Many of you who know me know that I do not claim to be a wine expert. I think that I am becoming a pretty good winemaker, and that I have some reasonably good senses for evaluating wine, but readily admit that being an expert takes more than just decent senses. It takes tasting many wines and learning from those tasting about varietals and blends, their “normal” characteristics, and what makes them unique from varietal to varietal, blend to blend, vintage to vintage. I am, however, getting better at recognizing the “normal” characteristics of different wines and the experience of tasting new vintages from different wineries continues to hone my experience.

Many of you may also know that Valerie and I just finished a seven day trip to Oregon and Southern Washington.  A good portion of that trip was dedicated to wine tasting at the many wineries and vineyards in the area. It was a very interesting trip full of great scenery and wines that ranged from just OK to very, very good.

Our trip took us to wineries in and around the Portland area, eastward into the Columbia River Gorge, (Hood River, The Dalles, and on to Biggs Junction), and south/southwest into the Dundee Hills area of the Willamette Valley. The northern wineries in the gorge area make a variety of wines.  The Willamette Valley is famous for their Pinot Noir. Every winery has at least one, and most more than one, Pinot Noir wine. There is also quite a bit of Pinot Gris and Chardonnay grown here, and while for the most part these are very good wines, neither of those varieties is one that I like to drink very much, so I spent a lot of time concentrating on the Pinot.

Believe me, the variety of wine made from Pinot Noir is enough to keep you busy. I can see Pinot being a very hard wine to appreciate, and not at all easy to taste. There is just so much diversity and complexity in the wines and the grape is so versatile and sensitive that there is very little consistency across vineyards and vintages. As Valerie and I tasted our way through the Dundee Hills and the surrounding areas I began to notice some similarities that allowed me to categorize the styles in my mind. I would like to share, and if you like, get some comments on, the categories of Pinot Noir wines I have developed for myself. These are very general categories, and probably do not do justice to the variety of Pinot Noir wines available, but they have helped me to deal with the many different wines that I tasted.

The fist style that stood out to me was the very light Pinot Noir wines. I don’t mean rosé style Pinots, (there were quite a few of those), but wines sold as true Pinot Noir that were made in a very light style. These light style Pinots are very lightly colored, soft wines, usually with a fruity, floral nose and taste that reminded me of red fruits like strawberries. Some of them are just too light, and to my taste without much body. I suspect some are a product of trying to grow Pinot Noir in an area where the grapes just don’t thrive and so don’t mature enough to give a very dark, full bodied wine. You might like these as a summer wine and if you don’t really enjoy more heavy reds. For me they were just too light, and if I really wanted Pinot that light I would drink a rosé style. Most of these very light wines came from the northern Oregon and southern Washington areas.

The next style, and one I like a lot more, is the full bodied Pinot Noir wines. These darker, ruby colored wines usually have a big complex nose full of smoke, pepper, plums and sometimes hints of leather and vanilla. The palate is a mouth full of darker fruits like plum, current, cherry, usually with relatively hefty tannins and a spicy finish. Interestingly, to my palate the acidity was all over the board ranging from crisp and bright to darker and less evident. This style is a lot more complex than the light styles, and I need to spend more time with these wines to learn to appreciate their subtleties. Most of the wines we tasted around the Dundee Hills fell into this category.

The final category, and in my mind the most rare, are what I term the “velvety” Pinots. These are by far my favorite, and, of course, usually the most expensive. The velvety Pinots I had were usually garnet or on the darker side of ruby red color, sometimes almost purple. The nose is not as spicy, but still smoky and usually featured dark fruit aromas mixed with chocolate, vanilla, and sometimes liquorish. They are smooth and luxurious on the palate with a mouth feel that reminds of the way velvet feels on my skin. The taste is an earthy, complex mix of dark berries, plum, chocolate, clove and other dark spices, and the tannins while present, are soft and melt away into the finish. You know when you drink one of these you have something special, and I love them.

As you might expect Valerie and I brought quite a few wines home with us, and I am looking forward to tasting them again to see how my perceptions the second time agree with my initial feelings. I am also looking forward to experiencing more Pinot Noir wines, and to learn more about the Burgundy wines that are mostly shaped by this complex grape.