Marq de Villiers wrote a book about Josh Jensen and his Herculean effort to establish Calera Wine Company, where he would produce, he hoped, world-class Pinot Noir in the hinterlands of Hollister, California; he titled the book "The Heartbreak Grape," and that moniker tells it all. No other plant is as fickle and capricious in its response to climate, soil type, pruning methods, or yields. Even the grape itself isn't necessarily of the same genetic material as your neighbor's Pinot growing in the vineyard next door, since no other grape is so prone to random genetic mutation. And no grape punishes     More

Marq de Villiers wrote a book about Josh Jensen and his Herculean effort to establish Calera Wine Company, where he would produce, he hoped, world-class Pinot Noir in the hinterlands of Hollister, California; he titled the book "The Heartbreak Grape," and that moniker tells it all. No other plant is as fickle and capricious in its response to climate, soil type, pruning methods, or yields. Even the grape itself isn't necessarily of the same genetic material as your neighbor's Pinot growing in the vineyard next door, since no other grape is so prone to random genetic mutation. And no grape punishes even the most conscientious growers and winemakers with ofttimes the most frustratingly mediocre results in the bottle.

So why do growers and winemakers torture themselves by even bothering with this demanding mistress? Simply put, at its best (think the great red Burgundies, which are all 100% Pinot Noir), no other variety combines intensity and concentration without weight, or marries the savage with the elegant and the refined. It's like crack for esthetes.

To compare North American Pinot Noir with its Burgundian cousins is a fool's wager: the grape expresses itself so differently in those two environments that it's pointless to think of Oregon Pinot as anything other than Oregon Pinot, or of Santa Rita Hills Pinot as expressing anything beyond its Santa Rita Hills-ness.   Less