The Most Seductive Red Wine in the World

By Paige Donahoo

$1500: this is what some wine lovers fight to pay for a bottle of Pinot Noir. Why?

I recently listened to a Patsy Cline CD which is all heartbreak.  In one of her songs she is singing about her devoted boyfriend who loves her, is considerate and kind, she then follows by saying “why can’t he be you?” The lovers of Pinot Noir have a similar dilemma. Why do Pinot lovers eschew other more reliable grapes and pine for this fickle and often disappointing grape variety?

For a 2000 Pinot Noir dinner at Café Boulud the sommelier wrote: “The most mysterious of all grape families, variations of the Pinot clan have been traced back to the first century AD. Mutating is commonplace with this notoriously degenerate vine variety.  It seems to be the least adaptable grape, taking on characters of the land or terrroir rather than possessing recognizable flavors or styles in wines from differing regions or even neighboring vineyards.  This is an exasperating varietal for growers, winemakers, and drinkers alike.”  He almost seems like he is talking of a person.  How does it make some effusive? Can the mention of some of its top bottlings make the lover blush? Yes.

It is the grape variety that produces some of the most expensive and seductive red wines in the world.  New York wine writer Willie Gluckstern says, “Mature passionate wine lovers invariably choose it over all others probably for these reasons; complexity, beguiling sweetness, and exquisite texture and length, its compatibility with upscale cuisine and its prohibitively high price, which discourages the peasants.” I would add another reason: its elusiveness. Like the man in Keats’ poem Ode on a Grecian Urn, frozen in a state of reaching for a beautiful woman, forever out of touch. The rareness of a fabulous bottle keeps it fresh.  The longing and the wanting are delicious. Sometimes when drinking a Burgundy, though, the impossible happens- words fail and one experiences something transcendent and otherworldly. That this probably happens (even if one can afford the often astounding price of Burgundy) perhaps five times in a lifetime is what keeps Burgundy lovers hooked.

Pinot Noir began my now 20 year wine passion. In the late 80’s I was working  in a small wonderful book store on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and a friend who knew I brought wine to dinner parties gave me a paperback advanced copy of a book called the Heartbreak Grape by Marq De Villiers. It was written by Marq after he was transported by a glass of wine produced by pioneering California Pinot Noir grower Josh Jensen. The book described Jensen’s apprenticeship in Burgundy and his efforts planting Pinot Noir in California’s Gavilan Mountains.   His Calera Mills bottling was mentioned and the description of it compelled me to buy it.  I was hoping it would be good enough to justify the $26 price tag which was 4 hours of my bookstore salary. This bottle was my wine epiphany, spectacular.  Four years ago when I entered the wine business and attended my first tasting for Lauber Imports I was at a table, my nose embedded in a glass of Foxen Pinot Noir when a gentleman to the side of me began talking to me. “How do you like the wine?” “I love it.” I said.  When I looked over at the man his name tag said Josh Jensen. He looked like Clint Eastwood and was wearing a wild, yet flatteringly tailored jean suit jacket that had cow boyish studs on it, and a lime green cotton button down oxford.  I told him how much I loved his wines and how I had happened across an article from a late ‘70’s Gourmet Magazine in which Gerald Asher was writing about Jensen’s Pinot Noirs. He praised them and compared them favorably with red Burgundy.

California Pinot Noirs have received acclaim and popularity only recently along with Pinot Noirs from Oregon (abetted a few years ago by the movie Sideways). Shortly after I finished the Calera I went back to the wine store where I bought it and asked the specialist to recommend other California Pinot Noirs. He practically sneered and said, “Why do you want a Pinot Noir from California when Burgundy has been producing Pinot Noir for thousands of years?” Pinot Noir is the red grape variety of famous Burgundies. So began my interest in Burgundy.

Burgundy excites wine lovers as a wine that has what talented wine writer and Pinot Noir lover Matt Kramer calls, ‘some-where-ness.’ He asks in his remarkable book Making Sense of Burgundy, what makes people willing to pay such high prices and devote so much attention to “just a wine”? Kramer answers, “Memorable wine is as much a map as a taste.  It is why wine lovers in general, and Burgundy lovers more than anyone else, spend so much pleasurable effort exploring the distinctions between one vineyard and another. This is why a thirty-one-mile slip of land, the Côte d’Or, has captivated wine drinkers for a millennium. Through its wines, one has the sensation of having found a terrestrial crossroads, a place where man and plant and planet meet.”

Even a novice can tell the differences of smell, taste, and texture between the wines of Burgundian vineyards. My first wine group tasting at my home I asked friends who were not wine geeks to bring a bottle of Pinot Noir from California or Burgundy to taste.  We sipped and talked and gave opinions of the wines and then compared them to Matt Kramer’s descriptions. Our assessments were gratifyingly similar to his… a Chambolle-Musigny was graceful, the Nuits–Saints-Georges was big and concentrated, a Volnay soft and silky.

My first wine trip was to Burgundy. My husband and I rented bikes and were soon pedaling and drinking our way through the communes: Vosne-Romanée, Morey-St. Denis, Gevrey-Chambertin.  One can reach out and touch the grapes.

Burgundy has the most parcellated vineyards in the world, many producers own parts of a particular vineyard, this makes it imperative to know the producer not just the name of the vineyard, quality can vary widely.  Wines are classified by the government as Grand Cru, Communal Premier Cru, Village, and Regional, in descending order of quality and a wider site.  Most wines of  Burgundy are regional and can come from anywhere in Burgundy, the Village wines come from a particular village, the Premier Cru come from better vineyards and the Grand Cru come from the best, these account for only 1% of Burgundy wines. Respected producers include Louis Jadot, try his 2003 Gevery-Chambertin this has nice strawberry and blackberry aromas and flavors and is affordable at $45.00 a bottle, also Vincent Girardin’s 2002 Volnay Premier Cru “Les Santenots” has lots of spice, ripe plums and jammy blackfruit flavors $50.00 a bottle. Girardin’s 2002 Corton Bressandes Grand Cru is also fabulous it is smooth and velvety wine offering ripe blackberry, cherry and blueberry fruit flavors $65.00 a bottle. 

Pinot Noirs from California and Oregon now are rivaling Burgundy. Outstanding wines I’ve had recently include the Fort Ross 2003 Symposium from Sonoma California, this has a pronounced seductive nose of blackberry fruit and toasty spices and show tons of ripe fruit on the palate $36.00 bt. Even more hedonistic is the Domaine Serene ‘Evenstad’ 2004 from Oregon, this wine is like cherry pie with some mintiness and toasted herbs de provence aromas and flavors, $55.00.

The Romanée –Conti La Tâche 2004 was released at $1,500, yet wine lovers were calling stores. “Are they in yet? How much? How many can I buy?” Most wine stores cannot even get any of these most coveted Burgundy’s, Romanée-Conti ‘Romanée-Conti’ or Romanée-Conti ‘La Tâche.’  Matt Kramer says in Romanée-Conti the “famed earthiness of Vosne-Romanée is captured more completely, with greater nuance, in Romanée-Conti than in any other wine.”  In a recent article for Wine Spectator Magazine Kramer compares the 2004 wines of this estate to watching Roger Federer play tennis, “they had all the power you could possibly want in a Pinot Noir, but the sheer ease of delivery made you forget the underlying strength.” What can you say about these wines but stunning?