Nice Oregon and South African pinots

Like any generalization it's not universally true but Oregon pinot noir seems to be generally lower alcohol than California pinot and have more earthiness to it, coming both in the form of mushrooms and kind of a dirt flavor, what I call forest floor.
 
originally posted by SteveTimko:
Like any generalization it's not universally true but Oregon pinot noir seems to be generally lower alcohol than California pinot and have more earthiness to it, coming both in the form of mushrooms and kind of a dirt flavor, what I call forest floor.
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Aha, ok. I guess CA is the real (ripe) outlier here. (Although there is obviously variation within CA).

Do you think you could reliably pick out Oregon vs. New Zealand pinot noirs? Perhaps more earthy flavors in the former and more juicy fruit in the latter?
 
I think that might be difficult given the fairly pronounced differences in pinot-producing regions in New Zealand; Nelson doesn't have much to do, structurally or aromatically, with the Central Otago, nor Martinborough with Marlborough. (Waipara and Central Otago might have some similarities, though.) But as a similarly gross and exception-ridden generalization, NZ pinots are a bit more powerful (sometimes from alcohol, sometimes not), while Oregon pinots at comparable quality levels seem a bit more...well, I'm not sure of the word, but maybe "complete" would be close.

On a few occasions that I've brought Oregon pinot noir to experienced tasters in New Zealand, their response has been along similar lines. They've felt the Oregon wines to be a little more polished and mature, in comparison to their own being more youthfully exuberant. This is a very limited sample, of both wines and opinions, however.

Regarding general categories of earth vs. fruit, I agree with Steve regarding mushrooms hinting at Oregon, but find a prevailing beet quality in some NZ pinots; from rather than of the earth, perhaps. And also, especially from the Central Otago and Waipara, blood orange rind, though I have no idea why, and from tasting with people there, there seems to be some conflation of the characteristics we mean by the two terms. Martinborough pinot noir is maybe a little smokier and more muscular, but also more "complete," I'd say, and despite the reputation of the Central Otago is probably the most reliable source for high-quality pinot noir. Marlborough, with the exception of some outliers like Fromm, is lighter and more red-fruited. I haven't tasted enough Nelson pinot noir to feel as confident characterizing it, but it seems to be on the more delicate, or perhaps restrained, side vs. other NZ versions.

In answer to your actual question, though, it would be a fun test, but picking "representative" bottles would be quite a task.
 
I've had about six New Zealand pinots and three I liked. I think the main difference would be that earthiness that I get in Oregon pinots that I don't get in California or the few New Zealand pinots I've tried.
My friend Glenn wondered if the Hamilton Russell was more like New Zealand.
 
I haven't had an NZ pinot that I thought was akin to the Hamilton Russell, but to be fair I've self-selected away from goopy NZ pinots I'm unlikely to enjoy.

For earth in NZ pinot, I'd look to Martinborough first. Then maybe Nelson. I think it might show up in C.O. pinot eventually, but I haven't had more than a few older wines (and none of them fully mature) from which to draw a conclusion.

(Addendum for Coad: noir, noir, noir, noir.)
 
originally posted by Thor:
I think that might be difficult given the fairly pronounced differences in pinot-producing regions in New Zealand; Nelson doesn't have much to do, structurally or aromatically, with the Central Otago, nor Martinborough with Marlborough..
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Sounds good! I haven't tasted enough of them to delve into these specificities. (And given the prices I haven't really been inspired to delve, given the other wines I would rather buy). But, perhaps one day I'll get around to it. The ones I've tasted have certainly been charming.
 
originally posted by SteveTimko:
Like any generalization it's not universally true but Oregon pinot noir seems to be generally lower alcohol than California pinot and have more earthiness to it, coming both in the form of mushrooms and kind of a dirt flavor, what I call forest floor.
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I agree that Oregon Pinot Noirs generally have a nice earthy, mushroom quality, but another difference is that Oregon tends toward darker fruits, i.e. black cherry, black plum, blackberry and CA is usually bright red fruits, sometimes like Hawaiian Punch.

I like the darker fruit flavors, personally. One of the cool things about Belle Pente Pinots, is that the fruits can be very bright and electric, but the wine usually still keeps its Oregon funk.
 
And given the prices I haven't really been inspired to delve, given the other wines I would rather buy.
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Well, that's the issue with pinot noir from pretty much anywhere, isn't it? It's not like one of the sources is a great bargain vs. the others. Given already high costs, trans-Pacific shipping, the usual markups, and small quantities of increasingly site-designated wines, the marketing challenges for NZ producers are formidable. I've had this conversation with a lot of NZ pinot noir producers who've asked me how to break into the U.S. market (as if my advice is helpful to anyone), and the basic issue is the one you identify: at the prices they'll need to achieve to make it worth exploring the market, the wines are in direct competition with domestic pinot noir and Burgundy, both of which are much more familiar to U.S. consumers. A bigger producer (Pegasus Bay, for example) can show their stuff while working their larger-production wines, but a producer like Felton Road (which isn't exactly microscopic) just can't provide enough wine to allow all the major critics, retailers, and restaurants a proper sample and still have worthwhile quantities to sell.

