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Pinot Noir is the grape variety wholly responsible for red burgundy and gives its name to the Noirien family of grape varieties. Unlike Cabernet Sauvignon, which can be grown in all but the coolest conditions and can be economically viable as an inexpensive but recognizably Cabernet wine, Pinot Noir demands much of both vine-grower and wine-maker (see climate and wine quality for example). It is a tribute to the unparalleled level of physical excitement generated by tasting one of Burgundy's better reds that such a high proportion of the world's most ambitious wine producers want to try their hand with this capricious vine. Although there is relatively little consistency in its performance in its homeland, Pinot Noir has been transplanted to almost every one of the world's wine regions, except the very hottest, where it can so easily turn from essence to jam.
If Cabernet produces wines to appeal to the head, Pinot's charms are decidedly more sensual and more transparent. The Burgundians themselves refute the allegation that they produce Pinot Noir; they merely use Pinot Noir as the vehicle for communicating local geography, the characteristics of the individual site, the terroir on which it was planted. Perhaps the only characteristics that the Pinot Noirs of the world could be said to share would be a certain sweet fruitiness and, in general, lower levels of tannins and pigments than the other `great' French red varieties Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah. The wines are decidedly more charming in youth and evolve more rapidly, although the decline of the very best is slow. Part of the reason for the wide variation in Pinot Noir's performance lies in its genetic make-up. It is a particularly old vine variety, in all probability a selection from wild vines made by man at least two millennia ago. There is some evidence that Pinot existed in Burgundy in the 4th century ad. Although Morillon Noir was the common name for early Pinot, a vine called Pinot was already described in records of Burgundy in the 14th century and its fortunes were inextricably linked with those of the powerful medieval monasteries of eastern France and Germany (see Burgundy and German history). Clearly Pinot Noir has for long been grown in Burgundy but it is particularly prone both to mutate (as witness Pinot Blanc, pinot gris, and Pinot Meunier) and degenerate, as witness the multiplicity of Pinot Noir clones available even within France. Galet notes that no fewer than 46 Pinot Noir clones (as opposed to 34 of the much more widely planted Cabernet Sauvignon) are officially recognized within France-and that in the 1980s only Merlot cuttings were more sought after from French nurseries than those of Pinot Noir. It is thus possible to choose a clone of Pinot Noir specially for its productivity, for its resistance to rot, and/or for its likely ripeness (which can vary considerably). Most selection work has been done in Burgundy and Champagne and it has been the Champenois who have selected particularly productive clones. It is generally agreed that a major factor in the lighter colour and extract of so much red burgundy in the 1970s and 1980s was injudicious clonal selection, resulting in higher yields but much less character and concentration in the final wine. The most planted clone in Burgundy is 115 but 114 is more highly regarded and the most reputable producers of all tend to have made mass selections from their own vine population. The clone called Pommard is well distributed in the New World, as has been one named after the Wadenswil viticultural station in Switzerland. More sought after now are Burgundian, or `Dijon' clones. In general the most productive clones, which have large-berried bunches, are described as Pinot Droit for the vines' upright growth, while Pinot Fin, Pinot Tordu, or Pinot Classique grows much less regularly but has smaller berries with thicker skin. In as much as generalizations about a vine variety with so many different forms are possible, Pinot Noir tends to bud early, making it susceptible to spring frost and coulure. Damp, cool soils on low-lying land are therefore best avoided. Yields are theoretically low, although too many Burgundians disproved this with productive clones in the 1970s and early 1980s. The vine is also more prone than most to both sorts of mildew, rot (grape skins tend to be thinner than most), and to viruses, particularly fanleaf (see fanleaf degeneration) and leafroll virus. Indeed it was the prevalence of disease in Burgundian vineyards that precipitated the widespread adoption of clonal selection there in the 1970s. Pinot Noir generally produces the best-quality wine on limestone soils and in relatively cool climates where this early ripening vine will not rush towards maturity, losing aroma and acidity. In Burgundy, for example, where it is typically cultivated alongside the equally early ripening Chardonnay, Pinot Noir may ripen after Chardonnay in some years. There is general agreement, however, that Pinot Noir is very much more difficult to vinify than Chardonnay, needing constant monitoring and fine tuning of technique according to the demands of each particular vintage. A vogue for rotofermenters was followed in the late 1980s by one for cold maceration before fermentation as a way of leaching more colour and flavour out of these relatively thin-skinned grapes. Pinot Noir is planted throughout eastern France and has been steadily gaining ground from less noble varieties so that by 1988 its total area of French vineyard was 22,000 ha/54,000 acres, twice as big as the total area planted with Pinot Meunier but less than Syrah's total-and considerably less than the total planted