This wine is what happens when you aren’t paying attention. I will sometimes ask a colleague to suggest a wine, if I feel like I’ve fallen into a rut, and want to try something I might not think of myself. So I did this one day. I said I didn’t want a Burgundy, since I had a whole bunch at home. So my colleague suggests this, which was new in at the time. I said ‘Sure, why not?’ Well, only realising later I had just bought a Pinot Noir – the grape in red Burgundy. It’s not Burgundy, but I’m not sure I’d have tried it I had been paying more attention
In the glass
Bright, ruby, clear. This is definitely a light wine. You could easily read through it – a way to judge how light a wine is that I learned at WSET. I’ve called it ruby, but I can’t quite decide if it is perhaps starting to shade a bit to something just a hint darker. I wouldn’t go as far as to call it garnet, the next darker colour in the ‘official’ red wine spectrum, but it’s thinking of becoming garnet when it grows up. Well, not this bottle, obviously.
The nose
Whoo! I actually smelled stuff this time. Red fruit, more specifically cherries and red currants. There’s also a hint of something I can’t quite distinguish. Perhaps leather? At any rate, something that belongs in the category of starting to hint at a bit of age. .
The palate
This is a light bodied wine for sure. The tannins are soft and not really noticeable. The red fruits also come through on the palate, but more red currant than cherry this time. The acidity is the thing in this wine for me. Relatively high acidity. I think it’s the first red wine I’ve had – or at least, that I remember having, which obviously isn’t the same thing – that has almost a hint of petillance. You get that in some white wines – most famously Vinho Verde, but in a red? Not that I can recall. It has a long finish, with a tingling from the acidity lingering for quite a bit.
When I move on from the semi-analytical tasting to just having some more, it occasionally comes across as a cough syrup-like. Not to a strong extent, but perhaps just enough to keep me from calling it a better wine.
Rating
This gets a yummy, but if you wanted to call it yummy-plus, I wouldn’t really argue. I liked it enough to Coravin a second sample. That says something. But yet, I also can’t quite get myself to call it yummy-plus myself. Maybe it’s just my mood.
It’s an intriguing wine. The acidity and red fruits point to youth, but at times there are hints of a bit of age. The back of the bottle says it can cellar for eight years, so perhaps at three, we are starting to see a bit of the age-derived aspects peeking through.
Sustainability
Can’t find any evidence of anything sustainability rated, sorry.
Other stuff
Nothing particularly noteworthy to add here. I do think this is the first Argentinian Pinot Noir I’ve had. Sort of glad I wasn’t paying that much attention when it was suggested.
The technical info and such
14.5%% ABV. Pinot Noir. £15.49 from Cambridge Wine Merchants.