The one thing they've got going for them in New Zealand is their continuing attempt -- with limited success so far, but it's still a very, very young industry -- to position themselves closer to Old World winemaking than the (expected) Australian paradigm. But that's a thin wedge to drive, because most of those consumers aren't going to turn away from Burgundy without a really compelling reason to do so. And even with a compelling reason...well, unlike many potential consumers I've tasted the wines, I know how good they can be, and yet given a Burgundy and a New Zealand pinot noir of equal quality and price, I don't know how often I'd choose the NZ wine, just based on my palate preferences.
 
originally posted by Thor:
Well, that's the issue with pinot noir from pretty much anywhere, isn't it?...most of those consumers aren't going to turn away from Burgundy without a really compelling reason to do so...given a Burgundy and a New Zealand pinot noir of equal quality and price, I don't know how often I'd choose the NZ wine, just based on my palate preferences.
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Perhaps it is just 'palate preferences'. But in an attempt to make my preferences universal, it seems that the diversity and precision of expression that Burgundy has to offer makes it hard for New Zealand to compete when priced similarly. At least in this century.
 
I am not nearly as adept as some here at mapping flavors to words, so I will just say that, in my experience, it is most certainly the case that you get flavors in OR that you don't get anywhere else. I would agree that these flavors are of the 'earthy' variety, but I can't do much better than that.
 
At least in this century.
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When many of the wine regions we're talking about didn't even exist forty years ago, and most of the vines we're talking about didn't exist ten years ago, that's rather obviously true.

Several centuries from now, who knows? But I'm fairly certain neither of us will care at that point.
 
That recently? Wow.
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That was probably a dubious claim. Let me clarify, thanks to Michael Cooper:

Marlborough's existence as a commercial wine region dates only to 1976, the vast majority of its plantings are much, much younger than that, and I doubt more than a handful of the better pinot noir vines are more than 15 years old.

Central Otago didn't produce a commercial wine until 1987, though there were some non-commercial vineyards dating back to the 70s (and a few tiny trial blocks in the 50s). Even then, much less than half the current vineyard area hadn't even produced a crop by 2000.

Canterbury (including the Waipara) only had 35 ha of vines in 1986, 325 ha in 1995, and 614 ha in 2001, though there was a highly-praised pinot from the region as early as 1982.

Nelson's serious producers didn't start planting until 1980, and there was very little pinot noir until fairly recently.

Martinborough is the oldster, with the first pinot noir plantings possibly dating all the way back to 1979, the first true commercial wines in 1984, and any actual attention for the region not coming until the mid-eighties.

I can say, though having visited a lot of wineries and having seen their tiny-trunked vines (and in the case of the Central Otago, having seen vineyards in 2005 on land that was rock or grass in 2002), that there's a lot of very, very young-vine fruit going into these wines. It's all they've got, in most parts of New Zealand, and in all of the pinot noir-producing regions.
 
originally posted by Thor:

Martinborough is the oldster, with the first pinot noir plantings possibly dating all the way back to 1979, the first true commercial wines in 1984, and any actual attention for the region not coming until the mid-eighties.
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Just to amplify this point, when I was there in '01, virtually all of the Pinot Noirs (that's for you, Chris) I tried were atypically purple and had a characteristic sappy greenness to their fruit. A traveling companion more savvy about Pinot Noir than I stated that the fruit came from young (
 
Part of the Martinborough Vineyard credit goes to Larry McKenna, though, who really did seem to make pinot noir better than everyone else during his tenure there (not that others didn't make good wine), and the combination of -- for Martinborough -- old-ish vines and his work were a winner. At Escarpment, with fetus-aged vines, he hasn't yet done so well, while his successor at MV (Claire Mulholland) maintained quality despite a slight shift in direction. I haven't tasted any wine from the newest winemaker yet, however; Mulholland has moved on to Amisfield in the Central Otago, which can only help as, for me, that is a winery that really underperforms.

The other pinots noir from (contextually) old vines from Martinborough were pretty dense, so I don't know how much red-garnet you'd get out of them; the problem with Ata Rangi and Dry River seems to be the patience to wait them out. I do think they're both excellent, but the former is the source of a pinot noir that's particularly syrah-like, and in a very Northern Rhnish way, as it ages. There's some speculation that it's from their widespread planting of a semi-legal (pre-legal would be more accurate) "gumboot clone" that's rumored -- like 99% of all dubiously-sourced pinot noir stock -- to come from DRC. No one really knows for sure, though. Whereas I don't find Dry River's pinot noir to be syrah-like at all.
 
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