Chris Williams waxes lyrical about this sensual (and so often disappointing) variety

Many wine lovers simply do not ‘get’ pinot noir. When they first taste an example, they are under-impressed by the pale colour, unusual earthy, slightly ‘bloody’ aromas; and the palate is equally light bodied, often dilute and insipid and finishes with a strange powdery, tea leaf like dryness. ‘What’s the fuss about?’ they will ask – and rightly so. Welcome to the over-populated world of expensive and disappointing pinot noir.

But then, one day, when you least expect it, you will have your ‘pinot moment’. If you don’t know if you have had it or not, then, I’m afraid, you haven’t. It is like your first kiss, awkward but alluring, and you know you want more.

My first ‘pinot moment’ was a bottle of Comte De Vogüe Musigny 1985 which I tasted over a simple lunch in 1995. This was the first wine I had ever tasted which silenced me. Not in a ‘thunderstruck’ kind of way but in a ‘put down your pen, close your eyes, stop trying to describe this wine and just enjoy’ kind of way. What was it about this wine that probably changed my life’s course? One word: perfume.

The wine exhibited an exotic perfume which defies accurate description. Yes, there was red and black fruit; sure, there was the meatiness, the savoury wild mushrooms. But it was the musk that did it. Musky, floral, savoury incense is the closest I can describe it, but then also soil, breath, herbs and burning aromatic wood smoke. The more I try to name the flavours, the more elusive they become. That is because pinot noir is not an intellectual wine like cabernet; it is sensual, sexy even, and also appeals to our subconscious, our Id. Good pinot is a supremely humane wine, it affirms life, desire and experience. Like I said, if you are not sure that you have experienced this, then you haven’t; it is unforgettable.

And this is where the problems begin. Having been seduced, corrupted even, you want to repeat the experience. You go out and buy expensive red burgundy, Oregon pinot perhaps. With trembling fingers you savagely tear the capsule from the top of the bottle. Breathing heavily with anticipation, you purposefully insert the corkscrew and try to draw it from the neck. There is a moment of resistance and then it yields, and it gasps as it pops open. Faster now you grab the bottle, impatiently you find the glass and pour. Time stops. There is expectation. And then you raise the glass.

Very pale, it appears, then you sniff, searchingly, looking for the excitement, the rush of endorphins and pheromones. But what is this? Alcohol, coarse charry wood. Some over-ripe fruit.

‘Where is the perfume?’ you squeal, ‘the spice, the musk?’. There is nothing there but base vinous components, there is no magic, no alchemy, no seduction. You slump into the chair, dejected, rejected. Another disappointing pinot experience.

You continue with the quest, like an addict searching for the fix. The bottles become very expensive. You consult Parker, Hanson, Broadbent, the Spectator even. You return from international trips burdened with promising bottles. You pay for the extra weight on board and customs when you get home. Still, disappointment. And then, when you have almost given up and begun to flirt with Bordeaux, Australia even, you will have another one. A sublime bottle. Again you will addicted.

This is the capriciousness of Pinot Noir. You have to know the vineyard, the vintage and the grower, yet this still will not guarantee you a ‘pinot moment’. There is bottle variation and the mood has to be just right.

Picky pinot

Pinot Noir is supremely choosy about where it grows. You have to have the right clones, you need to restrict the yields. With the slightest heat wave you get cooked fruit, a jammy, rhubarb mess.

In the cellar it is susceptible to oxidation, it absorbs poor quality wood in an instant and throws it back into your face in disgust. It is ambivalent to expensive, 36 month air dried, tight grain oak; it is sullen for months after malolactic fermentation. It picks up volatility when your back is turned. Like a gas canary underground in the mines it is the first wine to be affected by brettanomyces in the cellar. It is downright rude and infantile when you have a barrel tasting with an important journalist. But then one day you will taste the barrel again, and it will be perfect, rich yet light, perfumed, charming, ethereal. Now the challenge is getting it into bottle without bruising her lithe body.

Pinot noir growers usually have a look of forlorn and quiet desperation about them. They walk slowly, hunched, eyes down cast. Their mistress is a demanding one and it shows on their faces. But these same people (among whom, for better or worse, I count myself) gallantly and, some would say, foolishly persevere and defend pinot. Unparalleled is the loyalty and love these pinotphiles have for the grape.

I think it comes down to the perfume, both in the bouquet and the palate. I always love watching my dog when we are out on the farm for a walk. He lives in a realm of scent. He relies only fleetingly on vision and hearing. His world is composed of nanograms of molecules which travel up his nostrils and create his reality in his brain from ribbons of smells. As humans we have almost abandoned this acute sense in favour of our eyes and for me the bouquet of good pinot noir re-connects me with this primal sense. I am amazed that I can derive such pleasure from such an ancient and primordial faculty and pinot noir provides the object of this affection.

Next time: Anything but chardonnay?