Pinot noir
Pinot noir, also known as Pinot nero, is a red-wine grape variety of the species Vitis vinifera. The name also refers to wines created predominantly from Pinot noir grapes. The name is derived from the French words for pine and black. The word pine alludes to the grape variety having tightly clustered, pinecone-shaped bunches of fruit.
Pinot noir is grown around the world, mostly in cooler climates, and the variety is chiefly associated with the Burgundy region of France. Pinot noir is now used to make red wines around the world, as well as Champagne, and sparkling white wines such as the Italian Franciacorta, along with English sparkling wines. Regions that have gained a reputation for red Pinot noir wines include the Willamette Valley of Oregon; Carneros in Napa and Sonoma, Central Coast, Sonoma Coast, and Russian River AVAs of California; the Elgin and Walker Bay wine regions of South Africa; the Mornington Peninsula, Adelaide Hills, Great Southern, Tasmania, and Yarra Valley in Australia; and the Central Otago, Martinborough, and Marlborough wine regions of New Zealand. Pinot noir is the most planted varietal used in sparkling wine production in Champagne and other wine regions.
Pinot noir is a difficult variety to cultivate and transform into wine. The grape's tendency to produce tightly packed clusters makes it susceptible to several viticultural hazards involving rot that require diligent canopy management.
The thin skins and low levels of phenolic compounds lend pinot to producing mostly lightly colored, medium-bodied and low-tannin wines that can often go through phases of uneven and unpredictable aging. When young, wines made from Pinot noir tend to have red fruit aromas of cherries, raspberries, and strawberries. As the wine ages, Pinot has the potential to develop more vegetal and "barnyard" aromas that can contribute to the complexity of the wine.
Description
Pinot noir's home is France's Burgundy region, particularly Côte-d'Or. It is also planted in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, northern parts of Croatia, Czech Republic, England, the Republic of Georgia, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Hungary, Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Moldova, New Zealand, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Switzerland, Ukraine, United States, and Uruguay. The United States has increasingly become a major Pinot noir producer, with some of the best regarded coming from Oregon's Willamette Valley, and California's Sonoma County with its Russian River Valley and Sonoma Coast appellations. Lesser-known appellations are found in Mendocino County's Anderson Valley, the Central Coast's Santa Lucia Highlands appellation, the Santa Maria Valley, and Sta. Rita Hills American Viticulture Area in Santa Barbara County. In New Zealand, it is principally grown in Martinborough, Marlborough, Waipara, and Central Otago.The leaves of Pinot noir are generally smaller than those of Cabernet Sauvignon or Syrah. The vine is typically less vigorous than either of these varieties. The grape cluster is small and conico-cylindrical, shaped like a pinecone. Some viticultural historians believe this shape similarity may have given rise to the name. In the vineyard, Pinot noir is sensitive to wind and frost, cropping levels, soil types, and pruning techniques. In the winery, it is sensitive to fermentation methods and yeast strains and is highly reflective of its terroir, with different regions producing very different wines. Its thin skin makes it susceptible to bunch rot and similar fungal diseases. The vines themselves are susceptible to powdery mildew, especially in Burgundy infection by leaf roll, and fanleaf viruses cause significant vine health problems. These complications have given the grape a reputation for being difficult to grow: Jancis Robinson calls pinot a "minx of a vine" and André Tchelistcheff declared that "God made cabernet sauvignon whereas the devil made Pinot noir". It is much less tolerant of harsh vineyard conditions than the likes of Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Merlot or Grenache.
However, Pinot noir wines are among the most popular in the world. Joel L. Fleishman of Vanity Fair describes them as "the most romantic of wines, with so voluptuous a perfume, so sweet an edge, and so powerful a punch that, like falling in love, they make the blood run hot and the soul wax embarrassingly poetic". Master Sommelier Madeline Triffon calls them "sex in a glass".
