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Pinot Noir Red Wine
Pinot Noir
Pinot noir
Pinot Noir is a member of Vitis vinifera grape family, the red grape used more commonly in wine production, and may also have reference to wines produced almost entirely from the pinot noir grapes.
Pinot noir grapes are mostly grown in the french region of Burgundy, as well as a handful of other diverse locales around the globe.
Wine experts have been able to track the pinot noir production as far back as 2,000 years, pinot noir grapes produce some of the best wines in the wine world today, pinot noir is a difficult variety of the Vitis vinifera grape to cultivate and produce wine from from.
Pinot noir is at its best in France's Burgundy region, particularly in the Côte d'Or which for 100s of years has produced some of the world's most celebrated wines. A few countries that grow the pinot noir grape are, Africa, Austrailia, Canada, Southern California, Germany,New Zealand, Switzerland and Chile, with some of the best wines originating from California's Sonoma County with its Russian River Valley and Sonoma Coast Appellations, as well as the Central Coast's Santa Lucia Highlands appellation; the Willamette Valley in Oregon; Martinborough, Waipara, and Central Otago in New Zealand.
However, pinot noir wines are among some of the most popular wines the world has seen, the extremely broad range of textures and flavors added with the aromas and impressions that the pinot noir grape produces, confuses some wine tasters. For the most part, the wine tends to be of light and sometimes medium body with blackcurrants, raspberries and black cherries.
Pinot Noir is also sometimes used in the production of Champagne but is usually blended with the Chardonnay and Pinot meunier varieties and can be found anywhere in the world's wine cultivating regions, this is used for both still and sparkling wines. Pinot noir that is for standard table wines is mostly dry, low-yielding and can be quite hard to grow. Pinot noir that is for sparkling wines and Champagne is usually higher in yield.
As well as being used in the production of still and sparkling reds, pinot noir does be used for still rosé's and even on rare occassions vin gris white wines.
Pinot noir mutates very easily, this is evident by the other varieties - pinot gris, pinot blanc and pinot meunier they are all related to pinor noir. As of 1990, there were some 46 clones of pinot noir widely used in France. This compared to only 32 clones of the much more widely planted cabernet sauvignon.
Here are few of the regions that produce the pinot noir grape.
South Africa
In South Africa, pinot noir has been crossed with the cinsaut grape to make a unique variety called pinotage.
Australia
Pinot Noir is produced in quite a few regions good for wine production, notably in Tasmania and Victoria.
Austria
In Austria, pinot noir is called Blauburgunder (english translation as the Blue Burgundy) and is produced in Burgenland and south Austria. Austrian Pinot noir wines are dry similar in character to the red wines of Burgundy.
France
 Pinot Noir has made France's Burgundy appellation famous, and vice-versa. The Burgundy pinot noir variety produces some excellent wines all of which age quite well, developing flavours of orchards as they get older, when around 15 or 20 years it is considered optimum peak for the vintage. Many of the wines that are produced are in minute batches and are usually very expensive. Today, the celebrated Côte d’Or region of Burgundy has about 11,000 acres land for the production of pinot noir. And a great deal of the region's finest wines are produced in this area. The Côte Challonaise and Máconnais regions in southern Burgundy have another 10,000 acres.
Germany
In Germany it is called Spätburgunder, which is the most popular of the red grapes varieties. In history most German wine that came from pinot noir was pale in colour. Even now despite the weather coming from the northern regions, darker, more full bodied reds are being produced, often barrel aged, in such locales as Baden, Pfalz and Ahr.
There is a low yielding, small berried grape variety by the name of Frühburgunder which is cultivated in Franken and produces excellent wines. This is thought to be another clone of pinot noir.
While it is the most common red grape in Germany, much of the Spätburgunder is used to produce Sekt, German sparkling wine rather than red wine.
Italy
In the Italian vineyards pinot noir is known as Pinot nero, being produced in the Pavese, Collio Goriziano, Oltrepò, Alto Adig, and Trentino, this is done to reproduce Burgundy style reds. Cultivation in other regions of Italy proved difficult this has been the case since the very end of the 1970's and is majorly to climate and soil variations.
New Zealand
Pinot Noir is a very important variety of grape in New Zealand, early in the modern wine industry in the late 70s the low annual sunshine hours in NewZealand put vinters of planting of red varieties. But wine growers were hoping for Pinot Noir to take, initial results were not promising for several reasons, including the mistaken planting of Gamay, and the limited number of Pinot Noir clones. After the strong results with Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot in the Hawkes Bay and Auckland regions, industry interest ebbed away from Pinot Noir.
The next location to excel with Pinot Noir cultivation was Martinborough, which is on the southern part of the North Island. A handfull of vinyards including Ata Rangi, Palliser Estate and Martinborough Vinyards consistently produced interesting and increasingly complex wine from Pinot Noir at the end of the 1980s and into the 1990s.
At around this time the first plantings of Pinot Noir in Central Otago occurred in the Kawarau Gorge. Central Otago had always been renowned as an excellent producer of quality stone fruit and in particular cherries. Significantly further south than all other wine regions in New Zealand, it had been overlooked despite a long history of grape growing. However, it benefited from being surrounded by mountain ranges which increased its temperature variations both between seasons and between night and day making the climate unusual in the typically maritime conditions in New Zealand.
The first vines were planted using holes blasted out of the north facing schist slopes of the region, the first results coming in the mid to late 1990s were exciting. Not only were the wine distinctly of flavors such as fruityness and acidity common to New Zealand wines, but they demonstrated a alot of complexity, with aromas and flavours not common in New Zealand wine and normally associated with burgundian wine.
Canada
Ontario has for some time now produced very good quality pinot noir, which has been grown in the Niagara Peninsula wine region, as well as on the northern shore line of Lake Erie. It has also recently been grown in the Okanagan, Lower Mainland, and Vancouver Island wine regions of British Columbia.
In the last decade growers in the Prince Edward County region of Ontario, such as wine pioneer Geoff Heinricks, have made a concerted effort to grow pinot noir in the region, as it is felt by advocates that the lattitude, climate, growing season, and limestone soils are very similar to the Burgundy region of France.
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