Browse Tag

pinot noir

I Felton itch

Felton Road 2007 Pinot Noir (Central Otago) – I don’t know if the expanding range of single-site pinots being produced at Felton Road are changing the nature of the basic wine or not, but it seems a little simpler than I remember. Simpler, but fuller, so there’s a tradeoff in both good and less good ways. Here is the more familiar plum, beet, orange peel of the Central Otago, without the poise that the entire range used to show, but with more generosity. It’s quite tasty, whatever the circumstances of its birth. (8/11)

Ladies’ Union

St. Innocent 2008 Pinot Noir Temperance Hill (Eola-Amity Hills) – 13.5%. Dense and difficult. Sludgy berries, a dark stew of charred tree and straight-up tar, no fun at all to drink. A stage? I certainly hope so. (8/11)

Monot prix

Gachot-Monot 2006 Côte de Nuits-Villages (Burgundy) – A little bit gangly and awkward, but the sinews are good. Red berries tinged with hints of black’n’blue, snappish tannin in a thin wedge, good persistence with a tart afterthought. More time? Sure, I suppose. I don’t know this producer well enough to even guess. (8/11)

Ruh-Roh

Roh “Les Ruinettes” 2009 Pinot Noir Grand Cru de Vétroz (Valais) – Overworked fruit, made to spin the gerbil wheel way faster than it’s able. Goopy without substance, candied, almost like wine syrup that has then been diluted with brackish water. I did not like this at all, in case the preceding wasn’t clear. (8/11)

The Burgundian prince

Thibault Liger-Belair 2007 Hautes-Côtes de Nuits “Le Clos du Prieuré” (Burgundy) – Gentle strawberry/raspberry tartness, balled up tight at points but westering into softness at others. Very pleasant, not really much more than that. (7/11)

Hanging

Chad 2009 Pinot Noir (Sonoma Coast) – 14.3%. One of those “we can’t tell you where the fruit is really from” wines that are never as good as whatever price they would have gone for in some theoretically better economy. Well, what about at this price? It’s nice. Good pinosity, as the invented term goes, supple fruit with a little earth for muscle, fair structure, ripe but not overblown. Finishes just a touch short, but in this guise it’s inexpensive pinot, so who demands an endless linger? (7/11)

Rabbit-proof wine

Rabbit Ranch 2007 Pinot Noir (Central Otago) – Powerfully-concentrated neutron fruit, jammy and over-polished. Just too much. Those who insist that “wine is all about fruit, because grapes are fruit” will find all the mindless onanism here that they could ever want. (7/11)

Montihall

Montinore Estate 2009 Pinot Noir (Willamette Valley) – Tart red fruit, a little razored and volatile, with sharp and unintegrated acidity. It’s far from bad, but were this presented as a cheap little pinot-based quaffer rather than the result of much-trumpeted viticultural and oenological attention I’d be more sanguine. (7/11)

Wither Canada?

Wither Hills 2005 Pinot Noir (Marlborough) – Hits all the classic Marlborough notes of reddish fruit, spiky acidity, and a green-tinged edge. Unfortunately, those classic Marlborough notes can be, and have been, surpassed by a fair number of much better wines. This is too paint-by-numbers. (7/11)

French currency

Mirassou 2009 Pinot Noir (California) – Wretched, tortured fruit. Well, “fruit.” Because nothing that grows on tree, vine, or bush actually tastes like this. The closest I could come to any version of fruit would be chewing the sticky wrapper of some fruit-paste abomination, getting more wrapper than paste as a result. There’s a nasty char to the finish as well. Avoid, then run far away just to make sure it isn’t following. (7/11)