My bro in law introduced me this weekend to a red wine I consider very unusual, the Vini Tonon 2009 Rosso del Camul from Veneto, Italy. This was a blend of 50% Cabernet Sauvignon and 50% Pinot Noir from the region. It’s an affordably priced $20 CDN “daily drinker” type of wine that sells out of the SAQ whenever they bring it in and my brother lovingly declares is “a $20 wine that tastes like a $100 wine.”
When I went over to his house for dinner he asked me if I could find a bottle at the SAQ near where I was before he picked me up and when I told him I did, he told me he was driving over and buying an entire case which turned out to be the last case the store had.
Now I am starting to like Pinot Noir in general and don’t particularly care for any red Cabernet of any type from any country unless it’s in a sweet wine form, but I must say I was very pleasantly surprised to try it at dinner with him and admit his summation of the wine was pretty darn close. While I wouldn’t call it quite a $100 wine, it easily punches well above its weight class and is a remarkable QPR. I certainly would buy it over an equivalently priced sole Pinot Noir wine from another country.
I’ve often said that the good and bad of wine blends is that they can either take on all the positive traits of their components even as they risk taking on all the negatives instead. In this case, all the positives fortunately came out to play. The wine had the delicacy and fruit forward cherry flavors of Pinot Noir that I like with a touch of structure, tannin, acidity and fortitude from the Cabernet Sauvignon.
I researched the wine later and was quite surprised that wine is an equal 50/50 blend of 15 month oak-aged Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir as I was sure it would be a 70-85% Pinot base for sure. This made me wonder – given how well this came out, are there any other good Pinot Noir blends out there? I know that most people feel that Pinot Noir should really stand on its own but given how well the Camul turned out I’d love to see if there are others out there I should be eying.
Gasp…Tran…blend the noble PinotNoir (or Nebbiolo for that matter) with a “lesser” grape variety?? Why…that’d bring the end of WesternCivilization as we know it.
Blending noble PinotNoir w/ lesser varieties is what drives purists apoplectic!!! Purists have been known to be wrong.
One that particularly comes to mind is the Ojai Red. When they (AdamTolmach) are pumping the PinotNoir (and Syrah) into a tank for the equalizing blend, they then
run the dregs from the barrel thru a filter and then blend that leftover Syrah & PinotNoir. Then price it low and move it out the door. I did a TN on an older Ojai Red recently.
Though the Syrah tends to dominate (no surprise there), the Ojai Red can be quaite a nice wine. And cheap.
Tom
Just had a 2009 Lafarge passtoutgrains l’exception, fantastic use of the evil gamay and pinot noir, a little savory and gamey, but retained nice pinot fruit. Easy on the wallet as well. Not many other grapes I can think of which would work well though.
Tran: Pinot Noir doesn’t blend very well with other varieties because it tends to disappear in blends. Other varieties blend well because they are similar is structure and intensity, and with Pinot being so light and intricate, it gets overwhelmed with small percentages of bigger varieties. There’s a good reason Bordeaux wines are blends, and Rhone wines are blends, but Burgandy wines are almost always 100% Pinot Noir.
In the Jura, they blend Poulsard, Trousseau and Pinot Noir and I think it works really well. One of the few examples that does. That and blending Pinot Noir with Pinot Meunier pressed early with bubbles works well in Champagne.
Tran: Pinot Noir doesn’t blend very well with other varieties because it tends to disappear in blends. Other varieties blend well because they are similar is structure and intensity, and with Pinot being so light and intricate, it gets overwhelmed with small percentages of bigger varieties. There’s a good reason Bordeaux wines are blends, and Rhone wines are blends, but Burgandy wines are almost always 100% Pinot Noir.
Except that I’ve had winemakers tell me the exact opposite - PN tends to stand out, rather than disappear. It’s not necessarily light and intricate unless you make it that way, but it is usually “grapey” and identifiable. I think people don’t do it because they don’t have to - people will buy PN by itself. In the US, people like to buy by grape variety anyway, so it’s easier to sell that way than to make a blend, which might be better, but would also require more effort to sell.
I think the reason Bordeaux is blends and Burgundy isn’t has more to do with history and politics than with anything unique to the grapes. Burgundy is colder and the “Bordeaux” grapes historically wouldn’t do so well there. Not to mention that the “Bordeaux” grapes that we have today are not necessarily those of yesteryear anyway. In Burgundy, which was an independent entity for a long time, they didn’t have a lot of choices - they really only had a few grapes, and given that limited selection, one turned out better than the others.
Bordeaux was more cosmopolitan, as a port city, and it wasn’t a wine producing area until much later, so when they finally settled on a few grapes, it was w/out the benefit of a sole authority and was the result of political lobbying by various producers. They didn’t have a duke to issue an edict. Otherwise, Bordeaux would probably be mostly Malbec.
I would guess that this historical pattern has lots to do with which grapes grow well in each area.
After we bottle our reds, we save the dregs from racking and siphon into bottles for our cellar workers. I have a couple of cases of 2010 Pinot blended with 2009 Syrah at about 60/40 PN/Syrah. It is delicious. The problem is, this would be a fine way to turn a batch of $30 wine into very nice $20 wine. So, unless I have more PN than I know what to do with, it’s not part of my plans any time soon.
In Switzerland they blend Pinot Noir quite a bit with Gamay and Saint Laurent - Dole in Particular is one of the sexiest red wines produced in Switzerland - and it’s Pinot and Gamay -
I saw that Cakebread just released their new vintage (2011?) of the Rubaiyat, a blend of pinot and syrah (I think usually something like 2/1 ratio), sometimes with other varieties included in the blend varying from vintage to vintage. I’ve liked this wine in the past, and the QPR at around $30 is good, if not exceptional. I even had a magnum once that was maybe 5 years after release, and it had aged pretty well for that period of time.
Domaine Alfred (now called Chamisal Estate) used to sell an inexpensive pinot/syrah blend called DA Red, I think for less than $15. It was a perfectly decent inexpensive guzzler, but nothing exciting either.
Champagnes are about the only ones I’ve ever experienced that I would consider “good”…though a passetousgrains from Chevillon or others is certainly pleasant enough, if usually much more gamay than pinot noir.
You read my mind… Cakebread’s Rubiyat is a very enjoyable wine. A pure summer red.
They just had their Rubiyat release party for members yesterday. I was going to go up for it but couldn’t swing it. I’ve been the last couple years with friends who are members.
![[whistle.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/8/87d24eb81ec6dc01d84f3d6c19fa9a357e90218e.gif "whistle"){kind=small}
![[wink.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/04707e6a7bbb03e0153e349d8a9270d30e1e9525.gif "wink"){kind=small}