A Pinot Noir tasting panel is always very interesting. Just for the reason that the grape in itself is quite temperamental. As one of my convener’s at the California Pinot Noir tasting session at Vancouver had told me how the wine behaves like a teenager, quite impressive at times and downright off tune at times. We, at the Delhi Wine Club decided to blind taste a flight of 11 Pinot Noir from the Old Country and New from both the Southern Hemisphere and North. The tasting panel consisted of eminent personalities from the Delhi wine circuit: Our hosts were Mr Shubhash Arora and Mr Arun Verma from the Delhi Wine Club along with Ms Kriti Malhotra, the resident sommelier at the Pullman and Novotel hotels. The other panelists included Tristan and Isabel Beau de Lomenie, Col. Ravi Joshi from Guns 2 Guwerztraminer, Prithvi Nagpal from Lake Forest Wines, Manas Kapoor from Prestige Wines, Ankur Chawla from ScopeBev, Prateek Arora from QLA and Donnadieu Charles, sommelier at The Lalit New Delhi.
Although most of the scoring based around the median for the wines, many of them had scores which fluctuated wildly. Let’s start with some of the Old World Classics, especially with the Burgundy Reds. One of the oldest ones was the Joseph Drouhin Gevrey Chambertin ‘13, but there quite a few others that impressed us with the classic taste. The Bourgogne Rouge ‘15 by Albert Bichot has a cracking aroma of sweet berries on the nose that extends to it’s tasting notes too accompanied by a range of moderate tannins. The Burgundy from Les Vendangeurs has a quite lovely ending of strawberries which extends long into the aftertaste with quite a bit of acidity. But the Gevrey Chambertin that takes the prize with it’s dominant profile of oak along with nutmeg and a leathery flavour that co-incides with some spicy notes and a set of complex tannins that round it off perfectly.
Let’s head to newer pastures now. From the Northern Hemisphere, the Woodbridge ‘15 from Robert Mondavi has quite a few hints of Cherry while the Private Selection ‘15 is filled with hints of spice along with it too, namely white and black pepper. Although I found both of these quite similar to each other, I scored the Woodbridge at 86 over the Private Selection at 84.
We also had some of the Pinot Noir from the Southern Hemisphere too. The Framingham ‘15 gains it’s spicy and savory notes from being finished in smoked oak barrels while the Mudhouse ‘14 fills the front part of the mouth with prominent fruity flavours, most common of them being the raspberry. Both of these wines are from New Zealand and have the characteristic taste of new world Pinot Noir.
Tell us about your favourite Pinot Noir in the comments below.
