It is a terrible cross to bear, but if you are a
pinot noir lover then by and large you are going to pay for
it through the nose.
I am a pinot noir fiend, in part because there is nothing
quite like a first-rate pinot, and secondly because I find
the combination of the alcohol and tannins in a number of
other local and Australian reds frequently disagreeable.
It is also the case that once you have sampled the delights
of a top-flight pinot, the second-stringers don't quite
measure up; lower your expectations and they can be
unobjectionable, but they never quite have the proverbial
pizzazz.
Often the way to tell which bracket you are in is the price -
and sometimes the name.
Take two or three well-known Central Otago labels.
You can have the Mt Difficulty 2007 Pinot Noir, usually in
the early to mid-$40 range, or Mt Difficulty Roaring Meg 2007
Pinot Noir, which will set you back about $10-$15 less; in a
similar vein and with similar differentials you can fork out
for Peregrine 2007 Pinot Noir, or a Peregrine Saddleback 2007
Pinot Noir; or you can go for the unadorned Wooing Tree 2007
Pinot Noir - a multi-medal-winning wine - or the Wooing Tree
Beetlejuice 2007 Pinot Noir, and so on.
And yes, forty smackers is a good old whack for a bottle of
wine, so unless you have inherited a healthy estate with
concomitant per diem from Aunt Daisy's estate, then it's
probably not going to be your everday tipple. (Small
consolation, I know, but for the quality of wine represented
by some of our $40-plus bottles you would pay considerably
more for a matching French burgundy, or an Oregonian peer.)
What is more, you are probably not going to want to be
handing it round at the street party barbecue or the All
Blacks after match victory celebrations.
A good bottle of pinot noir requires, time, circumstance and
a degree of ritual - otherwise it's like slugging back a
jarful of $2 coins, or at least about 20 of them if you count
one per decent slug.
First, nominate your occasion: birthday, anniversary, a hard
working week well-navigated, a small creative triumph, the
end of exams, an important dinner date, or simply, dammit,
you just really, really feel like a decent pinot and if it
breaks the bank, blow it!
Make sure your bottle is at a comfortable room temperature,
and open it well ahead of time; a lot of people have gone off
this habit, but hands up those who've tried a glass from a
bottle one day, put the top back on and tried it again the
next - only to discover that it tastes a heck of a lot
better.
A note of caution here: you can overdo this.
A little bit of air encourages the wine to breathe, and
release some of the volatile aroma and flavour components;
too much and it chokes (the oxygen combining with natural
chemical compounds in the wine in oxidative processes that
can produce off-flavours).
Use a decent pear-shaped glass: round and wide-bottomed,
gently tapering inwards towards the top.
There are "proper" burgundy glasses - you don't have to go
that far, but don't squander it by pouring it into a cheap,
thick and narrow-necked champagne flute, for instance.
It may be counter-intuitive, but wines do taste different
according to how they are treated prior to serving and the
vessels into which they are served.
A broad-beamed burgundy-type glass allows a decent surface
area from which the delicate flavour/aromas will evaporate,
and the tapering top will help to collect and concentrate
them for that distinctive "hit" as you stick your beak in for
that first sip.
Enough of all that.
What would I recommend? Well, two of my favourites are from
Pegasus Bay and Rippon wineries.
They are both family owned and run affairs, now into their
second generation of expertise, and the care and skill that
goes into the wine-making shows in the bottle.
And while you will pay a premium, and perhaps will want to
make these special occasion wines, succoured and savoured in
the manner alluded to above, they will repay the attention.
The Pegasus Bay Pinot Noir 2007 ($40 mail order) is the
latest in a long line of carefully crafted pinots from this
classy Waipara winery.
It comes from a vintage that had shaky beginnings with
impaired pollination due to late spring winds, and thus lower
yields than usual, but made up for it with a fine summer and
long dryish autumn.
The result is a rich, gently spicy wine full of the red and
black berry flavours of Canterbury, its integrated tannins
and malo-lactic softened acidity yielding a smooth,
sophisticated finish.
Full of the luscious mysteries of a fine pinot, this one
reveals additional dimensions with each savoured mouthful.
I am equally enamoured of the Rippon Pinot Noir 2007
($54.50).
Admittedly I am a great fan of Nick Mills' steadfast approach
to allowing his wines to reflect the "terroir" of the
vineyard - reflected here perhaps in whisper of minerality
underpinning the blackberry-chocolate-farmy aromas and
putting some steel in its backbone.
But it is also an unfiltered and unfined wine - what it
perhaps loses in brilliance in the glass it more than makes
up for in the resultant fullness and slow-release complexity
on the palate.
A lovely hand-crafted wine which perfectly embodies the
romance of the pinot grape.
UK wine critic Jancis Robinson rated it highly, remarking it
was a wine that "danced on the palate".
There are of course many other fine pinots around, a couple
of others that I've sampled recently and which have impressed
being the Amisfield Pinot Noir 2007, and the Van Asch Pinot
Noir 2007.
