We talk a lot about how minute variations in geology, exposition and mesoclimate influence wine character in Burgundy, but I think we tend to talk too little about the influence of vine genetics. I’m planning to post more about this in the future, but I was just organizing some photos and found some pretty good illustrations of how extreme the differences can be within Pinot Noir in the Côte d’Or.
Here are two photos of really high quality Pinot Noir selections growing in the Côte de Nuits. Note the small berries and open cluster architecture. It seems as if the really good selections also tend to go through verasion in a much more rapid, homogeneous way. Selections such as this are both comparatively difficult to destem and much more favorable to whole cluster vinification than the lower-quality selections that we will come to next.
Whereas here is a photo I took in Volnay Santenots in 2017, showing a much more productive Pinot Noir selection, with fatter berries and less open clusters. Obviously compact clusters such as this will be more susceptible to disease (due to poor aeration) and the fatter berries will have a higher juice-to-solids ratio. Typically skins will be thinner, too.
Now on the one hand, you can tell a lot about the ensuing wines from looking at the grapes. Clearly, wines from the high quality selections will be more concentrated, and all things being equal (which they rarely are) more deeply pigmented, with more dry extract. Equally, it’s important to emphasize that intelligent winemakers are able to produce very high quality, delicious wines from the fatter-berried, more productive selections of Pinot Noir: witness Engel’s Vosne-Romanée Les Brûlées, which was so-called “Pinot Droit”. It requires adaptation, though. Clearly, the raw materials are not the same.
Little to add other than “keep it up” - this stuff is utterly fascinating. My introduction to Pinot Fin was via Arnoux-Lachaux and I was taken aback at how concentrated and dense it was without showing any signs of extraction or jamminess.
William, I don’t know for sure, but there was more than one plot in the Engel Brulees and I don’t think it was all pinot droit. Certainly Engerer & team at Eugenie immediately declassified some but kept the rest. Would be interested to know more
Interesting inquiry. So much goes in to making great wine. I’m also wondering what the difference would be if that Volnay Santenots plot dropped about half of the fruit when it was still green and only kept the nicest bunches and if the vine age changes the cluster development. I know yield goes down on old vines–but don’t know exactly why. Let us know when you start a Kickstarter to buy land in Burgundy to do this scientific research. I’ll go in at the half a case a year membership to start. Today I just learned Pinot Fin existed and now I want to try it? Yesterday I bought more Cédric Bouchard. Thanks for what you do.
I know cases where it hasn’t, such as the 1850s vines at Deaver. Hélène Mingot showed me some techniques to avoid that. I think it mostly comes down to ignorant pruning techniques. If you prune so the fluids continue through their existing channel, yields remain the same. If you keep redirecting through woody tissue, that constricts the flow and reduces yield. (Of course there are reasons the latter path is the norm, but they are addressable.)
I’ve handled Pinot Noir from quite a few sites over the years. A friend recently started sourcing from an excellent site, where he’s allotted equal parts of 4 clones. The 943 is just amazing! Tiny clusters, tiny berry, gorgeous aromatics and flavors, and great concentration. The first obvious thought handling that fruit, smelling during punch downs, tasting barrel samples, is wanting more. Get a bigger allocation, find another source, getting some more planted/grafted somewhere. Then in blending trials it’s got a little too much in some ways, and is incomplete in others. The grower’s proportions seem about right. Some clones can stand alone to make a great wine, others can play a crucial role in making a great wine.
Do growers plant Pinot Droit anymore. I think of that as being planted by the parents and grandparents of current growers and not as much planted today (at least in better appellations) but could be very much wrong. If I am correct, does it make sense to rip out 30-50 year old vines that are Pinot Droit to plant new vines that are Pinot Fin. In other words, what is the relative importance of vine age vs. clone?
If you keep buying wine every time William posts, will you be able to afford the Kickstarter participation? William could become hazardous to our wealth.
One problematic consequence of a green harvest could be even fatter, more inflated berries in the remaining clusters. Better, perhaps, to plant a cover crop and try to diminish vigor? I would take smaller berries over fewer clusters any day. But, not easy to know what to do when you are dealt a hand like that. And this is one of the problems in Burgundy: if the father or grandfather, back in the days when quantity was more interesting than quality, planted vine material like this in the regional and communal appellations, to say nothing of premiers crus, do you rip up and replant or simply carry on?
In California and Oregon, it is called “Pommard clone”
I think there are absolutely still people planting clones (more so than selections) chosen for volume rather than quality these days. It would be nice to imagine otherwise, but that would be naive when one considers how many wines sell for quite decent prices on the basis of their appellation alone.
Equally, more and more of the top growers are working with high quality selections, and some “massale” selections have been cleaned up and propagated by nurseries. For example, Pépinières Hebinger in Alsace has a fine massale selection from the Clos des Epeneaux in Pommard in stock. It will be exciting to see the fruit of all this two decades from now.
There’s a clone/selection known as “828” originally from Oregon, and now in CA, that is an upright Pinot. This is not the same clone as ENTAV 828. I don’t think of the Pommard selection as upright… but others will surely comment.
William, thanks for posting on this. I think its an incredibly interesting topic that seems pretty difficult to discuss… especially in continuously massale planted vineyards. is it even possible to know all the pinot genetics in some of those vineyards?
Nicolas Meo was talking about how genetics is such a difference between Oregon and Burgundy. mostly in the fact that Oregon has pretty limited and clearly defined genetics and Burgundy is pretty varied and diverse
I was being a little provocative, because the clusters themselves look exactly the same in terms of fatter berries and more compact clusters, even if the shoots aren’t necessarily upright (and I think that, in practice, the term is used quite loosely in Burgundy). But that would be true of a lot of vine material that has made it out to the USA, e.g.: Foundation Plant Services
It would be very interesting if producers reading this would post their own photos of clusters of clonal Pinot Noir.
Indeed! But even if the answers aren’t simple, I’m keen to draw attention to the importance of the topic. Sometims commentary on Burgundy’s wines strikes me as analogous to people comparing Gala apples to Golden Delicious and, without any reference to the trees, attributing the differences to the bedrock.
For me, the droit selection/clone is distinctive in growth attributes; and is something I’ve noticed quite often in the vineyards of Gevrey-Chambertin. While some do not consider it a qualitative choice, the upright selection here has compelling attributes in spite of its large cluster morphology. I don’t have any pictures to post but perhaps later this season.
I still live by the old hackneyed maxim, “I spent most of my money on wine and women, and the rest was wasted.” If William wanted to just pick me up extra bottles of whatever he was adding to his cellar, I’d do my best to make it work and am almost sure I’d be happy. Rather happy just living vicariously through William’s and Fu’s respective Instagrams though.
All joking aside, I admire what William does. Too often it seems that wine critics/reviewers practice a reinforcing hype loop that seems to make already exclusive wines more exclusive and stuffy. While there are many venerable large and/or iconic producers, it’s in my nature to seek out the small vintners that, in a heuristic/Wendell Berry, ‘Solving for Pattern’ approach, are pushing boundaries and innovating, even if it’s pushing against current trends; e.g. Jean-Pierre Boyer and Cédric Bouchard. In my opinion, more than a critic, it seems William is in the avant-garde of wine and then kindly shares that passion with us (even if the rest of the self titled avant-garde is chasing lactobacilli and brett filled orange wines).
Fun stuff. Tasting through Santa Barbara County left me pretty familiar with 115, 667, and 777 that I could tell if I was drinking something else like 828.
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