More old school wines: Pinot Noir and Merlot
Number four in a series about wine by a recovering teetotaler (#1 Syrah/Shiraz; #2 Chardonnay; #3 Riesling).
Pinot noir means “black pine,” referring to the tightly clustered nature of the grapes. Pinot noir grows well in cooler climates such as Burgundy; if you drink a red “burgundy” it’s probably from pinot noir or a pinot noir blend.
Pinot grapes produce lightly coloured, low tannin wines. Expect them to be lower in alcohol. Pinot noir is a difficult grape to get right, so if a bottle makes its way to market, chances are that it’s decent.
Describing Burgundy the region, Thomson (The World Atlas of Wine) writes that if Paris is France’s head, and champagne her soul, then Burgundy is her stomach, “the land of long meals.” This is a wine to buy with food-pairing in mind: bring up the cheap burgundy for the summer charcuterie — ham and other cold meats — and save an expensive, silky bottle for roast meats.
The popularity of pinot noir shot up after its merits were praised in the film Sideways. This is as good as a love letter to wine as you will ever see:
Go west from Burgundy and you will be among the merlots of Bordeaux. Expect inky wines that are full, velvety, and have you tasting juicy plums and ripe blackberries. (Incidentally, Sideways hated merlots, which killed sales in the USA vs. pinot noir.)
Bulgaria makes a nice merlot: this ultra-cheap bottle was juicy, oaky, yummy. Back in the day, Bulgaria exported most of its wine to the USSR; nowadays we can all sit back and drink wine from the Thracian lowlands and think about the Iliad. Homer has Thracians appear as Trojan allies. Perhaps Troy was drunk on Thracian wine as Odysseus’s horse was wheeled in?
