Why don’t we see PN in blends? Off the top of my head, seems like it could used in a similar way as grenache?
Maybe it doesn’t play well with others?
my GUESS would be cost. Pinot is pricey and maybe there wouldn’t be the return if it’s blended when it can be sold for more as a varietal. Complete speculation.
Pinot doesn’t make very interesting wine if it’s cropped high. So it’s expensive. Then it gets lost in blends, so it’s not really practical as a blending grape. Sure, there are some Pinot/Gamay blends. But really, it’s the veal of wine grapes. Make hamburgers with chuck instead.
It does get used, just not to the acclaim ‘pure’ bottlings get or the blends using Bordeaux varieties. Passetoutgrains(SP) is Gamay/P Noir from Burgundy and one of the more prevalent examples, and you find it popping up quite a bit in blends in northern Italy and recently in Austria. It’s more of a producer by producer sort of thing than a broad sweeping regional style that everyone can easily identify.
Lynn Penner Ash blends Pinot with syrah for her Rubeo blend.
And David Oreilly, I believe throws some into his crazy blend, the Abbots table in some years, along with 77 other grape varietals.
Both quaffable offerings and solid QPR
For the sub-$20 tab, I like Peter Rosback’s 2008 Red Table wine. IIRC, it’s primarily pinot with zin and some cab.
Flowers also blends pinot. Then again, there’s pinotage as a warning.
Recruiting ballerinas for rugby is what comes to mind.
Makes some pretty good blends with chardonnay and meunier…
Red Champagne?
Thought about champagne after I posted. Good catch. Obviously I was (narrowly) thinking about red wine initially.
The one grape (imo) that blends with Pinot in good/interesting ways is Poulsard…there are a few excellent Pinot/Poulsard blends from the Jura. I’d make one if I could find someone to plant/grow the Poulsard (at an interesting location, of course…not that there’s any sensible economics behind doing this).
Passetoutgrains (gamay/pinot) seems more like a way to use grapes that wouldn’t cut it on their own rather than being an interesting concept to pursue…tho I don’t have a huge amount of experience here so could be wrong.
Other than that, I agree that Pinot gets lost when blended with other red grapes, so what’s the point. Not sure the price of Pinot is a factor…cab is pricey and that still gets use to blend with merlot (at all price levels).
Coincidentally, I had a 2009 Domaine Brazilier Coteaux du Vendômois Tradition the other day. Really quite nice - a blend of Cabernet Franc, Pineau d’Aunis and Pinot Noir. Nothing life changing, but rather lush and balanced. An easy drinker, this performs well given the $10 price point.
I’ve had some different vintages of Cakebread’s “Rubaiyat” over the years, which is a syrah-pinot blend, some years including zinfandel, merlot and/or other varieties in the blend, and it’s quite a good and interesting wine.
Domaine Alfred (now Chamisal winery) used to make an inexpensive pinot-syrah blend called the DA Red, that was a solid quaffer for $10-15.
My guesses as to why you don’t see it more often would be (a) the cost, as several people noted above, and (b) that it’s just not traditional to blend pinot noir, other than in sparkling wine. Notice how you rarely see chardonnay blended either, that being the other main grape from Burgundy.
Indeed you don’t see it often.
The craziest blend I’ve seen with Pinot Noir is Rosso Del Camul from Venetia. It’s 50% Cabernet-Sauvignon and 50% Pinot Noir, aged in Slovenian oak. Under $20, pretty awesome QPR but the pinot does get lost in it.
Well there’s blends of the rhone varietals and blends of the cabernet varietals and I don’t know for a fact but I suspect these are genetically closer cousins to one another. You could blend pinot with gamay as they seem to be close cousins too but that just seems like a waste of good pinot. If you look at so called “kitchen sink blends,” you do find pinot in them. Tandem Peloton is one example.
Mas Gassac’s red has a small amount of Pinot Noir.
Aaron
Good point about poulsard. I have to disagree on Passetoutgrains, I think it is a really fun wine that combines the energy of Beaujolais with more Burgundian refinement, and I’d almost always prefer a Passetoutgrains to a generic Bourgogne. Try Chevillon’s or Clavelier’s for some good examples.
I remember trying Casa Lapostolle’s BoRoBo and thinking it was terrible. It is a blend that includes Syrah, Merlot, Pinot Noir, Carmenere and Cabernet.
Olson Ogden makes a field blend called Persuasion (for about $19). The 08 composition is:
Grenache
(13%),
Marsanne
(6%),
Pinot
Noir
(12%),
Syrah
(69%)
It’s a very nice wine.