[TN] On the darkening of Pinot Noir fruit ('07 Amisfield)

Hi Mark-I too have observed this trend. I made a couple of assumptions based on nothing more than my own observations. I think that "Parker" and many critics likes this style of pinot better than the red fruited style so the growers and vintners tend to be moving to that clonal selection more and more. Personally I like it when it's well made and to me represents the difference (very generally speaking) between Cote de Nuits and Cote de Beaune. Unfortunately too many times the vintners go overboard (think Aubert or Marcassin) and produce over extracted over oaked monstrous pinots that are closer to Syrah in nature than Pinot Noir. Just my 2 cents.

I also wonder about some of the wine makers adding Syrah to the blend and getting the darker color and deeper but less fresh taste. If it is just clonal selection, my preference is to go back to the older lighter colored style as I find many of the pinots becoming much more tannic and longer to resolve. Of course, my preference in Burgundy is Cote de Nuits.

Gentlemen, I appreciate the responses, but suspect that we're talking at cross-purposes. I agree about the overextracted, Syrah wannabe PNs, but what I'm talking about here is a PN that starts out its life (at release) as a red-fruited, light and bright wine but becomes, after a few years of bottle age, a darker-fruited, deeper and less bright wine. Does this ring any bells with you?

Mark Lipton

I've seen it in a few wines from Domaine Serene from Oregon but no California wines that I can recall. Occasionally a Volnay will go dark as I recall some Nicolas Rossignol Volnay that has darkened as it has aged.

The top red Burgundy wines of 1971 often were very light in color at first, but many became considerably darker with age. Some blamed the low pH and or high SO2 content for this effect, but I have no idea if this is true. In any event, the 1971s were a quite variable lot. Some turned out great with age and became darker and more complex. Others started to decline very early, and the nearly pink color of some of these soon became light brown. I still have a few 1971 red Burgandy wines that are good and of a more typical Burgundy color than when young. However many 1971s should have been buried a few decades ago.