SENSUALITY IN A BOTTLE
Pinot Noir stimulates the senses.
If you are uncomfortable with sensuality — your own, or that of others — you might want to skip forward a page or two. You see, when Pinot Noir is the subject, sensuality naturally flows to the forefront. Where the wines of Cabernet Sauvignon (including those from Bordeaux) are flavor-driven wines, those made from Pinot Noir are distinctively texture-driven. Wines made from the red Burgundian template are clearly, happily wines of suppleness and sulkiness, wines suggestive of silk peignoirs and satin sheets.
Pinot Noir is, in short, liquid sensuality. It is about wines whose lingering, languid textural attributes are nearly lascivious, even libidinous, in nature. So if you are faint of heart, or easily offended, you might want to flick the page. Now.
Pinot Noir is the grape responsible for the great French Burgundies, as well as the newly soaring reds coming out of Oregon, the cooler spots of New Zealand, and California (Carneros, Anderson Valley, Santa Ynez Valley, and, especially, Sonoma’s Russian River Valley). Part of Pinot Noir’s mystique is that it is — at one and the same time — the most precious of winedom’s prizes and the most pixilating of its puzzles. Much as the great Pinot Noirs stand apart from all other red table wines in their sweeping grandeur, so too are they as quarrelsome as Lucifer himself: as vines, as maturing grapes, as fermenting musts (juice, skins, seeds), as aging wines.
Just getting the right grape plant is a pain in the backside. There are thousands of clones of Pinot Noir, and matching the right clone to a given patch of earth is an art form in and of itself, so much so that the best Pinot plots on the planet command upward of $250,000 an acre.
ON THE VINE
Growing Pinot Noir is an equally enormous challenge, in that the vine is
susceptible to all sorts of plant maladies and wants to ripen its fruit
helter and skelter. The Pinot is almost as bad as Zinfandel, ripening
berries unevenly and in no particular order. Once the fruit is in the
cellar, problems continue. The must wants to ferment rapidly at high
temperatures, an absolute no-no in light of the fact that Pinot’s alluring
texture comes from slow, even fermentations conducted at lower, more
controlled temperatures. (Some complain of the Pinot’s tendency toward
lightness in color, but remember that the variety is naturally short one
color chromosome. It is not meant to be black like Petite Sirah or Petit
Verdot. It is meant to be delicate and elegant, from first taste to last,
lingering taste and texture.)
It is a curious, even ironic, wonder what winemakers have learned over the last decade or two. Most of the centuries-old Burgundian techniques make the best wines, particularly fermenting in low, wide, small tanks and gently pushing the cap (skins and seeds) down manually, rather than aggressively pumping the juice over the cap. Gentle handling — even to the point of avoiding crushing the grapes in favor of whole-cluster fermentation — draws more flavor and more texture, all the while avoiding the extraction of harsh tannins that would subvert the supple, alluring texture that gives the grape its singular identity. The sardonic cycle of that which is old becoming new again.
Once made, there is neither assurance nor security. André Tchelistcheff, for nigh onto four decades the resident doyen at Napa Valley’s Beaulieu Vineyard, cited his 1946 Carneros Pinot Noir as the best he had ever made.
“There were at least three stages, while the wine was still in barrel — we hadn’t even got it to bottle — when I was ready to pour that wine down the drain,” he once told me. “Yet, somehow, I felt compelled to wait the wine out. Eventually, that unexplainable patience was rewarded with a gloriously feminine wine.” Russian-born, French-trained, only André could get away with saying that.
IN SEARCH OF …
The reward for all those difficulties can be awesome, which is why so
many winemakers set out, like Jason on the Argo,
in search of this near mythical Golden Fleece. A couple of years ago at a
tasting of older Pinots, I came across Santa Cruz Mountain renegade David
Bruce’s 1981 Pinot. The wine still exuded a juicy texture, that succulent,
opulent, fleshy “mouth feel” that makes you literally drool for the rare
fillet, slathered with mushrooms sautéed in butter. The ripe strawberry,
tomato, and mushroom fruit, abundantly displayed, didn’t hurt the argument
for Pinot Noir as sensuality brought to liquid life.
The French are best at explaining such things. The Burgundians, in their own inimitable, conservatively witty way refer to red Burgundy as “The Good Lord Jesus, in velvet trousers, sliding down your throat.” The late August Sebastiani was earthier still. When asked, at his Sonoma winery, by a bosomy matron to describe his Pinot Noir, he replied: “To me, Pinot Noir is like a woman’s breast. It’s round, and it’s full, and you never get tired of it.” (Naturally, and appropriately, my many feminine friends would happily turn that about, pointing to a man’s muscled, hairy chest in a similarly seductive way. My wife, too, blessedly.)
