Tag Archives: Pinot Noir

Domaine du Prieuré Savigny-les-Beaune Les Gollardes 2005

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I had to leave this wine overnight as, on opening, it seemed excessively sulphurous, to the point of being undrinkable. It’s better tonight, although there is a hardness that seems reluctant to depart. I’m not enough of a guru to know whether this is a technical fault or a function of fruit, so I’ll just call this wine as I find it.

On the nose, softly fruited with quite luscious plum and strawberry characters. There’s also an edge of minerality and an underlying hardness that speaks to me of woody stalks. It’s actually becoming less expressive as it sits in the glass, although what’s there is interesting in an elusive way. The entry shows similarly contradictory characters. There’s a thread of the same juicy fruit, but it’s almost completely overwhelmed with hard, savoury characters. Things remain thin through the middle palate, with a thrust of bitterness that obscures pretty much everything. There’s a bit of joy on the after palate, with some sweetly floral characters, before an astringent, hard finish.
I’m not really getting a lot from this wine in terms of enjoyment, though I will persist with it through the evening to see where it goes. 

Domaine du Prieuré
Price: $A36.30
Closure: Cork

Farr Rising Geelong Pinot Noir 2007

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Usually, I’m too lazy to plan ahead when it comes to food and wine matching. Today, however, I was organised to a superhuman degree (for me, anyway) and actually thought about what I would drink with what I had planned to cook. So, a venison and beetroot pot roast is just finishing up in the oven, while I am enjoying my first sips of this Pinot Noir from Geelong.

Remarkably funky and characterful nose, the complexity of which seems fruit driven rather than forced through winemaking (who knows if this impression is accurate — kudos to Nick Farr if it’s all his doing). Riotous aromas of char siu, five spice, beetroot, minerality and hessian are neatly wrapped in a brightly expressive package. The aroma profile is truly interesting and seems full of the smells of childhood in a Chinese home (how I miss my mother’s cooking!).
A very flavoursome entry showing more markedly sweet fruit, red currant-like in character. It’s no simple fruit bomb, though. In fact, the flavours here are again complex, with spice and sour-edged rhubarb intruding in on the lusciousness of the fruit. It’s juicy without flab and savoury sans excess. Well balanced, in other words, though I would not call it delicate or elegant. In fact the flavour profile is a bit jingly jangly; it’s about contrast and glitter rather than harmony. The after palate shows some sappy oak and perhaps a bit of stalk action too, again well judged. Decent finish that seems to descend to the bass registers, slowly fading away with time.
Wish me luck with the food match. 

Farr Rising
Price: $A39
Closure: Cork

Domaine du Meix-Foulot Mercurey 1er Cru Les Saumonts 2002

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First impressions consist of a freshly picked field mushroom tossed on last night’s campfire. Quite a puzzling nose, actually. Pleasantly so, for it’s elusive and smart, like a subtle conversationalist who prefers to hover at the edges of the discussion. I’m trying, a little unsuccessfully, to pick out threads. There’s the aforementioned mushroom and charcoal, but what is most striking after some time in glass is a thrust of minerality that sits right between sour cherry fruit and musk. This wine is making me work and I’m really enjoying it. 

In the mouth, an elaboration of the aroma with some elements filled out. The entry is subtle, consisting more of a sulphur-like prickliness than any sort of substantial flavour. This fans out to a decidedly savoury middle palate. There is fruit of a sort, again in a sour cherry spectrum, yet flavours are so integrated it’s unsatisfying to pick this out as a discrete thread. Rather, there’s a detailed tapestry of elements, all bouncing atop a layer of well textured acid. The whole is light bodied, lacking much in the way of bass notes aside from some vanilla-nougat oak. It tastes marginal, as if ripeness were only just achieved. Raspy tannins rattle along the tongue with increasing presence. Sappy flavours take off on the lifted after palate and persist through a peacock’s tail finish that resonates with attractive flair. 
I like this sort of wine. It never yells yet has so much to say. The way it is building in the glass suggests a happy future. 

Domaine du Meix Foulot
Price: $A41.80
Closure: Cork

Bass Phillip Village Pinot Noir 2005

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I really do try to be a sympathetic partner, but I find myself involuntarily laughing when, on opening an unusual wine, my other half has a dramatically negative reaction, sometimes declaring a wine horrible and utterly undrinkable. “Oh really, what don’t you like about it?” I usually ask, knowing I’ll get back an amusingly colourful rant. Granted, he has an extremely low tolerance for things not to his taste (not a bad thing) which, when combined with my forgiveness of odd flavours and wine faults, means we have these conversations more frequently than one might expect. And so it was when we opened this wine a couple of nights ago.

Without wanting to suggest I’ve tasted an extensive range, ever since Chris and I shared a magical moment or two over a bottle of Tetsuya’s house red (a Bass Phillip Pinot made especially), I’ve had a soft spot for Phillip Jones’s wines. This one is testing my loyalty, though. Tasted from the same bottle two days apart, my experience is mixed. On the first night, a masculine wine full of robust, sour berry fruit and stalky, in fact almost twiggy, flavour. Although eliciting the aforementioned “yuk” from my partner, I really enjoyed the robust character and almost brutish force of the flavour profile. Granted, there seemed to be all sorts of weird flavours in there too, quite indescribable and frankly not quite “right.”

