What I shall term as ‘earlier tonight’, even though it is now 2am tomorrow morning, I drank a rather fetching little Pinot Noir: Gruyere Pinot Noir 2007, Mac Forbes from the Yarra Valley in Australia. Certainly a clean, well-made, modern wine, but in no way over-ripe, nor over-extracted, nor over-blown. It was clearly fruit-driven but the fruit was pretty and ripe with no hint of jamminess. This attractive fruit, coupled with its fine tannins, reasonable acidity and a surprisingly low alcohol level (12%) made the wine seem an elegant little charmer which was great fun to drink. It was far from the most complex Pinot I’ve tried, but this was purchased at a reasonable price to be a general-purpose drinking wine; it filled that role admirably.
If I may generalise from a sample size of one, yeah seems like you are right! At £20 (~$28) per bottle this is a really good wine to drink and enjoy, with enough just personality, and more than enough charm, to keep you interested. I shall look out for more of his wines.
I’m off to the Wine Australia tasting at the start of February, Mac Forbes’ wines will be represented there. I love how he labels his Rieslings, it would be great if some Alsace producers stated how much residual sugar there was in their wines.
Thanks for the post. We’ve enjoyed a fair number of New Zealand Pinots, hadn’t heard of any Australian Pinots that were moving into the mainstream. While the Aussie market for us has really died, Pinot in general has held its own and I will be checking to see what’s available to us here in the US. Funny, haven’t had a wine rep even mention an Aussie Pinot.
Mac makes a number of wines at all different price ranges (whites and reds) FWIW. But you are correct Steve. There may be some reviews in CT. If not, I know Josh Raynolds reviewed a number of wines if anyone else needs a reference point . . . and you have a Tanzer subscription.
Terribly sorry, you are absolutely right. I’m just so used to hearing how worthless the UK Peso… erm… Pound is I got the exchange rate incorrect.
If I may wine about the Pound very briefly, its collapse in value against the Euro since September 2007 has severely hampered those of us who buy wine from the rest of Europe. When this happened all of my Burgundy allocations got 30% more expensive. Bums.
There haven’t really been that many Australian Pinots that have tickled my fancy. A lot of them are on the hot, stewed and jammy side of fruit experiences, often with very high alcohol levels, and I don’t really go for Pinot in that style. If I want a wine of heroism I’ll drink Zinfandel.
The Aussie Pinots I’d recommend in a second are made by Gary Farr. He has worked at serious estates in Burgundy to learn the Pinot game and his wines, whilst being quite reasonably priced, have a real sense of class and style about them. His winery is called By Farr and it is based in Geelong, Victoria. As well as the ‘basic’ By Farr Pinot Noir (which is excellent) he has a prestige cuvee By Farr Sangreal Pinot Noir; it is a definite step up in terms of quality for not that much extra cash. His By Farr Shiraz is rather good too.
nice note, David … thanks for posting. I felt the same way about the one and only Australian Pinot Noir I’ve had – “Innocent Bystander” – can’t remember vintage -I think it was '05 or '06 - but it was actually pretty good, and under $20 to boot!
I was going to mention Innocent Bystander as well, as I remember liking the bottle I tried. Fairly simple, but balanced and no wood taste (big plus for me). Mostly on the red fruit side as I recall.
I’ll also agree about Innocent Bystander. It was one of the better values I’ve found in Pinot Noir in general and a style that I like (my impression was similar to Frank’s). I think I had the '06, but I’m not sure.
A couple of producers that I know of have made some slight efforts on this front, but they are far from perfect. Zind-Humbrecht have started putting either I, II or III (albeit in tiny characters in a corner of the label) on their flasher wines to indicate increasing levels of perceived sweetness in the wine. My experience of these numbered wines is that number assigned to them seems pretty arbitrary and give little real idea of how sweet the wine tastes. Domaine Weinbach (ooohhh those lovely ladies at Weinbach, skilled with vineyards, wine making and being ravishingly desirable) also use the figures I, II and III on their more serious wines, but this is an indication of the ripeness of the grapes harvested for that cuvee, rather than specifically how much residual sugar is in the wine.
I don’t mind my Alsace wines having residual sugar, some of them are undoubtedly nice, but when you pop a new producer’s wine you often don’t know if it’ll be searingly dry or distinctly sweet. I’ve attended many large tastings with dozens of Alsace wines presented blind, It is rather hard work tasting through ranges of wine where the level of residual sugar from one wine to the next may vary considerably; up and down like a yo-yo.
Time for a change in labelling rules for Alsace, I feel.
I’m glad to hear that some effort is being made by certain Alsace producers to give the consumer a little more information. I also do not mind some residual sugar in those wines, but I would like to know what I’m getting into before I open a bottle. I applaud Zind-Humbrecht in particular as I know their wines vary in that respect, even sometimes from vintage to vintage of the same label.