High QPR Pinot Noir #4! (How the American wine palate has been programmed by big wine, Pinot is a polarizing wine)

Show Notes

Episode 117: High QPR Pinot Noir #4!  00:00

Hello! And welcome to The Wine Pair Podcast. I’m Joe, your sommelier of reasonably priced wine, and this is my wife and my wine pairing partner in crime, Carmela. And we are The Wine Pair! 

Ok, a quick orientation for those of you who may be new to the podcast - in each episode we learn about, taste and give our honest review of three wines that are reasonably priced - meaning under $20 each -  and should be easy for you to find. And our podcast is made for people who want to learn more about wine, find new wines to enjoy, and just want someone to talk about wine in a fun way that regular people can understand. So, if that sounds like you, you are in the right place! And we are proud to say that we are recommended by the editors of Decanter Magazine who call us fun, irreverent, chatty, and entertaining

We are back,Carmela, with one of my favorite episode series that we do, and that is High QPR Pinot Noir. Now for those of you who may have forgotten, or never knew, what High QPR means, QPR means quality to price ratio, and that means, relative to the price, the wine is high quality or higher quality than you would expect.

I am not going to spend a lot of time on the concept because we have talked about it in other High QPR episodes. So you can be thankful for that. But I do want to talk about a couple of things related to these episodes and this wine. 

First, Pinot Noir is probably my favorite wine. Number two is probably Barbaresco. And I like them because I tend to find them, at least the ones I prefer, to be pretty subdued, complex, and elegant - and most importantly, not overpowering. A wine to be contemplated. 

But those kinds of wines are usually not cheap, and we have found that lower cost Pinot Noirs are generally not made in that style - the more inexpensive ones tend to be, to me, made more in a Cabernet Sauvignon style, which is bold and up front and in your face. We famously call them punch-you-in-the-face wines. So, finding High QPR Pinot Noirs that fit our expectations, that is under $20 and in that more elegant style, is not easy. We have not had a ton of luck in these episodes finding a lot of really good High QPR Pinot Noirs in our price range.

Which is why for this episode, we are going to try some wines from France and South America to see if getting outside the US is helpful in finding High QPR Pinot Noir.

The other thing about Pinot Noir that I have found, and we will talk about that in more depth later in the episode, is that Pinot Noir seems to be pretty polarizing. The people who like big, in-your-face wines, like California Cabs, tend to dislike Pinot Noir, or like them in a very California style -meaning oaky, bold, and tannic. 

Other people just don’t like Pinot Noir because they think it is, for its price, overrated. They just find the wine overpriced. And others don’t like Pinot Noir because they find Pinot Noir lovers to be snobby assholes who think they are better than everyone else. Which is probably true, but that's a rude thing to say.

So we’ll dig more into that subject in a bit, and we have three well rated and very reasonably priced Pinot Noirs to drink . . .

But first . . . we have to do our shameless plug.

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And we want to give a shout out to Janyne, and I really hope I am saying her name right, but Janyne got back to us last week about our Wallet Friendly Wine Review episode and let us know she wanted us to do more episodes like it, and so we are going to definitely oblige. Like we like to say, we want to create content you care about, so let us know what you like to hear or what to know more about. And, Bud, we are still on the hunt for Virginia wines - we are finding it a challenge, but we won’t give up

And, as we do every week, we’ll tell you someone we think you should tell about The Wine Pair Podcast. This week, we want you to tell anyone who thinks Pinot Noir lovers are snobs, because they just may find something they agree with in this episode. 

ARTICLES and LINKS

• https://www.wineberserkers.com/t/is-pinot-noir-overrated/289756  

Topic: Why Is Pinot Noir So Polarizing? 07:28

So let’s talk a little bit about why Pinot Noir can be so polarizing. Again, I see this over and over when going out to dinner or even talking about wine. There are people who adore Pinot Noir, and people who can’t stand it, and vice versa on Cabernet Sauvignon.

One of the reasons why people don’t like Pinot Noir is because the American wine industry, and I am sure this is true in other countries, is just built to push big, heavy, fruit and oak bombs that can be consumed whenever, particularly young, - which is very much the California style of wine - and so people have come to expect that in wines. Anything that is lighter bodied or more subtle comes across as weak.

There is a great blog post that I have a link to in our show notes from a site called World of Wine, and the author talks about a wine tasting for 50-odd wines from California, Oregon, and Canada. By the way, if you did not know, Oregon is considered to make a more Burgundy-like Pinot than anywhere else in North America and maybe the world. What he says in the post is very telling. 