Two days on and those odd flavours have won the battle. On the nose, a really odd smell that reminds me of rancid deep fryer fat, mixed with crunchy red berries, freshly ground black pepper and horse hair. Not exactly your clean, New World Pinot Noir. The palate continues this oddness, with flavours of paté on Melba toast, potato chips and utterly delicious sour fruit. And that’s the thing with this wine. It’s not right in the head, yet I keep coming back to it, fascinated by its combination of strange and compelling flavours. Flavour profile aside, it is structured really well, with good movement through the mouth and a well balanced interplay of acid and tannin.

I wouldn’t recommend this wine to a stranger, but I would share it with a friend.

Bass Phillip
Price: $A35
Closure: Cork

Sébastien Roux Santenay "Sebastien" 2006

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Somewhat sweet and yet savory on the nose, this wine throw out associations with spearmint, roses, strawberries, and dried straw. There’s also a hint of typically Burgundian sourness there, framing it all to somewhat more serious effect; I’ve enjoyed just smelling this for a few minutes without necessarily feeling compelled to drink any. If anything, it smells unusually ripe, which is a bit of a surprise given the fairly pail, almost milky color of the wine.Somewhat broad in terms of structure and tannin, there’s a somewhat disappointing lack of strong flavor here, buttressed by firm acidity on the finish and a disconcerting aftertaste of stale wheat crackers. Sadly, I’m at a loss to describe what exactly this tastes like other than “like mediocre Burgundy” – it isn’t bad, exactly, and yet it isn’t doing anything at all for me in terms of pleasure. Weirdly, the only thing that comes to mind is something called Crazy Cow, which was a 1970s breakfast cereal that turned milk into strawberry milk upon application thereof. There’s an industrial strangeness here which, paradoxically, comes from a wine which presumably isn’t industrially made. Could it simply be that unusual ripeness in this vintage is overwhelming what interest there is behind relatively full sugars? I don’t know, but I’ll take a pass on this one.Sébastien Roux
Price: $20
Closure: Cork

Curlewis Bel Sel Pinot Noir 2006

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Together with the Stefano Lubiana tasted yesterday, this wine falls in a sparsely populated class that I shall call “second label Australian Pinot Noirs that don’t taste like second label Australian Pinot Noirs.” Breaking new ground, as always.

This wine reeks of winemaking cred. Really funky aromas of tomato sauce, barbecued snags, sparkling red fruit and spice. A touch of merde too. Personally, I love it, not least for the fact that it will probably divide drinkers in an instant. Despite everything that’s going on here, fruit flavour seems quite straightforward, which is a nice foil to the winemaking artifact. Above all, it communicates an immediate, confident sense of style.

Stefano Lubiana Primavera Pinot Noir 2008

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Visiting Central Otago with Chris late last year was instructive in many respects, not least in the opportunity it afforded to taste many producers’ second label Pinots alongside their premium offerings. As much as I’d like to believe in the romanticism of wine and winemaking, more often than not I am struck by how calculated a particular range of wines can be. A simple, fruity second label, a heftier mainstream wine, an excessively extracted and oaked reserve label. Very much by the numbers, and quite uninteresting as a set of implicit assumptions around what constitutes quality and value. 

Wine, for me, should be anchored in a sense of context and appropriateness. Some wines facilitate a casual weekday meal, others challenge the intellect, and yet others can create a sense of occasion. Variations in structure and flavour profile reflect these roles, rather than a perceived hierarchy of quality. I’m not a relativist when it comes to quality, but I do believe the question isn’t simply a matter of “more” or “bigger.”
I mention all that in passing because this Pinot challenges the idea that a second label wine should be an easy, straightforward drinking experience. It’s a little different from some previous vintages of the Primavera which, while rarely being simple, have sometimes shown to more immediate advantage. The aroma here, by contrast, strikes one with depth and savouriness. It’s almost a difficult aroma profile, with odd notes such as sweet foliage (not quite tomato vine), juicy yet savoury cherry fruit and oak that seems smokey, sappy and a bit raw. Some attractive five spice notes on top too. Some of this angularity is no doubt due to its youth, but this wine seems to have a fundamentally dark aroma.
The palate confirms the density of this wine’s fruit flavour. It’s quite sombre, full of crushed black cherries and plums, sweet and sour sauce, chocolate and some sappiness. Entry is immediate, packed with fruit flavour and pushed along by a good dose of acidity. The middle palate is full of flavour but manages to avoid feeling heavy thanks to the acid and a framework of tannins that are loosely defined yet quite assertive. The flavour profile seems somewhat medicinal at this point, showing mostly in savoury terms and turning in a sappy, slightly oaky direction on the after palate. The finish is clean, long and full of fruit flavour. 
I’m not at all confident I have the measure of this wine, and that in itself pleases me. It’s a tasty, deeply fruited, sophisticated Pinot, packed with fruit flavour and happy to exist in a spectrum of flavour that might be regarded as difficult. I understand 2008 was a warm growing season in Tasmania, and the level of fruit ripeness here seems higher than in some previous vintages. In any case, it’s very distinctive and perhaps even brave. I suspect given a few months in bottle it will be even better. A pleasure to taste such complexity and distinctiveness in a second label wine.

Stefano Lubiana
Price: $A27.55
Closure: Stelvin

Jacques Cacheux & Fils Vosne-Romanée Aux Réas 2006

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It’s probably not the best idea to taste wine while you’re baking a cake, but as Philip White wrote recently in defense of mixing fragrance and wine: as if wine was always meant to be drunk in sterilised rooms. In fact, the smells of baking are stimulating my appetite in the most gluttonous manner, and I’d like to think this provides an