitfalls), where a longer season will help the fruit develop its potential for unmatched aromatic complexity. Warmer conditions can lead to flattering jammy fruits, but that can mean typically lower levels of acidity and elevated alcohol, a combination that can make a wine taste clumsy and unbalanced.
In terms of character, Pinot Noir produces fruity, perfumed red wines that can display all manner of soft red and darker bramble fruits, plum, occasionally a little orange citrus, a certain spicy savouriness, gamey flavours, and especially with developed (more mature) wines, a sense of the forest floor with undergrowth, damp earth, and mushrooms.
The greatest examples come from Pinot’s spiritual home of Burgundy in eastern France, where you find the famous villages and towns of Nuits-Saint-Georges, Vosne-Romanée, and Gevrey-Chambertin. This is where the idea of site expression is best understood and illustrated, and it’s the success and cachet of these wines that have taken Pinot Noir across the globe, making it a truly international varietal. We’ll come back to Burgundy a little later.
At its very best, Pinot can be incredibly complex and almost ethereal – wines of intensity that belie their appearance, wines of incredible elegance and lift...When you try a bottle of Pinot that gives you pause for thought, it’s something you will always try to recapture, but I’ll tell you now: Pinot Noir can be maddening in its fickle nature and so often reassuringly expensive.
At the entry-level, Pinot Noir offers a straightforward, rounded, fruit-driven experience, typically with lower levels of tannin, which means it can be lightly chilled and it’s versatile (unfussy) when it comes to food. Tanners was part of the story of how Romanian wines exploded onto the UK scene when we listed the Paparuda wines from Cramele Recas. Paparuda Pinot Noir continues to impress, showing real value for money – by any metric, let alone a tricky varietal such as this, by dependably offering up a mix of cherry, raspberry, and plum fruits, a touch of spicy oak, and a dark floral perfume. A superb starting point for anyone looking to explore Pinot! Los Coches Pinot Noir, representing Chile’s Central Valley, is similarly generously fruity, with a little of that tell-tale Chilean leafiness accentuating raspberry and strawberry notes and is a touch lighter at just 12% vol.
The starting point from France comes from the excellent negociant, Loron, who specialises in Beaujolais and Mâconnais wines. Their L&F Pinot Noir is sourced from the Auvergne, which sits on the lighter side and again that doesn’t mean ‘weedy’! At 13.5% it shows some of that Central France warmth and the fruits tend to keep to the redder end of the spectrum, but it always has a fascinating savoury element and classical spicing. It’s another huge customer favourite here and feels like you’re getting closer to the prize that is Burgundy.
A wine that always surprises and impresses me in equal measure, comes from Navarra in Spain - not exactly cool-climate but Castillo Monjardin Pinot Noir is all about their old, high-altitude El Cerezo vineyard on clay and limestone soils. This is usually available with a little bottle age and it ticks so many boxes: there is some lovely oak influence that brings a little vanilla, toast and sweet spicing to a host of plump bramble and cherry fruits; I love its savoury vein and it has these tantalising pockets – a little richness here, bitterness there, all very well balanced, with fine tannins and a touch of maturity. Seriously good and sensibly priced – it will have you making croquetas day and night, although you could always chill a bottle down to refresh you through a late summer barbecue!
Check out Catherine Marshall’s Pinot Noir ‘On Sandstone Soils’ a brilliant South African example out of the cool Elgin Valley in the Overberg District. This is New World, but it’s a cool-climate delight and starts to show how lacy and precise Pinot Noir can be, while offering complex, generous aromatics. A cool, cool wine.
It’s hard to talk about Pinot Noir without referencing Burgundy. But Burgundy is a huge subject, so we need a little grounding. Bear with me.
Burgundy is a region of eastern France, the winegrowing part runs from Auxerre in the north where we find Chablis, down to Mâcon in the south – home to Mâcon-Villages, Saint-Véran, Pouilly-Fuissé, but we will focus on the middle bit here: the 40-mile stretch ‘Cote d’Or’, an elongated escarpment, essentially with Dijon at the north and Maranges to the south, but it’s also sub-divided further with the Côte de Nuits to the north and the Côte de Beaune to the south.
These two Côtes, or hillsides, are named after Nuits-Saint-Georges and the city of Beaune respectively, and very loosely you could say those wines from the north tend to be darker in character, more powerful and lush, but also home to the rarest and most sought-after, elegant wines on the planet. The wines that come from the Beaune end tend to be redder but there are always exceptions to the rule, and there are plenty of deep rich examples too.
