Pinot Noir

Identity

Pinot Noir is the grape that persuaded the world a red wine could be light without being slight. Small, tight, pine-cone-shaped bunches — hence the name — tiny thin-skinned berries, colourless juice: everything about its morphology points to a wine of half-tones. It rarely gives deep colour, almost never massive tannin, and it falls apart the moment you ask it for yield. What it offers in exchange is aromatic definition and a texture few varieties reach: the sensation of biting into fruit rather than drinking its extract.

It is also an unstable grape in the genetic sense. Pinot Gris, Pinot Blanc and Meunier are somatic mutations of Pinot Noir rather than separate varieties, and French collections hold some eight hundred clones of it. That instability is itself a clue: only vines cultivated for a very long time accumulate that many variants.

History and origin

Pinot appears in Burgundian documents from the Middle Ages, and is almost certainly far older. It most likely descends from a local domestication of wild vines in north-eastern Gaul, though no record lets us date the event.

Its parentage, on the other hand, remains incomplete — and that is worth stating plainly rather than papering over. The Vitis International Variety Catalogue records Pinot Noir (no. 9279) as "? × Savagnin Blanc": one parent established by microsatellite markers, the other unknown. To name a pair of parents would be to invent half the story. This profile therefore carries no parentage, where Chardonnay, Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon all do.

What Pinot left behind it, by contrast, is enormous. Crossed with Gouais Blanc — a productive, ubiquitous grape of the medieval north-east — it produced sixteen identified varieties, among them Chardonnay, Gamay, Aligoté and Melon de Bourgogne. Pinot Noir is not merely a great grape; it is an ancestor.

In the vineyard

Pinot buds early — one day after Chasselas, the reference variety — which walks it straight into spring frost. It ripens early, in the first period, roughly half a week to a week after Chasselas: that is what lets it ripen in Gevrey-Chambertin or in Champagne, where Cabernet Sauvignon would stay green.

It is susceptible to most of the major diseases: downy mildew, rotbrenner, grey rot on both clusters and leaves, and leafhoppers. Its compact bunches trap humidity and its thin skin forgives nothing. It wants lean, well-drained clay-limestone slopes in a cool temperate climate, and it only shows its full hand when vigour stays low to moderate and yields are held down. This is a variety that punishes generosity.

Warming has moved it. Sunny vintages now give it an alcohol level and a stewed-fruit character nobody used to expect of it, while cool vineyards once written off as marginal — England, Tasmania, northern Oregon — have become serious ground.

In the glass

A pale robe, often light ruby, that browns at the rim early. The young nose is a red-fruit register: cherry first, crunchy and tart; raspberry on cool sites and lightly extracted cuvées; strawberry in the southern Côte de Beaune and in saignée rosés. Over the top sits a powdery floral layer — peony above all, sometimes violet — that signs the fine limestones of Chambolle-Musigny.

On the palate, acidity carries everything. It runs from 3 in a sun-drenched vintage to 5 in an early-picked Champagne base wine, and it is acidity rather than tannin that underwrites the ageing. Tannins are fine and sparse: they reach 4 in a concentrated grand cru, never the firmness of a Cabernet. Body stays medium, alcohol contained.

New oak brings a little clove and vanilla, to be used sparingly: Pinot takes dominant wood badly, because wood covers exactly what you came for.

With age — eight to ten years — the wine tips over. Fruit withdraws and gives way to forest floor, mushroom, humus and fallen leaves, then to game and sometimes truffle. That is the point at which Pinot Noir stops being a wine of fruit and becomes a wine of woodland. One caveat: these animal notes of maturity are not the same as those produced by Brettanomyces, which are a fault rather than a patina.

Great terroirs

Burgundy gives the canonical reading, cru by cru: the Côte de Nuits for structure and depth, the Côte de Beaune for suppleness and scent. This is where the idea of the climat — the named, delimited plot tasted on its own terms — has been pushed furthest, into the village / premier cru / grand cru hierarchy. Vosne-Romanée is its densest expression.

Champagne is its largest vineyard by area. Vinified white, Pinot Noir supplies the structure, vinosity and body of the blends, and goes into blanc de noirs, made from black grapes only, on its own or with Meunier. Chalk and a cool climate make for very high-acid fruit — exactly what a second fermentation in bottle demands.

In the Centre-Loire it is the only black grape permitted in AOC Sancerre, for light, taut reds and rosés grown on caillottes and terres blanches.

Beyond France, Oregon, New Zealand (Central Otago, Martinborough), Tasmania, and Germany's Baden and Ahr now give readings that stand up to scrutiny.

Commonly confused with

Blind, Pinot Noir is confused first with Gamay, its direct offspring (Pinot × Gouais Blanc): the same apparent lightness, but Gamay pushes towards banana and boiled sweets when carbonic maceration is involved, and its fruit is brighter red than cherry.

With Nebbiolo the confusion is about pale colour and notes of rose and tar — but Nebbiolo carries a tannic firmness Pinot never reaches, and a characteristic bitter finish.

Grenache can mislead with its light robe and red fruit, but it arrives warmer, more alcoholic, more confected, with less acidity.

Finally, a warm-climate Pinot from a hot vintage can pass for a light Syrah; black pepper and violet then settle the matter.