Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2012 Pinot Noir is pure and fresh yet intense on the rather lean, cassis-scented bouquet with sweet strawberry aromas and tart leafy notes. Silky, refined and lush on the palate, this is a generous and elegant Pinot with very fine tannins intertwined with crystalline saline purity. The finish is intense and sweet, very long but also delicate and stimulating in its finesse and mineral tension.
Thin-skinned, finicky and temperamental, Pinot Noir is also one of the most rewarding grapes to grow and remains a labor of love for some of the greatest vignerons in Burgundy. Fairly adaptable but highly reflective of the environment in which it is grown, Pinot Noir prefers a cool climate and requires low yields to achieve high quality. Outside of France, outstanding examples come from in Oregon, California and throughout specific locations in wine-producing world. Somm Secret—André Tchelistcheff, California’s most influential post-Prohibition winemaker decidedly stayed away from the grape, claiming “God made Cabernet. The Devil made Pinot Noir.”
Enhancing quality and diversity of wine grapes in recent years after the Swiss government lifted import controls on wine, Switzerland is beginning to gain some ground aside its European neighbors. While its main variety is the white Chasselas, more than half of Switzerland’s wine production is red. The country has 15,000 ha of vineyards mainly in the cantons of Geneva, Neuchâtel, Ticino, Valais and Vaud.