The complicated thing about Burgundy is that, more than anywhere else, it is about WHERE the wine is from. All reds here are Pinot Noir but the various clones, the age of the vines, the exposition, the different soils types – on the flat parts and even on the slopes from the higher to the lower sections – all of it makes a difference, and that is before you factor in the winemaker and their choices, and the vintage! These myriad variables mean specific wines are produced in tiny volumes, making them rarer and that can (and does) mean higher prices.
A good way to explore Pinot Noir from Burgundy is to take a geographical approach, and then to find a producer you enjoy and see what sort of range they have. Most producers want their wines to taste of where they come from, so regional differences are respected.
Your first port of call should be like zooming out of a map. Bourgogne Pinot Noir, also known as Bourgogne Côte d’Or, will allow a grower to blend their Pinot Noir wine with fruit grown across the broader Burgundy appellation, although you will find that most producers have a home ‘Domaine’ vineyard, which will make up the core of such a blend. Tanners Red Burgundy is produced by Maison Roche de Bellene, a blend of fruit from villages and higher spots in both the north and south, combining crisper and softer red and black fruits, a touch of oak, with good core weight and a silky, juicy personality. This is a wine designed to be enjoyed now, but it often has the potential to develop for a few years in the bottle too.
Santenay, vieilles vignes, P & L Borgeot 2021 gives you a village wine, which means the fruit must come from a delimited area in and around the village – in this case, Santenay. I remember this fondly from visiting in November of 2023: 80 year old vines! A compact, dense nose of summer fruits, with some darker pockets, a stimulating palate that becomes creamier, showing some minerality, a little tannic grip and a moreish savoury thread. You can see how the language looks more serious here.
You could compare that with a village in the north, like Marsannay ‘Le Finage’, René Bouvier 2022, produced from various plots across the village, showing some really attractive, crunchier dark fruits on the nose and a cool, dark, silky-smooth palate laden with black cherry and tangy red fruits. Plenty of structure here, a focused feel and shows excellent length.
From village level, you move up to their premier crus and most villages have numerous premier cru sites – Santenay for example has 12, with Les Gravieres and Beauregard amongst their best-known; Marsannay doesn’t have any premier cru vineyards – yet, but there are plans afoot to change that. Keep an eye out for the likes of Marsannay ‘Les Ouzeloy’, which is a likely candidate for promotion in the coming years. Premier cru vineyards tend to be more favourable positions to achieve riper fruit, which in turn produces more powerful and complex wines.
Above premier cru, you have grand cru, which represents the pinnacle of Burgundy. For some grand cru vineyards, this might be a tiny strip of vines within a premier cru vineyard, the opposite is very true for the large Corton and Clos de Vougeot. Grand cru wines are usually the most powerful wines in Burgundy, generally riper sites producing very rich, concentrated fruit, but you will also find here some of the purest, finest wines produced anywhere in the world.
Burgundy breeds hyperbole, so it’s very easy to get carried away and to be left a little disappointed. As I alluded to earlier, Pinot Noir can be fickle, and there are days when a bottle will simply refuse to give up its charms. You may find a great vineyard from a so-so producer, and you might come across a supposedly modest wine that hugely outperforms its status. This is why you must keep at it, because when it clicks, there really isn’t anything better!
Let’s explore some more great Pinot from elsewhere.
Did you know that Pinot Noir goes by other names? I don’t mean Red Burgundy, or Gevrey-Chambertin, but in Germany and Austria it’s known as Spätburgunder, in the Italian alps you may see Blauburgunder/Blauer Burgunder, and in northern Italy as Pinot Nero.
Weingut Salwey in Baden, Germany, have a superb range of Pinot Noirs and their Kaiserstuhl Spätburgunder has just been awarded 96/100 in a recent Decanter Panel Tasting, something of a bargain when considering its competition! Konrad Salwey is sympathetic in balancing oak and fruit here; there is often a hint of the pine forest that surrounds the vineyards, and it offers warmth and spice with superb freshness. Well worth a look!
Our Italian range is in great shape and a couple of years ago we welcomed Tiefenbrunner to the list, representing the Alto Adige where you find some serious high elevation wines. Their Blauburgunder leads with plump blackberry, raspberry and cherry fruits, and pressed violets. Oak supports in the background and helps flesh it out to a silky, almost creamy mid palate. A great food wine that pairs with Italian cold cuts, sausage ragu and mildly spicy curries.