While some folks are swayed by the more fruity examples of the variety — whose descriptors range from strawberry to cherry — my tastes generally sway toward the more earthy, the more essential wines. These wines are spoken of with words like “tar,” “mushroom,” occasionally “barnyard,” and my favorite, “filet mignon.” Blood rare. Put that in your sensory memory bank and think on it awhile. “Decadent” is the word winemaker Rodney Strong suggests. It fits. So, too, does “flesh,” the meaning expanded by a winemaker friend to encompass “the smell of a woman freshly out of the shower.” Israeli-born Oded Shakked, winemaker at Russian River Valley’s “J” Winery, compares Pinot Noir’s juicy texture to “liquid foreplay.” Yeow!
Tchelistcheff favored the more replicable “rose petal,” telling the story of Captain Joe Concannon of Livermore. “Joe told me to go into the rose garden at Beaulieu, find the darkest red rose in bloom, cut it, and put it in a vase for 48 hours. Then open the petals to the bloom’s heart. There, in the dying rose, is the true fragrance of Pinot Noir.”
FLAVOR AND FEEL
As important as flavor is, what truly and finally sets the Pinot apart
from all other red wines is its fluid, voluptuous texture. Well-made, Pinot
Noir has a textural “feel” to it that is supple, succulent, velvety, silky,
juicy, fleshy, fecund, and “wet.” And that is where the true and hedonistic
pleasure comes from. It is voluptuous; it is animal in a way; it is nearly
carnal. But it is also wonderfully sumptuous and luxurious.
It is that basic, near feral quality about Pinot Noir that helps us get past those who dehumanize wine by quantifying it so narrowly with point systems and scores, with talk of total acidity and pH numbers. British-born author Gerald Asher assesses those who judge wines by the numbers: “It’s almost as if your hostess leaned across, just when you were about to taste her hollandaise sauce, and started to discuss emulsions with you.” Phew! (My own response to the 100-point scoring systems and judgmental approach is Hinkle’s First Wine Law, which says, “There are only three categories of wine: 1. I like it; 2. I don’t like it; or 3. I’ll drink it if someone else pays for it!”)
What makes Pinot Noir so ultimately alluring is that inherent and generous “mouth feel” we have just spoken of. Because of that, Pinot Noirs are wines that can match up with nearly any food grown on the third rock. Seagram’s seasoned restaurant adviser Evan Goldstein refers to Pinot as “liquid chicken in its easy versatility.”
That said, when you pair a good example of the Pinot with rare red meats, or nearly anything with mushrooms, you shall see at first hand the fullest, most complete glory of red wine at its best, sensuality in a bottle.
And, as the Dalai Lama reminds us, the goal of life is happiness. I suggest to you, here, that Pinot Noir is as good an avenue as any for attaining that goal. Allow me to raise a glass to your health!
Richard Paul Hinkle wrote the California, Oregon, and Washington chapters to the Larousse Encyclopedia of Wine. His most recent book is Alligator Dreams: The Story of Greenwood Vineyards.
LAUGH OUT LOUD
Pinot Noir’s sensual reputation seems to be insinuating its way into the
mainstream press as well. A recent New Yorker
cartoon by David Sipress depicted a shopper asking the wine clerk,
“Can you recommend a large-breasted Burgundy with a big behind?” The
maturing of the wine in America, before your very eyes.
A DOG AND HIS BEAUNE
Just south of Dijon, at the heart of Burgundy’s Cote d’Or is the town of
Beaune (“bone” is close, for pronunciation). Other great producing sites
nearby include Aloxe-Corton, Vougeot, Volnay, and one of my favorites,
Gevrey-Chambertin. The French like to tell the story of a doughty old
Frenchman and his lifelong four-footed companion. They are sitting outside a
little bistro. When the old gentleman orders his lunch, the waiter inquires
about a glass of wine. “Mais oui,” says he. “I’ll have some Volnay ... and,
I think, a little Beaune for my dog!”
FEATURED PINOT NOIRS
Corton Pougets Grand Cru 1998 (imported by Glazer’s Wholesale Distributors,
Dallas, Texas)
Faiveley Nuits-St-Georges 1er Cru 1998 (imported by Wilson Daniels Ltd., St.
Helena, California)
Fess Parker 1999 (produced and bottled by Fess Parker Winery, Los Olivos,
California)
Robert Ampeau - Volnay-Santenots 1979 (imported by Glazer’s Wholesale
Distributors, Dallas, Texas)
Robin’s Vineyard - Star Hill 1998 (produced and bottled by Star Hill Winery,
Napa, California)