with Burgundy's other red vine variety Gamay because of the vast extent of Beaujolais in comparison with the famous Cote d'Or. The Cote d'Or was once the wine region with the biggest single area of Pinot Noir, but the extension of the Champagne region in the 1980s meant that, by the end of this decade, more Pinot Noir went into champagne than into red burgundy. In 1988 there were 6,000 ha of Pinot Noir in the Cote d'Or. Even in the greater Burgundy region, Pinot Noir is rarely blended with any other variety, except occasionally with Gamay in a Bourgogne Passetoutgrains and, increasingly, to add class to a Macon. At one time, Pinot Gris would be planted randomly in the same vineyard as Pinot Noir and the varieties would be vinified together. The red wines of Burgundy can vary from deeply coloured, tannic, oak-aged mouthfuls that demand long bottle age to acidic dark roses that should be drunk as young as possible. The best grands crus (see grand cru) are intense, fleshy, vibrant, fruity wines with structure but oak influence that is never obvious. See under individual village names specified for the Cote d'Or for more detail on individual wines. Pinot Noir is also gaining ground in the Cote Chalonnaise and, to a lesser extent, the Maconnais, typically at the expense of Gamay, which is in decline in both of Burgundy's subregions between the Cote d'Or and Beaujolais. The 1988 census showed that total Pinot Noir plantings in the Saone-et-Loire departement were 2,800 ha (as compared with Gamay's 3,200 ha). Pinot Noir occupied a full quarter of all Maconnais vineyard in 1988 and the Chalonnaise reds of Mercurey, Givry, and Rully have shown that they can often deliver a more consistent level of wine-making than more expensive appellations to the north, even if the fruit quality may be slightly more rustic. Pinot Noir is the favoured black grape variety in northern Burgundy too. In the Yonne departement, dominated by its 3,000 ha of Chardonnay for Chablis production, there were also 450 ha of Pinot Noir by 1988 used for such Auxerre wines as Irancy and particularly northern versions of Bourgogne. It is cultivated even further north east for the light reds and vin gris of Lorraine such as Cotes de Toul and the wines of moselle. Although plantings of Pinot Noir increased throughout France (and indeed the world) in the 1980s, it was in champagne that the greatest increase was seen: from 4,700 ha in 1979 to 5,600 ha in 1988 in the Marne departement alone, together with plantings of 3,000 ha in the Aube where Pinot Noir takes first rather than third place behind Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay. It is used almost exclusively in Champagne, and indeed in the production of a wide range of sparkling wines made around the world in champagne's image, as a still, very pale pink ingredient in the base blend of still wines. The grapes are pressed very gently and any remaining pigments tend to agglomerate with the dead yeast cells during the champenization process. In such a blend Pinot Noir is prized for its body and longevity, as well it might be for that small proportion of champagne made exclusively from Pinot Noir is usually memorably substantial. In Champagne, a small quantity of Pinot Noir is used for still red Coteaux champenois and Rose des Riceys. Pinot Noir is also planted, to a limited but increasing extent, in the most easterly vineyards of the Loire and its tributaries, most notably to make red and pink Sancerre but also in Menetou-Salon and St-Pourcain, and is technically allowed in an array of the Loire's VDQS wines. It was taken to the vineyards of the Jura and Savoie from Burgundy centuries ago and is increasingly offered as a varietal wine. It is rarely encountered in the south or west of France, the domains of Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon, but there are limited plantings in the Languedoc with some intriguing, if atypical, results in cooler sites. Pinot Noir is increasingly sought after in all areas where German is or was spoken. In Alsace, where it has been an important vine since the early 16th century (see German history), it is effectively the only black-berried vine variety planted, with a total area planted of more than 1,000 ha. Pinot Noir is capable of producing quite deep coloured, perfumed, sweet reds in the ripest vintages. In cooler years it produces deep pink wines, often with a similar smoky perfume to a white Pinot Blanc or Pinot Gris, that can be reminiscent of old-fashioned German Spatburgunders, even down to the whiff of rot in the wettest vintages. See Alsace for more. Germany's rediscovered interest in connoisseurship of the 1980s and 1990s resulted in a marked increase in demand for the nation's noblest red. See Spatburgunder for more details. It is fair to say, however, that, whereas Cabernet Sauvignon is often associated with the flavours of oak, Pinot Noir is often encountered with more than its fair share of sweetness, especially in inland Europe, as though over-chaptalization had been adopted as an alternative to true ripeness. Austria's Blauburgunder, for example, can taste sweet and oddly viscous unless from one of its most skilled practitioners. Total Austrian plantings are limited, however, and the native grape St-Laurent, sometimes confusingly called Pinot St Laurent for its Pinot Noir-like soft fruitiness, is much more common. Pinot Noir is spread widely, if not in great quantity, in the vineyards of eastern Europe where its name is usually some variant on the local word for Burgundian. There are plantings of Burgundac Crni in parts of croatia, in Serbia, where it can be quite successful, and in much paler form in Kosovo. It is also grown to a limited extent in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. Romania