Dan Berger’s Varietal Views: pinot gris
Dan Berger’s Varietal Views: pinot gris
By Dan Berger
NAPA VALLEY, Calif. — Despite some rather disparaging comments and its being the butt of inside-the-industry jokes, the grape we call pinot gris has retained a major presence in the wine community and can make a wine that has the potential to be a fascinating dinner-table companion.
Called pinot grigio in Italy’s Veneto, it can be a simple, decent quaff; in France’s Alsace it is nobler, occasionally making a rich yet food-oriented wine.
And in the coolest regions worldwide (Italy’s Alps-adjacent Alto Adige, much of breezy New Zealand, Mendocino County’s Anderson Valley and parts of Oregon) it has been elevated to regal status.
Since it has such an interesting persona, wine-lovers might wonder why more of the great versions aren’t produced or promoted as prodigious. Part of the reason is that it is — as are so many other pinot family variants — maddeningly difficult to deal with, both on the vine and in the winery. But those who accept the challenge adore what it can deliver.
Not everyone agrees. One of the world’s greatest wine-tasters, Australian wine authority James Halliday, once told me a pinot gris joke: “They held a taste-off between pinot gris and Perrier (water), and Perrier won,” he quipped. It was obvious that the line was intended to illustrate how lacking in flavor this varietal wine can be.
Halliday’s comment came a few weeks after my wife and I had driven through Oregon’s Willamette Valley and tasted approximately 20 newly released PGs, most of them a year old or less. They were fresh and not very complex but delightful because they had substance in their mid-palates and their aftertastes were appealing.
As Halliday implied, pinot gris grapes come with some odd proclivities, including that occasional blandness. But when grown in a cool spot and dealt with deftly, the grape’s bland tendencies don’t preclude it from making interesting — if not dramatic — wines. Great winemakers using great grapes can make excellent PGs.
Worldwide, dozens of wineries make pinot gris that are tasty although nothing special. Such wines are popular because they are unchallenging. Lots of Italian pinot grigios sell here at modest prices and elicit about as much excitement as a day-old dishrag.
Mysteriously enough, pinot gris’ various shortcomings can actually make it a fascinating wine for those willing to try to understand it — which isn’t easy. The good PGs and the bad both start with the genetics of this peculiar grape, which is a bit of an enigma.
Purely as a cultivar, it usually is thought of as a mutation of pinot noir. The “gris” in its name is French for “gray,” which is the color of the grape skins late in the season after the grapes lose their early season green.
The brilliant wine writer Jancis Robinson says in her “Oxford Companion to Wine” that pinot gris on the vine actually might be blue. And that the colors, even on the same cluster, might well be green, blue, gray and pink. Pinot gris might be viewed as a sort of degenerate cousin of pinot noir with no ability to make anything resembling a red wine or a rosé.
However, the “white” wine it makes often has a tinge of copper or gray color from the phenolics (tannins) in the skins. So it makes a “white wine” that’s neither white nor red and definitely isn’t pink but can have some of the properties of a red in texture.
As with Gewürztraminer (which we profiled here recently) the grape’s tannins can leave the resulting wine susceptible to being slightly bitter, similar to how tannins work in most red wines. Pinot gris’ potential astringency poses a minor dilemma for winemakers, who may have to deal with this drawback dexterously.
To mask any bitterness, winemakers might use various techniques. One is to leave some residual sugar in the wine to cover bitterness. Or, as occasionally seen in France’s Alsace, they allow slightly higher alcohol, which can add a delicate sweetness, thus covering some bitter compounds.
Making pinot gris with lower alcohol combined with very light pressing of the grapes to minimize bitter compounds also works. That often is combined with managing crop size to deal with potential bitterness before the grapes are picked.
Some California wineries make a pinot gris using a technique they think helps mask bitterness. They harvest a bit late, and the resulting higher alcohols (14% or more) add the impression of sweetness. This also gives the mid-palate a certain weight, so it “feels” like chardonnay to some buyers.
Some winemakers age pinot gris in barrels to give it added richness. Oak aging also can give a wine added weight, but I often find that the flavors of barrel-aged pinot gris are incompatible. Also, doing a secondary fermentation, known as malolactic, can lower the acidity, but in some cases that tactic harms the delicate aroma.
Some winemakers reduce the acidity by raising the pH to make the wine more succulent, but that simply makes the PG less likely to go with food. Others prefer to age pinot gris in old oak barrels or upright tanks that impart no flavors at all. This allows maturity to develop by letting spent yeast cells (called the lees) create a layer of complexity through maturity.
One additional tactic is to treat pinot gris a bit like a red wine and not release it until it has been in the bottle for an extra year. The extra bit of aging in the bottle allows some of the wine’s aromatics to “knit,” giving the wine slightly more depth.
One of the state’s best pinot gris annually is from Navarro Vineyards in Anderson Valley, where winemaker Jim Klein ages his pinot gris in old, neutral German oak oval casks to build the mid-palate with nuance. Navarro’s PG is always held back at the winery for extra aging, which develops its aromatic complexities so much more than if it had been released sooner.
In the case of cool-climate pinot gris, the primary aromatic attributes usually call forth memories of spring flowers, blossoms and one most appealing varietally correct nuance, fresh fennel.
