Ara Single Vineyard Pinot Gris, Marlborough, New Zealand 2013 (£10.99, Waitrose) In the thicket of branches that makes up the pinot wine grape family tree, two names stand out as the most familiar, although their reputations could not be more different. Pinot noir is known for being fickle and finicky but capable of transcendently aromatic and silky reds; pinot grigio is synonymous with borderline neutral dry whites of the most innocuous and industrial kind. No wonder serious growers in New Zealand tend to use the French “gris” when they’re making their increasingly excellent grigio. With its ripe sweet pear flavours, Ara’s is a particularly glowing and fluent example, with a strong family resemblance to the spicy wines made from the variety in Alsace.
Josmeyer Pinot Blanc Mise du Printemps, Alsace, France 2014 (£11.50, The Wine Society) As good as pinot gris from New Zealand (or Oregon) can be, Alsace is the place where it is capable of scaling heights of seductive pleasure comparable, in feeling if not flavour, to pinot noir. It’s hard to believe that the billowing peach, pear, honeysuckle and shortcrust pastry of Trimbach Hommage à Georgette 1996 opened by a generous friend recently (Hedonism Wines in London has some in stock for £96.70) comes from the same grape as dreary supermarket grigio. Alsace also does a neat line in yet another member of the pinot clan, pinot blanc, which in the hands of the ever-excellent Josmeyer makes for a more dainty style of dry white with apples, blossom and the spring freshness that the name suggests.
Litmus White Pinot, Surrey, England 2011 (£22, Marks & Spencer) If the pinot family, which, according to the set text on the subject, Wine Grapes, contains some 156 varieties, wasn’t confusing enough already, here’s a wine to further complicate the picture. Though it’s called white pinot, it isn’t made from pinot blanc (aka pinot bianco in Italy or weissburgunder in Germany). It’s a white wine, from red pinot noir grapes, with the skins separated from the juice before they can lend their colour. That’s common enough in sparkling wines such as champagne, where pinot noir and pinot meunier are used to make white wines. It’s rather more unusual for still wines, but it works brilliantly in the North Downs, creating a dry white of biscuity richness, berries and apples pitched somewhere between a Burgundian chardonnay and, perhaps inevitably, an Alsace pinot gris.
