Pinot Noir: Wine Production Fraught With Difficulty
By Dominic Donaldson
Pinot Noir has a huge fan base, despite being notoriously difficult to grow. It is one of the oldest known grape varieties that are used to make wine, with the Romans being documented as having identified this grape in the first century AD as Helvenacia Minor.
The only region to have achieved consistently successful production of this wine is the Cote d”Or in France, which means ‘’slope of gold”” and is a thrity mile stretch of hills in Burgundy.
The reason this region is so suitable for Pinot Noir is due to a number of reasons. The vines here get a substantial amount of sun exposure because the vineyards slope down gently towards the east, yet manage to avoid intense afternoon heat.
The soil is ideal as it’’s calcareous, which means it’’s chalky and so offers good drainage and has a higher temperature than average, which helps the grapes to ripen.
There are difficulties with the production of Pionot Noir at almost every step of the process. The plant is genetically unstable, and this means that a vine can produce offspring whose fruit is very different to its parent’’s. The sizes and shapes of the berries may be different, and even have different flavours and aromas. It is estimated that there are as many as 1,000 clones of the grape in the world. When you compare this with Cabernet Sauvignon, which only has twelve clones, you can understand the extent of the variations.
The grapes are relatively tolerant to colder climates, although they are vunerable to spring frosts as it is a very early-leafing variety. The sharpshooter leafhopper bug loves to live on the bines, and the Pierce’’s Disease that it carries can wipe out a whole vineyard in as short a time span as three years.
The vines aren”t very good at protecting themselves from birds, either, because the leaves often lack adequate coverage, and birds can do a lot of damage to a potential harvest. Even if the grapes sit out the summer unscathed by these factors, they are prone to shriveling up and drying out quickly, especially the thinner-skinned ones. This gives the wine a raisiny aroma with a neutral flavor.
Fermentation is also problematic, to some extent due to the fact that it has eighteen amino acids in it, which cause Pinot Noir to boil up out of the container. The retention of colour in the wine is a problem, particularly when thicker-skinned berries have been used, and the wine can sometimes loose the promising aromas and flavours it displays once it is bottled.
But these difficulties are all part of the reason why Pinot Noir is so coveted, and once you”ve tried a really good bottle of the wine, it really is very hard to beat!
About The Author
Dominic Donaldson is a wine expert. Find out more about Pinot Noir and the great bottles that await!
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