Some of the best pinot gris offer wild spice aromas not unlike carnations. When wild aromatics of gris are coaxed out of a cold-climate vineyard, the main spice can include white pepper with hints of peach, pear and a faint tropicality.
This grape variety is most distinctly a semi-aromatic variety with faint traces of riesling. The spice typically doesn’t appear in most Italian pinot grigios that come from warmer areas such as Trentino. The best wines from there display more earthy notes and minerality.
Historically, among the most prized pinot gris are those from the top producers in France’s Germany-adjacent Alsace. Pinot gris isn’t as widely respected in Germany, where it is often called Ruländer.
In Alsace, pinot gris (also, oddly, called Tokay) is definitely a noble grape. Among the best PGs there are those from the respected house of Zind-Humbrecht. Its single-vineyard pinot gris wines sell for exalted prices. (A wine called Clos Jebsal is $50.) These are distinctly stylized wines best suited for those who have experience with them and a budget to afford them.
Alsace producers occasionally make remarkable dessert wines from pinot gris, called Vendange tardive or Selection de Grains Nobles. Prices for these wines can be well over $100 for half-bottles.
One of the world’s most important regions for drier-styled pinot gris is Italy’s cold north district Alto Adige, an Alps-adjacent area also referred to as Südtirol. (A new regional designation is called Dolomiti.) Here the grape variety’s most exotic versions can be found. It is also where a distinctly spicy version is seen, particularly when the wines are young and vivacious. Although they used to be difficult to get in the United States, these wines now are imported and prices are fairly reasonable, considering their high quality.
One aspect of pinot gris that hardly ever gets recognized is how this wine can age. In most cases aging of white wine is an extremely risky tactic and can lead to disaster. But on a trip to Oregon about 15 years ago we discovered something unusual that put me on a path to investigate this concept further.
There we were offered several wines that were 5 years old. Our first reaction was that they were disappointing because the flowery aromatics had declined. But on further reflection we decided to let the wines sit in our glasses for some time and tried them 40 minutes later.
What we discovered was never anticipated. The older pinot gris had changed aromatically but not necessarily for the worse. They simply had developed secondary characteristics that none of the younger wines had. What was happening was that these older pinot gris were evolving.
The best aspect of them was that they tasted structurally a little bit like rosé wines with textures that were more appropriate with rich seafood dishes, such as baked or roasted salmon. They had taken on slightly more weight in the mid-palate, and their flavors were more expansive.
Since then I have attempted to find out what happens with older pinot gris that started out with excellent acidity. I have been overwhelmingly pleased with the results of this completely unscientific analysis.
A few weeks ago came the proof I was looking for. Rummaging through my underground wine cellar I discovered a bottle of 2005 Navarro Pinot Gris that I had completely forgotten about. Fortunately, the storage was perfect.
I opened it for a group of five people. Three of them are winemakers. We all agreed: The wine was absolutely brilliant. No longer youthful or displaying the spice component that had been in the wine when it was released, it nonetheless showed an amazing combination of freshness and expansiveness that I could never have imagined before I stumbled on to this little secret. Pinot gris does age.
Well, not all of them. In fact, probably only a few. If the wine comes from a cool climate, if its acid is relatively high, if its pH is relatively low and if the storage conditions are near-perfect, I concluded, the potential is there for pinot gris to become absolutely superb when it is a decade or more old. Some of its semitropical aromatics may have changed and become more like dried fruits but with substantial flavoring attributable mainly to its careful aging.
So in spite of some seriously damaging comments about pinot gris that probably are perfectly warranted, there is nothing in the grape itself that warrants its dismissal. If it is planted in the wrong location, if it is badly treated by the grape-grower, if it is handled unconcernedly by the winemaker, if it is badly stored by the retailer or the buyer, it probably will not deliver much of the charm that it can.
But almost like any other top-rate grape, dealt with as you would any other noble variety it can deliver an exalted experience, almost as a nose-thumbing response to its disparagement.
Wine Discovery: 2022 Navarro Pinot Gris, Anderson Valley ($26) — Two weeks ago I was in Anderson Valley to see a documentary about the region. On my way home, I stopped at the Navarro tasting room, one of the most commodious places in Wine Country, and tasted several wines before buying a few. The most amazing wine in the tasting room was actually the company’s dramatic new 2023 pinot blanc — a bargain at $21. But for sheer definition of varietal correctness, Navarro Pinot Gris is a go-to standout. Most other wineries have already released their 2023s or are in the process of doing so. Navarro’s system is to hold back pinot gris until it develops added aromatics. This version is a textbook example of the variety. Tasting notes are unnecessary — it is precisely what I expect and rivals the best dry PGs anywhere. Klein said he ages the wine on its lees in German oval tanks. The lees act like an oxygen scavenger, keeping the wine fresh and vibrant.
If today's story captured your interest, explore these related articles:
Dan Berger has been writing about wine since 1975.
I particularly love Pinot Gris from NZ and from Oregon.In both locations they are made with a touch of residual sugar and they have beautiful aromas and taste. I also enjoy Pinot Blanc in Alsace.
Another great article.