Recently I had an occasion to celebrate and it made me think of a suitable wine. The kind of wine you spend more on because of the celebration and the experience you expect. My wife and I both like pinot noir so we did a comparison taste test of some well-known makers.
Merry Edwards is a highly respected maker of Pinot Noir in California’s Russian River valley in Sonoma county. I met Merry during a wine event in Alexandria back in 2014. At that event we enjoyed the Meredith Estate Pinot the best of the wines served, and it has continued to get stellar reviews. So that one seemed a natural contender, and I paid around $85 for the 2017.
The wine was very dark in the glass, with a bouquet of violets. It could almost be described as rich, with black tea and lots of dark fruit, currant, boysenberry and black cherry. I also had a bit of forest and just a bit of pepper on the long finish. Plum starts to come in after some time in the glass.
The wine was a powerhouse, and not really what I wanted out of a pinot noir. It was obviously well-made, but I didn’t enjoy the wine’s overwhelming and rich experience. I don’t know if it’s more the wine changed since 2014 or if it was my taste for pinot noir.
Kosta Browne is another famous name for California pinot noir. I had never had it before and decided this was a good time. I paid $113 for a bottle of the 2020 Russian River. Being another Californian pinot noir from the same region, I thought it would be similar to the Merry Edwards.
It was not. The Kosta Browne a mile, lightish wine in my opinion. The fruit was cranberry/raspberry, there was a nice silkiness on the palate and some tart fruit on the finish. There was also a tinge of vegetation that I did not enjoy. A very different wine but again not the special occasion experience I was seeking.
Having given California first dibs we then decided to try Burgundy. It’s not a road we often go down – French pinot noir from Burgundy is usually expensive and my wife has a New World preference. We spoke to a friend who owns a restaurant and she suggested we look for wines from the makers Rossignol and Rene Bouvier.
The first one we found was the Rossignol 2015 Volnay. This wine for us was the extreme light end of the Pinot Noir spectrum – overly delicate, tart and tasting a bit like cranraspberry. Initially it had some earth but in less than 15 minutes in the glass that was gone. It was not the best way to spend $105 in our opinion.
The winner for us was our restaurateur friend’s other suggestion, the Rene Bouvier. We very much enjoyed the 2018 Gevrey Chambertin Les Jeunes Rois at a French (of course) restaurant. It looked light in the glass but had a more substantial feeling on the palate. It was cherry driven with a touch of currant, a bit of mushroom and earth on the finish. It had a beautiful balance of fruit and acidity and was a fantastic complement to our meal.
So there you have it for special event pinot noirs. One thing to note is that the $100 mark is sort of the entry point for a nice French burgundy, you can spend a lot more and (maybe) get an even better experience. If you do, please tell me about it!