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Pinot Noir wines are the hot ticket in red wine these days. Have you noticed? Ever since the main character in the movie Sideways identified Pinot as his favorite grape type sales for this red wine have skyrocket. (The character of Miles also maligned Merlot wines in the movie, and the sales of Merlot have suffered ever since).

Pinot Noir is the grape used to make the red wines of Burgundy in northern France. The reputation of those wines is so great that Pinot Noir from anywhere else is inevitably compared to the French model. That makes it tough, but the enthusiasm of wine makers around the world doesn’t seem to be blunted by the challenge.

Pinot production is up everywhere and new vineyards are still being planted. Aside from having to compete with Burgundy’s example, Pinot Noir is a difficult grape to grow, even for the French. Any true lover of the wine will admit that if Pinot Noir is sublime at times it can also be frustrating.

A good Pinot Noir looks translucent in the glass and displays fruity sweetness and a gentle, intriguing perfume, with soft tannins. The skin of the grape is thinner than some of the other black grapes (like Cabernet or Syrah for instance) and the taste profile is more subtle.

Pinots are elegant and medium bodied where some other reds are bold and rich. From the right vineyard, in a good year with a talented wine maker Pinot Noir can be as expressive as any wine, consistently interesting and appealing, wonderful with food and capable of real improvement with age. Young, it is like a bowl of summer warmed raspberries but with some maturity Pinot Noir takes on complex vegetal, even animal-like scents. A fine, aged red Burgundy from a cru vineyard challenges the taster and defies exact description.

From a wine maker’s perspective, the quandary with Pinot Noir is that the vineyards that bring out the best in the grape are in marginal areas where simple ripening is often difficult.

Burgundy in northern France, the Willamette Valley in Oregon, Carneros and higher altitude vineyards in California and New Zealand’s coastal vineyards are all threatened with late spring and early fall cold and rain. Pinot Noir is thin skinned so it is more vulnerable to various vineyard pests and diseases as well as bad weather.

If planted in warmer, more generous climates Pinot Noir too often loses its edge of acidity and complexity and yields a simple, juicy wine. So you risk, and maybe make good or great wine or, you play it safe and make simple or average wine.

This translates to expense for you in the wine shop or at your local restaurant. It’s a general rule of thumb among sommeliers that, “good Pinot Noir is not cheap and cheap Pinot is never good”. And, because this particular wine’s best often comes from more difficult environments, vintages can make a big difference in quality.

From Burgundy, keep in mind that Bourgogne Rouge is the most basic level of quality. A so-called village wine, one that bears the name of a specific village in Burgundy (like Volney or Gevrey-Chambetin) is the next step up. These wine are where value can be found and, if you choose a basic Bourgogne made by a good producer you can score a great value.

Permier Cru and Grand Cru wines are the very best and they can be quite expensive. They will often have a village name as well as the name of a specific vineyard (like Le Ruchots or Clos de Beze) on the label. Burgundy is all about little vineyards, lots of them, and very fine differences between wines. In Oregon or other places outside France, wines that have a more general geographic identity (like California) will have less distinction than wines with more specific identity (like Willamette Valley or Shea Vineyard).

The range of price for Pinot Noir wines can go from $9 per bottle to $250 and more, based upon the reputation of the vineyard and the wine maker and the specificity of the place it comes from. If very little wine can be made from a single vineyard location then it will cost more per bottle. The frustration comes when you open a bottle that should be great to find that fragile, subtle Pinot Noir is missing its elegant finesse.

It’s up to you to judge value. A good working definition of “value” is, the point at which you feel like you’re getting more than you pay for. For some wine drinkers that will be the $11 Carneros Pinot and for others it will be the $25 village-level Burgundy.

The great thing about Pinot Noir is that it is expressive. It does taste differently depending upon its origin, and the vintage, and it is subtle, elegant and charming. It is the perfect wine with game bird because of its earthy undertones, especially an aged Pinot. It’s also a great choice in a restaurant where some are having chicken or fish and others are having red meat, because it is neither weak nor overpowering. Pinot Noir is always a wonderful partner with food and the bottle you buy should be as good as the dinner you’re planing to serve.

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