What he said is that descriptors like spicy, jammy, black fruits, and hot were often used when tasters were talking about California Pinots - which are descriptors for big, bold reds, not Pinots. Meanwhile, he says that the tasters used these descriptors for Oregon Pinots: red fruits, cherry, raspberry, and fresh, which are very much classic Pinot descriptors - but not really tastes that the average wine drinker would say about the wines they drink every day, or what they expect out of wine. 

The blog writer also talked about the more classic style of Pinot wines feeling “effortless” which I think is one of those things that a really good wine will give a sense of, but is really hard to describe when drinking a wine. The point he was making is that great wines come across as effortless, as if the wine maker just sort of let the grapes do their thing and the yeast do their thing and left them alone mostly, while other wines felt like the winemaker had to force flavor out of them. To me, that is a fantastic way to describe how I feel about these over extracted overdone American or California style wines. 

This tuning of the American palate, and the expectations around what makes a good wine is I think pretty pervasive and influential, and impacts even the first impression around Pinot Noir. For example, Pinot Noirs are often lighter colored wines which can throw people off. In fact, many mass produced wines add either grapes or additives to wines to make them appear very dark in the glass, and so people are conditioned to expect a certain look from their wine, meaning dark and inky and opaque, which a good Pinot Noir will not have.

Also, Americans, and most wine drinkers I believe, are not very patient. The vast majority of people buy wines and expect to be able to open them up and enjoy them right away. Storing a wine requires time, patience, and an adequate place to store them. However, many of the best wines, and this is especially true of good Pinot Noirs, as well as Barolos and Barbarescos, etc. need years before they are really ready to drink. What that means is that most people who are drinking Pinot Noirs and finding them not all that are most likely drinking Pinot Noirs that are either not ready, or were not built to age and therefore are really sub-par by their nature. 

So, while I will always say that what a person likes in wine is highly subjective, and people have different preferences in all sorts of things related to food and drink, overall, I just firmly believe that people who don’t like Pinot Noir tend to be people who gravitate towards big, bold wines that are meant to be drunk young AND because they have not had a great or even good Pinot Noir. Because a mediocre Pinot Noir is just not great and will be underwhelming, especially when compared to those bigger wines. And that is the impression that most of these wine drinkers will get from this style of Pinot Noir. 

So, that’s a lot.  I think it’s time to learn a little more about the specific wines we are drinking today.

ARTICLES and LINKS

• https://www.winespectator.com/articles/pinot-noir-polarization-14604 
• https://sanfranciscowineschool.com/blogs/blog/19214595-why-somms-love-pinot-noir
• https://www.gosanangelo.com/story/life/2021/07/13/here-four-types-palates-wine-drinkers/7954865002/  
• https://worldoffinewine.com/uncategorized/north-american-pinot-noir-nature-and-nurture-4661323 
• https://www.conosur.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/FICHA-ORGANIC-PINOT-NOIR-2021-ENG.pdf

High QPR Pinot Noir Wines We Chose for This Episode 15:38

As usual, all of the wines we have chosen for this episode are under $20, and all of them should be relatively easy to find because I bought them all on wine.com. And, overall, it is not hard to find Pinot Noir. What I think is hard is to find good Pinot Noir that doesn’t cost a lot. And by a lot, I mean a lot. Unfortunately, most good Pinot Noirs are going to be in the $40-ish or more range. 

As I mentioned earlier, this time around I tried to find Pinots that had decent ratings, that were very reasonably priced - in fact all of these are under $14 - and are not American. At least not North American. So, we have two from France, and one from Chile. The one thing I will say about these wines is that they are pretty young, so that could definitely impact the tasting. 

The first wine we are going to drink is called Cono Sur Organic Pinot Noir, and it is a wine from 2021 that hails from Chile. And, by the way, I had to say the name out loud before I got the tongue in cheek nature of the name. At least I hope that’s what they were intending

This wine is certified organic by the organization ECOCERT which is based in France and mostly, but not completely, focuses on food products. Even the label on the wine is made from recycled paper, so they are trying!

I did find a tech sheet for the wine which I always like to get because it gives some important information about the wine like how they make it, if they age it in oak, etc.. They say the grapes are handpicked, and that 50% of the wine was aged in French oak barrels for 10 months, and half of it was aged in stainless steel tanks for 12 months. Although the tech sheet also said that it was picked in March of 2021 and bottled in October of 2021, which is only 6 months, so I don’t know how they aged the wine for a year. So they screwed up somewhere. 

