Why you should be drinking Pinot.
I wasn’t always a Pinotphile. However, once you start getting older and drinking a lot more wine, you start needing something lighter that you can have with lighter dishes. Your stomach and palate simply can’t handle a big Napa Cab everyday with red meat. For red wine lovers, Pinot Noir is a perfect solution because it pairs with so many things. It’s also healthier since you’re likely to have lighter dishes with it, and it is one of the grapes with the highest levels of the antioxidant resveratrol.
In addition, Pinot is a treat on its own. As your palate matures and you appreciate more subtle notes, Pinot offers stunning and complex aromatics and an ethereal palate.
Bottom line, you should be drinking Pinot more often, but can you afford it? Pinot is notoriously a difficult grape to grow and expensive. So why aren’t more Pinotphiles flocking to buy Chilean Pinot Noir?
Comparing Value Pinot Noir Around the World
Over the past few years, I’ve been on a quest to find bargain Pinots from all around the world. I’ve had my share of Bourgogne or maybe some Givry 1er Cru that can be classified as bargain Burgundy Pinot. I’ve experimented with well rated and under $25 Pinot from Argentina, every region of California, Oregon, Austria, Germany, Italy, Australia, Switzerland, South Africa and every appellation of New Zealand. Yet, Chilean Pinot Noir wins the prize for best value Pinot.
Don’t get me wrong — All those places have some very nice Pinot and I wouldn’t hesitate to revisit Pinot from those regions, but those other places require you to spend more money to reach the same quality.
The price range for Chilean Pinot practically eliminates most of the other competitors. $25 and under is the standard and not the exception like most Pinots around the world. In Chile, I can find a William Cole Gran Reserve Pinot Noir from Casablanca for $5. I’ve seen it in the US for $10-15. And the quality? Suckling gave the 2017 93pts. For me, they are consistently 88-92 point Pinots each vintage.
Montes Alpha Pinot, which critics give 89-92 pts, costs around $17-22. The consistently 90+ Errazuriz Max Reserva Pinot will cost you $13-20. The same is true for the Villard Expresion Reserve Pinot. The Montsecano Refugio has received as high as 94 pts and costs $20-25 in the US (only $10-12 in Chile). The list goes on.
How much would equally rated Burgundy, California, and Oregon Pinot cost? A majority would be $30-50+. It’s not only about the points. I’ve tasted some Chilean Pinot at less than $20 that could pass for excellent Chambolle-Musigny or Willamette Valley Pinot.
Diversity of Chilean Pinot
Beyond the cost and overall quality, Chilean Pinot is diverse. In addition to Chilean winemakers, many of the winemakers of Pinot have come from California and France. Therefore, you get a variance in styles of more classic Pinot Noir and New World Pinot Noir. However, they generally hover somewhere in between.
Chilean Pinot often has a nose closer to Old World style Pinot with earthy and mineral notes while the palate has plenty of fruit like New World Pinot. On the other hand, they rarely push towards the dark Syrah-like Pinots you can find in California.
Moreover, the terroir is diverse. Pinot can be found in almost every growing region in Chile from as far north as the Atacama desert and as far south as Patagonia.
We recently did a tasting comparing several valleys of Chilean Pinot. We tasted (from south to north) Casa Silva’s Lago Ranco from Patagonia, Clos des Fous Latuffa from Malleco, Calyptra Gran Reserva from Cachapoal, Ventolera Litoral from Leyda, Montsecano from Casablanca, Clos des Fous Pucalan Arenaria from Aconcagua and Ventiquero’s Tara 1 from Huasco, Atacama.
The styles ranged from well oaked and dark Pinots to light, floral and red fruited Pinot. Each taster had their personal favorite that matched their style preference. Although these were mostly “higher end” Chilean Pinot, most were $30 and under. Only the Atacama Pinot was around $50 since not much is made from this region.
History of Chilean Pinot
I spoke with Thierry Villard of Villard Fine Wines about the history of Chilean Pinot. He has been making wine in Casablanca since 1989. According to Villard, producers came to Casablanca to grow whites because of the climate, but it also became apparent that the soil and climate also suited Pinot. Unfortunately, there was no demand for it.
After years of improving their craft at growing Pinot, the trickle down of the Sideways effect hit Chile after the movie came out in 2004. Villard says that they went from only local producers and winemakers drinking all the Pinot in those days to nobody being allowed to drink any of the Pinot because they were selling out. Pinot grew from about 10 hectares in 1991 to 1000 Ha in 2018.
Chilean Pinot Production Today and its Future
Despite having endless amounts of coastline and high altitude nooks to try to find cool enough areas to grow Pinot, it is only around the 9th most produced grape in Chile with only 27 million liters produced in 2018. Chile is still only 9th globally in hectares of Pinot planted. Just to compare, France has around 10 times as much and the US has more than 5 times as much.
However, Villard says that Pinot will never be a high production industrial grape in Chile because it’s so expensive to grow (low yields, frost, rot, etc). Instead, he says Pinot highlights the world class quality Chile can achieve. Plus, it’s only likely to improve with more investment and aging of better clonal material.
The Market for Chilean Pinot
Even though Chilean Pinot is the best value Pinot in the world, Chileans themselves have only recently started to see it in their market over the last 10 years. Your average supermarket in Chile still doesn’t carry Pinot, so it’s mostly in the wine shops and nicer restaurants where you find it. Many Chileans I run across find it too light and dry for their tastes given that they’re used to their big Cabernets.
The marketing department at Viña Casa Marin confirmed that their job is to convert Chileans to Pinot through storytelling and education. However, it’s starting to become trendy. On the other hand, the international market needs to be convinced to choose Chilean Pinot and their brand over many other choices of Pinot.
Yet, if you find Chilean wine internationally, it’s not usually going to be Pinot. After researching the inventory of various stores, I also found that if they did have Chilean Pinot, the selection was very limited to Pinot made for the $5-10 market. They were not necessarily representative of the average Pinot being made now for just a little more money. Unfortunately, Chilean wine as a whole has a reputation as a cheap wine and people don’t venture beyond that and only the larger stores specialized in imports carry some of these other options.
Conclusion
Given the price, scarcity and demand for quality Pinot around the world, one can arguably state that Chilean Pinot is not only the best value Pinot in the world, but also simply the best value WINE in the world.
Therefore, it’s not a surprise that renowned Pinot expert Rex Pickett chose Chile to make his own wine. Pickett is the author of Sideways, whose novel and film changed the market for Pinot forever. Will his new Sideways wine and third Sideways novel about his adventures in Chile cause a second Sideways effect in Chile?* All the more reason to pounce on Chilean Pinot why it’s still such a value.
Living in Chile, I’ve been spoiled to have high quality Pinot at an affordable every day price. I hope you grab a case next time you come across one.
Do you agree? What is your favorite bargain Pinot? Have you tried Chilean Pinot yet?
*Read my review of Rex Pickett’s Sideways Pinot Noir from Casablanca, Chile and my brief interview with him.
How did this recent tasting compared to last August? Any new finds? I still like a Cali that seduces me with its perfume before tasting the velvet and richness on the first sip. Larry was fond of telling the story of one he opened with friends that just filled the room with its fragrance.