I think Miles was wrong...for some

The movie Sideways made Pinot Noir popular and Merlot passe. Everyone remembers Miles' now famous proclamation, "I am not drinking ******* Merlot! If anyone orders Merlot, I'm leaving!" As a Pinotphile myself, I understand where he's coming from. At the same time, the fact that sales of Pinot Noir are up 120% over the past two years gives me pause. As someone who has sold millions of dollars worth of Pinot Noir over the years, I can tell you this - I expect the sales to slow up in a hurry. If I were starting my own winery in California today, I wouldn't plant Pinot Noir. Let me tell you why.

First there are the basics - Pinot Noir is hard to grow. Pinot Noir is completeley different from Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot or Shiraz. These wines derive their dense, purple hues from the thick skins of those grapes. The thick skins protect the wines from many harmful natural factors such as intense sunlight. The skin of Pinot Noir is usually quite thin. (A corollary of the thickness or lack thereof of the skin is that Pinot Noir is usually lighter in color.) Because the skin is not as thick as that of other red grapes, Pinot Noir is more likely to be damaged by natural elements and also highly susceptible to rot! Rot in your wine is bad! It tastes horrible. When Cabernet for instance is underripe, there is a vegetal green bean character that develops. I'd take a vegetal Cab over a rotten Pinot noir any day! If you don't believe me, try a bad 1983 Burgundy: then you'll understand why really quickly.

Because it's difficult to grow, and requires enormous attention, something of which I am largely incapable (I am mre the visionary-type than detail-oriented), Pinot Noir and I would be a bad mix. But that's not the real reason: the real reason is that, despite the current trendiness of Pinot Noir, I think most casual wine drinkers enjoy Merlot more than Pinot Noir, unless the Pinot Noir is made poorly (more on this below).

Because of the skin differential, the wines are fundamentally different. Cabernet, Merlot and Shiraz age because of tannins. That is because tannins come (largely) from the skins of the grapes. Since Pinot Noir has substantially thinner skin, Pinot Noir doesn't age due to tannic structure. Pinot Noir actually ages due to acidity, or rather the balance of acidity and fruit. Whereas Merlot and its kin age because of the mouth-puckering tannin, Pinot Noir titilates the palate with mouthwatering acidity, much like most (non-sweet) white wines. Pinot Noir is a white wine in red wine clothing. And I don't think that's what most casual wine drinkers want in their wine. It's what I want, but what I want won't necessarily bring you enjoyment.

So we have a problem, as W. Blake Gray's recent SF Chronicle article discusses. Instead of making Pinot Noir the way they should make it, many California winemakers just leave the grapes hang on the vine longer to thicken the skins. It doesn't matter to them that in the first place, Pinot Noir is a cooler-climate grape and shouldn't be planted in 80% of the California vineyards in which it is found.

So we are left with one of three possibilities:

1) Until the Pinot Noir craze dies down (something I instinctively feel is already happening), people will continue wines that they don't like to be trendy.

2) Many winemakers will continue to try as hard as they can to make Pinot Noir taste like Merlot, Shiraz or Cabernet Sauvignon to cater to the latest trends, thus deceiving consumers into thinking they have developed a taste for Pinot Noir, when, in reality, they haven't yet learned the beauty of real Pinot Noir, that is, Pinot Noir that is graceful, light in color, svelte and equilibriously acidic.

3) The Pinot Noir craze will die of necessity, when most people realize that they prefer supple, fruit-forward Merlot to the vibrant, levity of Pinot Noir.

I can only hope as a true Pinotphile that three is the case. It will allow wineries such as Hunter Hill Winery and Adastra Vineyards to continue making Pinot Noir the way it should be made, from cooler climate sites (the Sonoma Coast and Los Carneros respectively). Although our visits to these wineries convince me that in spite of any trends in any direction, niether winery would budge from their current modus opperandi. That's why AVA Wine is proud to bring them to you. The goal here is to find representative exmaples of each of California's many AVA's (American Viticultural Areas), and in Hunetr Hill Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir and Adastra Los Carneros Pinot Noir, you have two fine examples of this. You can drink either one of these and say to yourself, "This is what Pinot Noir should taste like," and if you don't like it, by all means, drink Merlot and don't feel guilty. Drink what you like and forget the current trends.