On to our next wine, which is the Paul Mas Réserve Pinot Noir from Languedoc-Roussillon France, which is in the south of France. The winery says the vineyards they get the grapes from are in the Pays d’Oc appellation, and are well exposed and frequented by cooling winds, and the soil is chalky, gravelly clay, and limestone.

They also say they use sustainable farming practices, and portions of the vineyards they source their grapes from are organic. They also say the harvest at night when it is cooler, that they scrape the grapes, which is something I have never heard before, and then they do a cold pre-fermentation. They do use malolactic fermentation which is used to mellow a wine out. By the way, Decanter gave this wine a 90 and James Suckling gave it an 89. 

Alright, our final wine is Domaine Laroque Cite de Carcassonne Pinot Noir from the 2021 vintage, and is also a wine from the Languedoc region in the south of France. The name of the winery, Laroque, evidently comes from these large rocks called Menhirs, which I guess are like Stonehenge stones, that are found around the area. Here is a little story about them and the winery:
During the Middle Ages, the vineyards belonged to the Bishop of Carcassonne, who was renowned for making the best wines in the region. Local legend has it that the devil, upset with the Bishop of Carcassonne for stealing his “clients,” tried to stone the Bishop with giant rocks. Following the attack, the Bishop constructed the fortress of Cazilhac with these Menhirs and marked the event by placing a cross on the last remaining Menhir. After this, processions were undertaken around this oratory and all the parcels of vines that surrounded it, including those of Laroque, in order to ward off the devil.

The winery says their grapes rival those found in Burgundy. They ferment the wine in stainless steel for 14 days, and then finish the fermentation in fresh oak. They also do something called remontage - which is pumping juice over the cap to macerate the wine or draw out flavor - and they do this three times a day to soften the tannins for the first few days, and then move to twice per day. They fine and filter their wines and also use malolactic fermentation. They claim to be environmentally friendly, and they also night harvest. 

But, I think that is more than enough information - let’s get to drinking! We’ll take a quick break and be right back. And, if you have these wines or similar wines, drink along with us!


ARTICLES and LINKS

• https://madwine.com/shop/product/cono-sur-organic-pinot-noir/56ca47717562752ed5580200?option-id=98dc83358db9bfd9c4bd6eff6cfebcfebe4e7e48a5407bde9aabcd82ecdb6026 
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECOCERT 
• https://www.volioimports.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Paul-Mas-Reserve_Pinot-Noir_Tech-Sheet.pdf 
• https://www.mtouton.com/products/france/languedoc-roussillon/languedoc/cite-de-carcassonne/1119-2021/laroque-pinot-noir 

High QPR Wine Pairing Tasting and Reviews 23:24

Wine: Cono Sur Organic Pinot Noir (Click here to find this wine on wine.com. Affiliate link)
Region: Chile
Year: 2021
Price: $11.99
Retailer: wine.com
Alcohol: 14%
Grapes: Pinot Noir
Professional Rating: WW 89 

What we tasted and smelled in this Cono Sur Organic Pinot Noir:

• On the nose: Raspberry, smells hot, tart red fruit, tart cherry, earth, damp forest, mossy, spicy paprika, black pepper
• In the mouth: Tart, young, cranberry, tannic, grape skin, black tea, more California style, not mellow, pomegranate, dried cranberries

Food to pair with this Cono Sur Organic Pinot Noir: Red meat, rolled stuffed flank steak, braciole, grilled meat, grilled vegetables, 
 
As a reminder on our rating scale, we rate on a scale of 1-10, where 7 and above means that we would buy it, and 4 and below means that we are likely to pour it down the sink, and a 5 or 6 means we are likely to drink it and finish it, but we are probably not going to buy it. 

