Grape Files: ‘Pinot’

Pinot is ancient. It’s morphologically close enough to wild vines to be one step out of the forest. It’s old enough that it has no parentage, none that we can reconstruct; but cross-pollinated with gouais blanc in the vineyard, it birthed an entire universe of varieties in northern France: chardonnay, melon de bourgogne, romorantin, aligoté, gamay—this is just to name the best-known. Pinot is a great-grandparent of syrah, and a grandfather to chenin. Follow its family tree and you’ll find everything from refosco to rotgipfler. It’s older than all of them.

Pinot was once considered unusually prone to mutation, but its spectrum of diversity is really just a function of how long it’s been around, and how much it’s been loved. It’s been vegetatively propagated (which is to say: cuttings named, carried, placed in the ground to grow again in the spitting image of their parent) for a long, long time.

When that happens, a little gene will occasionally toggle. One of the simplest is for the color of the grape skins on the fruit of the vine itself: you see it all the time in older, well-travelled varieties (grenache, carignan, picpoul). And so there are pink- and gold-skinned versions of the blue-black pinot noir that crop up in different places, and in different languages. Ruby-pink often rendered as ‘grey,’ grau or gris or grigio; gold as ‘white,’ weiss or blanc or bianco.

There are qualitative differences, too, in some of these mutations: clusters tighter or looser, bunches bigger or smaller. Sometimes they get chosen, in a specific place, and given special names. One that’s mentioned frequently enough it’s often treated as its own variety: meunier, literally “miller’s pinot”, for the fuzzy white hairs on the underside of its leaves that look like dustings of flour.

These days, now that plantings are by clonal selection from nurseries grafted onto rootstock rather than cuttings plugged into the ground, pinot attracts a lot of conversation about those clones (Dijon 113-15 or 777? Wädenswil G5V15?), which is tedious but a reflection of that ancient diversity. Plants epigenetically adapt to their environment, which is to say that DNA is not destiny; another question a person might ask is, ‘how genetically diverse was your plant material to begin with?’

I come back again and again to this grape, for different reasons. On the one hand, it’s responsible for some of the best classic wines in the world, and it’s a widely recognized brand.

On the other hand, its widely recognized brands are incoherent—genetically, it is both red Burgundy and industrial pinot grigio—and even if you try to confine yourself only to classic wine regions you’ll still run out of places and producers long before class is over: not just in Burgundy but in the eastern Loire and in Champagne, in the Jura and in Switzerland, in northeastern Italy, in Alsace and across the Rhine in Baden, in Otago and the Willamette, Niagara Escarpment and Adelaide Hills—and I haven’t even mentioned the entire state of California yet, deserving of an entire essay thanks to that one movie.

Which is to say: pinot is wonderful. It’s thin-skinned and early budding, with naturally high acidity, susceptible to frost and vulnerable to disease. It’s a testament to how beautiful wines made from this grape can be that it’s been taken to so many places, despite the difficulty.

But also, it raises the question: if it can be this many different things, what was the use of grape variety as brand name in the first place?

Below, you’ll find a list of pinot(s) we’ve tasted in classes both remote and in-person. If you learned something from this, consider supporting the project via our patreon!

PINOTS GREEN + GOLD

LAURENT BARTH, pinots blanc, gris, noir, + auxerrois “Pinots” _^ALSACE direct press
HOLGER KOCH, weissburgunder ,“Herrenstück” _^BADEN
WASENHAUS, weissburgunder _^BADEN
ETIENNE CALSAC, pinot blanc, petit meslier, arbanne, “Les Revenants” _^SÉZANNE 2016 brut nature

PINOTS PINK + RUBY

KELLEY FOX, pinot gris, “Maresh Vineyard” _{^{DUNDEE HILLS}} skin contact
END OF NOWHERE, pinot gris, “Space Boy” _{^{SACRAMENTO DELTA / SIERRA FOOTHILLS}} skin contact
TERAH BAJJALIEH, pinot gris, “Ramato — Bassi Vineyard” _{^{CENTRAL COAST}} skin contact
GRAWÜ, pinot grigio _{^{ALTO ADIGE}} skin contact
PHILIP LARDOT, pinot gris _^MOSEL skin contact

ENDERLE & MOLL, grauburgunder _^BADEN
ENDERLE & MOLL, grauburgunder + weissburgunder, “Weiss & Grau” _^BADEN skin contact
HOLGER KOCH, grauburgunder, “Herrenstück” _^BADEN
BECK-HARTWEG, pinot gris, “Dambach-la-Ville” _^ALSACE

PINOTS BLACK + BLUE

CAMERON, pinot noir, “Abbey Ridge” _{^{DUNDEE HILLS}}
EYRIE, pinot meunier _{^{DUNDEE HILLS}} 2016
HOPE WELL, pinot noir, “Monday’s Child” _^EOLA-AMITY rosé
HIYU, pinot noir, “Oak Ridge” _{^{COLUMBIA GORGE}}
MARGINS, pinot noir, “Makjavich Vineyard” _{^{SANTA CRUZ MOUNTAINS}}

BECHTOLD, pinot noir, “Obere Hund” _^ALSACE
WASENHAUS, pinot noir, “Grand Ordinaire” _^BADEN
ENDERLE & MOLL, pinot noir, “Basis” _^BADEN
DUPASQUIER, pinot noir _^SAVOIE 2018
LUKAS HAMMELMANN, spätburgunder _^PFALZ rosé

TRICOT, pinot noir & gamay, “Les Milans” _{^{LOIRE VOLCANIQUE}}
LUCIEN MAZARD, pinot noir _^SANTENAY
CHISA BIZE, pinot noir, “Shirokuro” _{^{SAVIGNY-LES-BEAUNE}} direct press
PIERRE-HENRI ROUGEOT, pinot noir & gamay, “Une table pour deux”, Passetoutgrains _^MEURSAULT rosé
MICHEL LAFARGE, pinot noir & gamay, Passetoutgrains _^VOLNAY
SYLVAIN PATAILLE, pinot noir, Bourgogne Rouge, _^MARSANNAY
SYLVAIN PATAILLE, pinot noir, “Clos du Roy” _^MARSANNAY
BÉNEDICTE & STÉPHANE TISSOT, pinot noir, “En Barberon” _^JURA 2017

ULYSSES COLLIN, pinot noir, “Les Maillons R.17” _^SÉZANNE blanc de noirs extra brut
FLAVIEN NOWACK, pinot noir, “Les Bauchets” _{^{VALLÉE DE LA MARNE}} 2015 blanc de noirs extra brut
LELARGE-PUGEOT, pinot meunier, “Blanc de Meuniers” _{^{PETIT MONTAGNE DU REIMS}} 2014 direct press
LELARGE-PUGEOT, pinot meunier, “Coteaux Champenois” _{^{PETIT MONTAGNE DU REIMS}} still rosé