As I am a bit of a Pinot Noir fan this week is something I have been looking forward to, but as I have said before choice is something that I can find overwhelming, if there is too much of it. I have talked a little about book shops (week J (2013)), but this week you get another insight into the alleged workings of my mind which concerns restaurants. Give me a menu and I will parse the options to remove anything that sounds unnecessarily healthy, most things that come out of the sea and items which after having the superfluous descriptive words removed sound like nothing more exciting than meat and two veg. Hopefully that leaves me with a choice of two or more attractive options. The One will want to know what I will have so that she can order something else, with the intent of stealing at least a forkful of my dinner, but that's not going to happen. Oh, no. Not purely for selfish reasons, but mostly because I can't choose until the waiter is hovering over me with a sharp pencil.
Pinot Noir has its home in Burgundy, in the West of France, where countless producers make red wines from a single grape variety grown countless vineyards, in countless villages. It's all Burgundy, but it's not all the same. Quality and price vary widely and so choosing well requires a balance of knowledge, budget, courage and luck.
I want to keep on track with my 52 wines in 52 weeks plan, so I decided to find my Pinot Noir somewhere else less complicated.
Week P (2014) is Hahn Winery, Pinot Noir , California. 2012. Waitrose £13.99.
The Hahn family founded their winery in 1980 and it is still managed as a family business today. The grapes used in this wine come mostly from the American Viticultural Area (AVA) of Arroyo Seco, with 8% coming from their holding in the Santa Lucia Highlands. Hahn explain that this blend is intended to produce a rounded fruit forward wine with well balanced acidity and elegance. This sounds great and we will see if we agree shortly.
Pinot Noir is not an easy grape to cultivate and this explains, in part, why the range of qualities, styles and flavours available from Burgundy alone is so diverse. It has a thin skin, the part of the grape responsible for a wines colour and much of its flavour and so Pinot Noir is not often deeply coloured, and this together with it producing flower buds early in the season leaves it prone to all kinds of viticultural risks from both weather and disease.
In very hot regions it can produce very jammy (as in jam, not luck) wines and it is best grown in cooler climate areas, like Burgundy. California has a broad spectrum of climatic conditions but the Arroyo Seco AVA is in Monterey County, to the South East of a bay of the same name, where cool air from the Pacific Ocean moderates the more extreme temperatures found further South or inland. The soil is gravelly and absorbs heat during the day, and releases it through the night and protects these sensitive grapes from one of the many perils that can cause problems; frost.
The wine is a medium intensity ruby colour and it has tears that point to the 14.5% abv that lurk in the bottle. This is on the high side for a Pinot Noir, but on tasting it is well integrated with the fruits, mostly black cherries, and the subtle oak-influenced results of having spent some time in 40% new French oak.
I am very impressed with this wine, it is smooth, well-balanced, complex and has a lasting finish. At the price it isn't from the 'everyday wine' category (if there really is such a thing), but it is good enough value to not get stuck in the Sunday lunch only bucket. And that's a phrase I'll never use again.
Final factette: The family name, Hahn, translates into German as 'Rooster' and that explains the logo.
Pinot Noir has its home in Burgundy, in the West of France, where countless producers make red wines from a single grape variety grown countless vineyards, in countless villages. It's all Burgundy, but it's not all the same. Quality and price vary widely and so choosing well requires a balance of knowledge, budget, courage and luck.
I want to keep on track with my 52 wines in 52 weeks plan, so I decided to find my Pinot Noir somewhere else less complicated.
Week P (2014) is Hahn Winery, Pinot Noir , California. 2012. Waitrose £13.99.The Hahn family founded their winery in 1980 and it is still managed as a family business today. The grapes used in this wine come mostly from the American Viticultural Area (AVA) of Arroyo Seco, with 8% coming from their holding in the Santa Lucia Highlands. Hahn explain that this blend is intended to produce a rounded fruit forward wine with well balanced acidity and elegance. This sounds great and we will see if we agree shortly.
Pinot Noir is not an easy grape to cultivate and this explains, in part, why the range of qualities, styles and flavours available from Burgundy alone is so diverse. It has a thin skin, the part of the grape responsible for a wines colour and much of its flavour and so Pinot Noir is not often deeply coloured, and this together with it producing flower buds early in the season leaves it prone to all kinds of viticultural risks from both weather and disease.
In very hot regions it can produce very jammy (as in jam, not luck) wines and it is best grown in cooler climate areas, like Burgundy. California has a broad spectrum of climatic conditions but the Arroyo Seco AVA is in Monterey County, to the South East of a bay of the same name, where cool air from the Pacific Ocean moderates the more extreme temperatures found further South or inland. The soil is gravelly and absorbs heat during the day, and releases it through the night and protects these sensitive grapes from one of the many perils that can cause problems; frost.
The wine is a medium intensity ruby colour and it has tears that point to the 14.5% abv that lurk in the bottle. This is on the high side for a Pinot Noir, but on tasting it is well integrated with the fruits, mostly black cherries, and the subtle oak-influenced results of having spent some time in 40% new French oak.
I am very impressed with this wine, it is smooth, well-balanced, complex and has a lasting finish. At the price it isn't from the 'everyday wine' category (if there really is such a thing), but it is good enough value to not get stuck in the Sunday lunch only bucket. And that's a phrase I'll never use again.
Final factette: The family name, Hahn, translates into German as 'Rooster' and that explains the logo.
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