Pinot Noir: the great red grape of Burgundy that makes wines to equal (and sometimes surpass) the greatest of Bordeaux wines.

This is a fickle grape variety that is hard to grow even in it’s homeland and even harder in other areas. The wines that it produces have flavours of raspberries and strawberries and often a suggestion of sweetness with a delicacy about them. Drinking great Burgundy is an amazing experience, but also sadly a rare one as consistency in Burgundy is rare. The new world Pinots are much more reliable and a lot cheaper too.

I was lucky enough to grow up with Pinot Noir. My father had a great liking for red Burgundy, his favourite red wine of all being the Wine of the Infant Jesus from the Greves vineyard close to the medieval town of Beaune. My brother and I grew up thinking that Jesus was a wine, and a brilliant one at that!

In the days before the mid 1970’s it was general practise to illegally add a bit of Chateauneuf-du-Pape to the Burgundian Pinot Noir and when the authorities finally clamped down on this we were very concerned to find a much lighter (and purer) wine in place of the bigger, richer style which we knew and loved. In later years I think that this disappointment led to my increasing interest in new world styles that, although being made from 100% Pinot Noir have some of that richness that I knew about thirty years ago. Nowadays countries like California, South Africa and more recently New Zealand are producing world class Pinot, which although not as complex as Burgundy are a fraction of the price. Chile is also beginning to make good Pinot too.

Pinot Noir’s other claim to fame is as an important constituent grape variety in Champagne where it adds weight to the blend and an aspect of maturity to the wines as they develop. But for me Pinot Noir it is at its most brilliant in its varietal form with lamb, white meats and game. Yes it is my favourite red grape variety in case you hadn’t already guessed!