Pinot Noir

Pinot Noir clusters are small, tight and pine-cone shaped — the likely origin of the name, from French pin. The berries have thin skins, which give relatively pale wines with soft tannins and leave the grape vulnerable to rot in wet harvests. Those same thin skins are why it is prized: with little colour or tannin to mask it, the wine reflects differences in soil, slope and vintage with unusual clarity.

In the glass, young Pinot Noir typically shows fresh berry fruit — cherry, blackcurrant — over fresh acidity and a light-to-medium body. With time in bottle, the fruit recedes and more savoury notes emerge, such as wild mushroom, truffle and leather.

Pinot is among the oldest varieties still widely planted and is genetically unstable: it mutates readily, and its colour variants Pinot Gris and Pinot Blanc are the same variety with altered skin pigmentation. Meunier, the third Champagne grape, is a chimeral mutant of Pinot.

DNA profiling published in 1999 showed that crosses between Pinot and Gouais Blanc — a prolific, long-despised peasant grape — produced Chardonnay, Aligoté, Gamay Noir, Melon and a dozen others (16 in all in the 1999 study; later work counts 21). In 2007 grapevine became the first fruit crop to have its genome sequenced, from PN40024, a highly inbred line long thought to be pure Pinot Noir (it descends from a Pinot Noir × Schiava Grossa cross); a Pinot Noir clone was sequenced the same year.

Burgundy — above all the Côte de Nuits — remains its reference. In Champagne it is blended with Chardonnay and Meunier, giving body and red-fruit depth; in Alsace and the Loire (Sancerre rouge) it makes lighter reds. Germany's Spätburgunder, from the Ahr to Baden, has grown into a serious style. Beyond Europe it succeeds where nights are cool: Oregon's Willamette Valley, the Sonoma Coast and Santa Barbara in California, Central Otago and Marlborough in New Zealand, Tasmania and the Yarra Valley in Australia, Casablanca in Chile and Hemel-en-Aarde in South Africa.

Pinot Noir is often called the most food-friendly red, and the reasons are structural rather than mystical. Fresh acidity cuts through fat and refreshes the palate against rich, gelatinous braises such as bœuf bourguignon. Low to moderate tannin means it does not turn bitter or metallic with fish, mushrooms or poultry, where a heavily tannic wine can clash. Its savoury, earthy notes echo mushrooms, roast meat juices and aged cheese.

It is less happy with very spicy dishes, where alcohol and tannin amplify heat, or with strongly sweet sauces, which make dry wine taste thin.