Winemaker Notes
Combine it with simple red meat dishes or venison. It is excellent with mushroom dishes or with matured mountain cheeses.
Professional Ratings
-
Vinous
Darkly floral, the 2020 Pinot Noir Cru Selection smolders up with a mix of dried blueberries, crushed blackberries and savory herbs. This is soft in texture, nearly fleshy in feel, balanced by zesty acidity and tart wild berry fruits that add a pleasant tension through the close. The 2020 finishes long and staining, leaving a bitter tinge that puckers the cheeks as the mouth waters for more.
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.”
A picturesque, eastern European wine growing nation, Slovenia can claim one of the most ancient winemaking cultures in all of Europe. Its history dates back to the Celts and Illyrians tribes, well before the Romans had any influence on France, Spain or Germany. But it wasn’t until the 1970s that Slovenia developed a more refined, private-sector wine industry.
Today it is a powerful source of some of the industry’s most important orange wines (whites made with extended skin contact); furthermore, fully three quarters of the country’s wine production is white.
Slovenian weather is continental with hot summers and cold, wet winters. It is divided into three wine regions: Podravje in Slovenia’s northeast; Primorska in its west, close to Italy; and Posavje in its southeast. These are further divided to nine wine districts.