New Zealand has established itself as a leading producer of high-quality Pinot Noir, especially from Central Otago and Martinborough, but there are great examples all over from Hawke’s Bay to Marlborough, Nelson, and Canterbury. Greenhough ‘Stone’s Throw’ Pinot Noir from Nelson usually has a little bottle age, it always feels pretty French to me – leaning more to the earthy, plummy Côte de Nuits style. Nothing overblown, but all nicely proportioned and wonderfully balanced. A lot of good wine for the money!
Felton Road must be New Zealand’s most famous label for Pinot Noir. They blazed trails, leading with a biodynamic approach and have firmly established themselves with a down-to-earth approach to create elite-level wines. Their Bannockburn Pinot Noir is like a Bourgogne Rouge in that it’s a blend of their sites, offering up a wonderfully perfumed, lifted, super expressive style, with long flavours laced with exotic woods, and very sophisticated tannins.
Australia has some superb examples from the cool, elevated vineyards of the Yarra Valley in Victoria, and the cool, coastal Mornington Peninsula, which looks across to Tasmania. Mac Forbes Pinot Noir, Yarra Valley will be an eye-opener for many, with a surprisingly low ABV for an Australian red – understated is the word here, a great freshness and delicacy, showing a touch of spicy oak, crisp and crunchy red fruits and a lovely mineral quality. Paringa Estate Pinot Noir from Mornington has this uncanny savoury, herby quality, a little dried fruit, dark cool fresh fruits, a little smoke and lots of wild cherry. Supple, very juicy and nicely balanced. Both feel light enough to pair with fish, they’re great with charred flavours too (BBQ!), and Pinot like this is delicious with softer cheeses too.
Finally, the USA. Oregon in the Pacific Northwest has been a beacon for French producers looking to spread their wings and so there is a bit of a multinational community up there along the Willamette Valley, producing some astonishingly good wines – wines that have their own identity too. Domaine Divio ‘Les Climats’ Pinot Noir, owned by fourth generation Burgundian winemaker, Bruno Corneaux, is back for a second vintage with Tanners and feels rather like a smoky, dark, savoury Pommard. Nice depth without feeling heavy, juicy and lively with pockets of sweetness. It’s a really charming wine. Stoller Family Estate Pinot Noir is from the Dundee Hills AVA within Willamette and was once a very large turkey farm! It’s a fascinating project to read up on – all about sustainability as so many are on the west coast of the USA, this cuvee is less about oak, more about fruit purity and tends to show more soft reds over a plummy core and lush black cherry fruits with a complex, floral perfume, lot of spice and a palpable mineral note. I’d say if Divio is like Pommard or Volnay, this reminds me of Saint-Aubin.
And to California. But surely it’s waaaaaay too hot for elegant, delicate red wines from Pinot Noir? Well yes, if you’re down by LA, or far inland, but in the coastal valleys and at altitude, things get wild, very cool and surprisingly marginal. Ideal for Pinot, if you don’t mind chilly fingers! We really shouldn’t have favourites here but The Hilt Estate Pinot Noir is a wine and a property we talk about a lot. From the very cool Santa Rita Hills in Santa Barbara, this was such a revelation when we first came across the wines because they were so… electric! Lean, sinewy, racy, bright, energetic… I remember winemaker Matt Dees saying ‘refrigerated sunshine’. I could waffle on all day about these and honestly, I can’t say they taste like a specific village in Burgundy – these are unique wines for sure. And you can find out more by coming along to our USA Walkaround Tasting in October!!
Pinot Noir can be, should be and will be an obsession. It’s a variety full of potential with so many different expressions to learn about. If you have had your fingers stung chasing a special bottle of Gevrey-Chambertin, you need to get back on the bike, get tasting!
I will leave you with a story about a lovely producer of ours, Michel Prunier & Fille (Michel and his daughter, Estelle) of Auxey-Duresses. Auxey is close to Volnay in the Côte de Beaune, opposite Meursault, so you know you’re in a posh spot, but Auxey doesn’t quite have the same gravity of those other names – and that’s fine because it means you can find value there, you get something that has a bit of the character of it’s more illustrious neighbours without the price tag. When we visit them during the primeurs in November to taste the new vintage, we are sometimes treated to a blind wine to finish the tasting. When I was last there in 2023, we were treated to something clearly mature, enveloping and deep, amazingly complex – woody, earthy, sumptuous fruits, filigree tannins… it was a bottle of their Auxey-Duresses 1er cru Clos du Val from 1998. Twenty-five years old and in very fine fettle! This goes to show it isn’t always about the flashiest labels, most expensive bottles or grandest names.