The tremendously broad range of bouquets, flavors, textures, and impressions that Pinot noir can produce sometimes confuses tasters. Broadly, the wines tend to be of light to medium body with an aroma reminiscent of black and/or red cherry, raspberry and to a lesser extent currant and many other fine small red and black berry fruits. Traditional red Burgundy is famous for its savory fleshiness and "farmyard" aromas, but changing fashions, modern winemaking techniques, and new easier-to-grow clones have favored a lighter, more fruit-prominent, cleaner style.
The wine's color, when young, is often compared to that of garnet, frequently being much lighter than that of other red wines. This is entirely natural and not a winemaking fault, as Pinot noir has a lower skin anthocyanin content than most other classical red/black varieties. Callistephin, the 3-O-glucoside of pelargonidin, an orange-colored anthocyanidin, is also found in the berry skins of Pinot noir.
However, an emerging, increasingly evident style from California and New Zealand highlights a more powerful, fruit-forward, and darker wine that can tend toward Syrah in depth, extract, and alcoholic content.
Pinot noir is also used in the production of Champagne and is planted in most of the world's wine-growing regions for use in both still and sparkling wines. Pinot noir grown for dry table wines is generally low-yielding and of lesser vigor than many other varieties, whereas when grown for use in sparkling wines, it is generally cropped at significantly higher yields.
In addition to being used for the production of sparkling and still red wine, Pinot noir is also sometimes used for rosé still wines, Beaujolais Nouveau-style wines, and even vin gris white wines. Its juice is uncolored.
History, mutants and clones
Pinot noir is almost certainly a very ancient variety that may be only one or two generations removed from wild Vitis sylvestris vines. Its origins are nevertheless unclear: In De re rustica, Columella describes a grape variety similar to Pinot noir in Burgundy during the 1st century CE; however, vines have grown wild as far north as Belgium in the days before phylloxera, and it is possible that pinot represents a direct domestication of Vitis sylvestris.Ferdinand Regner argued that Pinot noir is a cross between Pinot Meunier and Traminer, but this claim has since been refuted. In fact, Pinot Meunier has been shown to be a chimerical mutation which makes the shoot tips and leaves prominently hairy-white and the vine a little smaller and early ripening. Thus, Pinot Meunier is a chimera with two tissue layers of different genetic makeup, both of which contain a mutation making them non-identical to, and mutations of, Pinot noir. As such, Pinot Meunier cannot be a parent of Pinot noir, and, indeed, it seems likely that chimerical mutations which can generate Pinot gris from other pinot may in turn, be the genetic pathway for the emergence of Pinot Meunier.
Pinot gris is a pinot color sport, presumably representing a somatic mutation in either the VvMYBA1 or VvMYBA2 genes that control grape berry color. Pinot blanc is a further mutation and can either naturally arise from or give rise to Pinot gris or Pinot noir; the mutation-reversion path is multi-directional, therefore. The general DNA profiles of both Pinot gris and blanc are identical to Pinot noir; and other Pinots, Pinot mour, and Pinot teinturier are also genetically similarly close. Almost any given Pinot can occur as a complete mutation or as a chimera of almost any other pinot. As such, suggestions that Pinot noir is the fundamental and original form of the Pinots are both misleading and highly tendentious. Indeed, if anything, Pinot blanc may be the original human-selected form of Pinot, although given the genetic variability of this longstanding genetic line, thinking of Pinot as a familial cluster of grapes sharing a fundamental and common genetic core is almost certainly nearest the truth. It is this core around which the sub-varietally identifying color variations occur, along with the more striking chimeric morphological mutation that is Pinot Meunier, and the interesting further mutations of this variety as Pinot Meunier gris and as the non-hairy mutation which the Germans classify as 'Samtrot'.