has its own subvariety known as Burgund Mare which has been responsible for some extraordinarily soupy, yet recognizably Pinot Noir-like cheap reds. Elsewhere in Europe the finicky nature of the Pinot Noir vine has set a natural limit on its spread. In Iberia there has been some successful experimentation in Somontano and Catalonia in Spain and even Ribatejo in Portugal. The vine is relatively important in Switzerland particularly, as Blauburgunder, in eastern, German-speaking Switzerland. In French Switzerland it is blended with Gamay to make the ubiquitous Dole. There have been some noble experiments in some cooler Italian wine regions, notably Lombardy where it is used for sparkling wine production; see Pinot Nero. See also Valle d'Aosta, Breganze, Trentino, Alto Adige (where it is called Blauburgunder), Collio, and Friuli, as well as Oltrepo Pavese, where the rather neutral Pinot Noir is valued as an ingredient in classically made sparkling wine. It was wine producers in the New World, however, who turned the full heat of their ambitious attentions on Pinot Noir in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Some even relocated their wineries many hundreds of miles in order to be closer to sources of suitably cool climate Pinot Noir fruit. Although for many years Oregon, with its often miserably cool, wet climate, was popularly supposed to provide America's answer to red burgundy, the number of seriously fine Pinot Noirs that emerged from California in the late 1980s redefined the more southerly state's reputation for Pinot, especially but not exclusively in regions such as the Russian River district of Sonoma, Santa Barbara County, Carneros, Chalone, and the Gavilan mountains of San Benito. The state's total acreage remained steady in the 1990s so that in 1996 there were about 10,000 acres/4,000 ha of Pinot Noir, notably in Sonoma with a large proportion in Carneros, where the variety is also valued as an ingredient in champagne-like sparkling wines. The variety called Pinot St George in California, now in sharp decline, is unrelated to any known Pinot and is probably in fact Negrette, while that called Gamay Beaujolais (of which more than 1,000 acres/400 ha remained in 1996) is a clone of Pinot Noir, although not one embraced by the most ambitious producers of California Pinot Noir. Outside California and Oregon (where Pinot Noir is sometimes picked a good six weeks after it is in California), the variety has no established American outpost of great reputation, although there were plantings in many of the United States including New York, Idaho, Pennsylvania, and Arizona, and the vineyards around Lake Michigan. Washington state persists with it only on its southern border with Oregon. There are pockets of Pinot Noir in Canada, however, and they are producing increasingly successful wines. As Pinot Negro, it is known in most Argentine provinces where vines are grown but the climate is too hot and irrigation too commonplace to produce wines of real quality, as in most of the rest of South America, although Chile had a few hundred hectares planted in cooler spots such as Chimbarongo in the early 1990s and wine-quality was improving. Across the Atlantic in South Africa, on the other hand, at least one producer, Hamilton-Russell, had managed to coax convincingly burgundian flavours from Pinot Noir vines grown in a particularly cool southerly spot and this has since acted as a spur to others, including neighbours Bouchard Finlayson, and Clos Cabriere-even if the quantity of true Pinot Noir planted is still minute compared with the total area of South Africa's signature black grape variety Pinotage. Plantings of Pinot Noir in Australia and New Zealand on the other hand rose substantially in the early 1990s, with notably more success in the latter country. New Zealand had 524 ha/1,294 acres in 1997, three times as much as at the start of the decade, with the most impressive results coming from Wairarapa Martinborough, Canterbury, and Central Otago. New Zealand has already established itself as one of the New World's most successful producers of this fickle variety. See New Zealand for more details. Fine Pinot Noir has been more elusive in Australia, where total plantings climbed from 1,100 ha in 1991 to 1,900 in 1997. Areas with proven success as producers of good-quality red wine (as opposed to useful ingredients for the sparkling wine business) include Geelong, Yarra, and Mornington Peninsula, all relatively cool areas around Melbourne in Victoria, as well as Tasmania. See Australia for more details. Wherever there is a wine producer with a palate, there will be experimentation with Pinot Noir. Bibliography - Barr, A., Pinot Noir (London, 1992).
- Galet, P., `La Culture de la vigne aux Etats-Unis et au Canada', France viticole (Sept.-Oct. 1980 and Jan.-Feb. 1981).
- -- Cepages et vignobles de France (2nd edn., Montpellier, 1990).
References Alsace Alto Adige Aosta Australia Auxerre Azerbaijan Bourgogne Breganze Bulgaria Burgundy California Canada Catalonia champagne climate and wine quality clonal selection clone Collio connoisseurship Cote d'Or coulure Czech Republic fanleaf degeneration Friuli frost Gamay Georgia German history Givry grand cru Hungary Idaho Irancy Jura Kazakhstan Kosovo Kyrgyzstan leafroll virus limestone Lombardy maceration Macon mass selection Menetou-Salon Mercurey Meunier Moldova Negrette New York New Zealand Noirien Oltrepo Pavese Oregon Pinotage Pinot Blanc Pinot Nero Ribatejo Romania Rose des Riceys rotofermenter Rully Sancerre Savoie Serbia Slovakia Somontano South Africa Spatburgunder St-Laurent St-Pourcain Switzerland terroir Trentino United States varietal vin gris wild vines
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