Little Pinot Rant

After spending a few days showing another lush around the wineries in the Hawke's Bay I've discovered that drinking and tasting are mutually exclusive. Everything began tasting of its separate components. Hence I could taste acid, tannin and the carpentry of the wine but not the fruit. All of the delightful parts of the wine disappearing, flashing in and out of existence and preventing me from getting a sense of the wine. Certainly my notes from over the last few days are scratchy.

Had a nice wee line up of quite disimilar Pinot Noir from three different regions. Palate fatigue was intense but here goes....

La Strada Pinot Noir 2004 was a nice lively ruby in the glass and was giving up dry baking spices, red cherry and rhubarb followed dusty herbs. This is a fairly high acid style without the dense fruit of some New Zealand Pinot but none the worse for that. A touch herbal on the palate, floral and sinewy. The fact that we impressed a collector of Clos de Vougeot with this wine the other day speaks volumes about it's fine structure. I'm not suggesting that it's in the same league but I had an interesting discussion with this guest debating the 'problems' with New World Pinot Noir for the Burgundy afficianado. The crux of the issue being that New Zealand Pinot starts big and tends to unravel in the glass whereas his favourite (famous and expensive) tipple only whispers its name and then builds to a cacophony. It was nice to change his pre-conceptions and serve him something like the La Strada.

The Rippon Pinot Noir 2005 is another New Zealand Pinot that eschews the overly dense style. I like it and I guess there is something of a pattern emerging in that I'm much more fond of Pinot Noir you can read a book through. Not insipid just feminine, seductive and alluring Pinot Noir, as it should be..... And so to this wine. It's had 16 months in barrel and is not filtered or fined which gives the wine a slightly wild aspect. For all that the nose shows great varietal depth and harmony with cranberry and black cherry surrounded by dried flowers and basil. The oak lends some lovely cinnamon and perhaps a touch of licorice.

And all these flavours are so different from the Dry River Pinot Noir 2005 which swings the pendulum almost to the other end of the spectrum. Now I realise that with only a couple of years in the bottle this wine is something of a baby but right now it's not pushing my buttons. I'm sure it will and I'm sure the kiwi Bacchus would strike me down for daring to type that I didn't find Dry River to be perfection in a bottle but..

Actually I might put off making notes on this for another day before that bolt of lightening hits....