Cono Sur Organic Pinot Noir Wine Rating: 

• Joe: 6/10
• Carmela: 6/10

Wine: Paul Mas Réserve Pinot Noir (Click here to find this wine on wine.com. Affiliate link)
Region: France, Languedoc-Roussillon
Year: 2021
Price: $12.99
Retailer: wine.com
Alcohol: 13%
Grapes: Pinot Noir
Professional Rating: Decanter 90, JS 89 

What we tasted and smelled in this  Paul Mas Réserve Pinot Noir:

• On the nose: Smoky, cedar, raisin, wet earth and mushroom when swirled, dark cherry, stewed cherry, kirsch, cherry juice, flowers, rose petal
• In the mouth: Cedar, toasted oak, not very fruity, tannic, light body, soft and silky, tart, spice, dark cherry, cherry juice, black tea, cigarette on the aftertaste 

Food to pair with this Paul Mas Réserve Pinot Noir: A food wine, versatile with food, stews, pizza, meat, lasagna, meatloaf, American foods, mushroom pasta, mushroom ravioli

Paul Mas Réserve Pinot Noir Wine Rating: 

• Joe: 6/10
• Carmela: 6/10

Wine: Domaine Laroque Cite de Carcassonne Pinot Noir (Click here to find this wine on wine.com. Affiliate link)
Region: France, Languedoc
Year: 2021
Price: $13.99
Retailer: wine.com
Alcohol: 12.5%
Grapes: Pinot Noir
Professional Rating: WW 89

What we tasted and smelled in this Domaine Laroque Cite de Carcassonne Pinot Noir:

• On the nose: Tart raspberry, crunchy red fruit, tart cherry, pencil, gravel, stone, smoke, matchstick, red Australian licorice, candied cherry or raspberry
• In the mouth: Tart fruit, very little aftertaste, mellow, very little tannin, acid, puckering, lemon, sangria-like, red Kool-Aid, closer to a classic Pinot Noir, would be good slightly chilled

Food to pair with this Domaine Laroque Cite de Carcassonne Pinot Noir: cheeseburger, spicy foods, grilled foods, pizza, Thai food, spicy fried chicken


Domaine Laroque Cite de Carcassonne Pinot Noir Wine Rating: 

• Joe: 7/10
• Carmela: 6/10

Which one of these are you finishing tonight?

• Carmela: Domaine Laroque Cite de Carcassonne Pinot Noir
• Joe: Domaine Laroque Cite de Carcassonne Pinot Noir

Taste profiles expected from Pinot Noir 39:18

• General 
  • WE: The best Pinot Noir taste has complex flavors that include cherry, raspberry, mushroom and forest floor, plus vanilla and baking spice when aged in French oak
• Cono Sur Organic Pinot Noir
  • Winery: Quite appealing with its rich, deep red color, this wine has a complex and developed nose that is governed by sweet wild fruit aromas, where notes of cherries and berries are enhanced by slight toasty hints. This Pinot definitely has a personality of its own; it's tasteful, with soft tannins and an excellent structure.
  • WW: This wine shines with aromas and flavors of red fruit, mineral notes, and a hint of spice.
• Paul Mas Réserve Pinot Noir
  • Winery: Very elegant notes of red berries (strawberry and cherry) combined with soft spices and a hint of vanilla. Medium-bodied wine with ripe tannins and a well-balanced acidity.
  • D: A pretty, soft-textured Pinot Noir from Languedoc-Roussillon. Fragrant red berries and rose petals on the nose, it's juicy with red cherry, raspberry and herbs, with depth of darker fruits, refreshed by decent acidity. The tannin is soft but does not lack structure. Dried cranberry and a hint of liquorice on the finish. No oak influence at all.
  • JS: Cherries, redcurrants, raspberries, dried herbs and some sweet spices on the nose. Medium body. Round, fruity and creamy with some wild, savory elements.
• Domaine Laroque Cite de Carcassonne Pinot Noir
  • Winery: Earth and fruit aromas with a fruity sweetness and dried spices on the nose. The mouth is charming, juicy and straightforward. Medium tannins linger on the finish alongside a hint of roasted cocoa nib. An excellent option for those who enjoy a more gentle and approachable style.
  • Barriques: A bright translucent ruby-red color in the glass. Upfront aromas of ripe raspberry, bing cherry, and cranberry fruits with a slight dusty floral note. Nicely balanced on the palate, fresh berry flavors with a soft, dry finish.
  • WW: Pleasing and lovely for everyday enjoyment. This wine shows aromas and flavors of tangy red fruits.

Outro and how to find The Wine Pair Podcast 42:05

Ok, so, Carmela, it is just about time for us to go, but before we do, we want to thank you very much for listening to us - and if you haven’t done so yet, now would be the perfect time to subscribe to our podcast and also a fantastic time to leave us a nice rating and review on our website or Apple podcasts or other podcast service - and it is an awesome and free way to support us and help us grow listeners.

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Alright, with that, we are going to sign off, so thanks again, and we will see you next time. And, as we say, life is short, so stop drinking shitty wine.

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