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.