Last Sunday a great afternoon spent tasting and gabbing pinot. Gordon Newton Johnson makes one at Newton Johnson cellars, and he wanted to have some friends around to compare a group that ranged from Marlborough to Hemel-en-Aarde to the Cote de Nuits.
Pinot makes you work for her, and her “sweetspot” is very narrow. On the one end, with young vines, you get light but attractive strawberry fruits and not much complexity. On the other end, you get confected fruit and the over-exaggerated presence of oak. Somewhere in a very small middle you find delight.
The New Zealanders (Delta, Terravin, Felton Road) are able to extract wonderful fruit expression, and where they match this with judicious wood, the result is wonderful, like the 2004 Felton Road. They seem to be able to capture the “perfume” of pinot, something that Gyles Webb remarked we seem to struggle to achieve.
Our examples that day (Newton Johnson 2003 and 2006 sample and Hamilton Russell 2003) showed, on the NJ, great texture and good acidity but a quiet nose; on the HR the over-bearing presence of wood. The 2003 HRV is for me not typical of the house style, however, even though it became a 5 star wine in the John Platter guide.
The French wines stood out for their fruit weight – the advantage that you only achieve through old and properly mature vines. Not all of them – famously this is a wine where you can spend a great deal on a thin, very slight wine, here the 2002 Jean Chauvenet Nuits St Georges refers. But then they can be wondrous, like the 2001 Meo-Camuzet Nuits St Georges.
Pinot: the wine as much about desire as satisfaction.
Out of interest, who’s opinion or ‘ratings’ do you pay more attention to? The ’sighted’ John Platter Guide or the ‘blind’ Winemag ratings.
The less obvious a wine is, the more intriguing it is…love Pinot Noir for that reason…although there have been south African attempts that fall seriously flat.
Sighted vs Blind: the perennial debate. In a perfect world, we taste the wine by drinking a glass or two, preferably with complementary food.
Sighted seems to respect the wine more, which can be a good thing if the taster is scrupulously honest about what is tasted. This is, of course, almost impossible, and we are all swayed by opinion and preconceptions. With sighted, the taster can also assess whether the wine delivers on the promise that that winery makes – be it through its media message (and its label, bottle weight, etc) or price or track record.
Blind is more “scientific” and should be better. However, having tasted on some of these panels, my concern is the speed that the tastings are done at, a real sniff and spit race. There is no time for reflection, something you may do with sighted. Blind has the other advantage of wine’s being tasted against peers, a great leveller. But blind is usually done in panels of tasters, with a chair, and this chair can often sway the personal opinions and make the result uniform or flat (check out all the three star Wine mag wines).
I am personally against ratings for wines. I know they fulfil a great marketing function, but they are too often a “lottery”. But to answer your question: I look at Wine’s for curiousity but don’t believe; I look at Platter but find the notes more interesting in the facts they convey. Platter’s five star wines are however worth noting – having been selected by the sighted tasters and then survived the blind taste-off.
Thanks! great stuff. yip i personally hate the ratings…they become institutions them selves, and whether blind or sighted, create and influence perceptions in the consumers minds….and just as much as the label or historical reputation of a farm does…in the end its a vicious circle
The award stickers do however generate exponential sales…i guess it goes back to the good old saying of ‘never judge a book by its cover’…