File:Pinor Noir vines, Clos de Bèze, Burgundy.jpg|thumb|right|250px|Pinot noir vines at Clos de Bèze, Gevrey-Chambertin, on Burgundy's Côte d'Or
A white berried sport of Pinot noir was propagated in 1936 by Henri Gouges of Burgundy, and there is now 2.5ha planted of this grape which Clive Coates calls Pinot Gouges, and others call Pinot Musigny. There is, however, no published evidence, nor any obvious reason, to believe that this is other than a form of Pinot blanc, having simply arisen as a selected natural mutation of the original Pinot noir in the Gouges' vineyard.
In the UK, the name 'Wrotham Pinot' is a permitted synonym for Pinot Meunier and stems from a vine that one of the pioneers of UK viticulture, Edward Hyams, discovered in Wrotham in Kent in the late 1940s. It was, in all probability, the variety known as 'Miller's Burgundy,' which had been widely grown on walls and in gardens in Great Britain for many years. Archibald Barron writing in his book, Vines and Vine Culture, the standard Victorian work on grape growing in the UK, states that the 'Millers Burgundy' also was found by Sir Joseph Banks in the remains of an ancient vineyard at Tortworth, Gloucestershire – a county well known for its medieval vineyards. Hyams took the vine to Raymond Barrington Brock, who ran what was to become the Oxted Viticultural Research Station, and he trialed it alongside the many other varieties he grew. Brock said that when compared to supplies of Meunier from France, Wrotham Pinot: had a higher natural sugar content and ripened two weeks earlier. Hyams, ever the journalist in search of a good story, claimed that this vine had been left behind by the Romans, although he provided absolutely no evidence for this. Brock sold cuttings of 'Wrotham Pinot,' and the variety became quite popular in early English "revival" vineyards in the late twentieth century, although it is unlikely that many vines from the cuttings supplied by Brock survive in any present UK vineyards. Indeed, despite the fact that today virtually all plantings of Meunier in the UK stem from French and German nurseries, the name Wrotham Pinot is still a legally acceptable synonym for this variety, although little, if ever, used by UK growers.
Pinot noir can be particularly prone to mutation, and thanks to its long history in cultivation, there are hundreds of different clones in vineyards and vine collections worldwide. More than 50 are officially recognized in France compared to only 25 of the much more widely planted Cabernet Sauvignon. The French Etablissement National Technique pour l'Amelioration de la Viticulture has set up a program to select the best clones of Pinot. This program has succeeded in increasing the number of quality clones available to growers. In the new world, particularly in Oregon, wines of extraordinary quality continue to be made from the Pommard and Wadensvil clones.
Gamay Beaujolais is a Californian misnomer for a UCD clone series of upright-growing Pinot noir. Planted mostly in California it also became established in New Zealand. In New Zealand, its disposition to poor fruit set in cool-flowering conditions can be problematic. It has been claimed that the 'Gamay Beaujolais' Pinot noir was brought to California by Paul Masson. But it was collected in France by Harold Olmo for UCD in the 1950s and was one of the first Pinot Noir vines this institution offered as a high-health clonal line from about 1962 onward. However, it was misleadingly identified at UCD as a 'Gamay Beaujolais' type. In general, these upright growing 'Pinot Droit' clones are highly productive and in California and New Zealand, they produce robust, broad-shouldered wines. In Burgundy, the use of Pinot Droit clones is reportedly still widespread in inferior, Village appellation, or even non-appellation vineyards, and Pinot Droit is consequently regarded, arguably with very good reason, as a sub-form significantly inferior to classical, decumbent, 'Pinot fine' or 'Pinot tordu', clonal lines of Pinot.
Frühburgunder is an early-ripening form of Pinot noir. Across the Pinot family, ripening in typical climates can be dispersed by as much as four, and even six weeks between the very earliest clones and the very latest ripening. Virus infection and excessive cropping significantly add to the delaying of Pinot noir ripening.
Gouget noir is sometimes confused as being a clone of Pinot noir but, DNA analysis has confirmed that it is a distinct variety.
In August 2007, a consortium of researchers, announced the sequencing of the genome of Pinot noir. It is the first fruit crop to be sequenced, and only the fourth flowering plant.