Tag Archives: France

Pinot Noir is the grape that makes my absolute favorite wine: red burgundy. Of course, the real secret to burgundy is, as the adage goes, location, location, location. This is more accurately referred to as terroir — or at least, a significant part of terroir — within the lexicon shared by those of us with stained teeth, diseased livers, and big smiles.

Among the areas of France that has provided some surprisingly pleasant treats over the years is the stretch of winegrowing regions south of burgundy that run somewhat near the Alps: the Jura, Savoie, and Bugey.

So it was with some surprise that I didn’t fall head over heels in love with a pinot noir from a Bugey producer I’ve come to respect, specifically the 2008 pinot from the Peillot family in Bugey. As I drank a few glasses, I jotted down the following notes:

All the elegant berry fruit of a decent burgundy but lacking the bracing acidity and/or smoky quality that the best of those have to offer. Rather, there’s a bit of peanut shell in the finish, a dry minerality in place of the tartness I’d hope for. I alternate between loving this and having only modest interest in this.

After another drink later on, I decided that the dusty, fruity nature of this particular bottle was appealing but needed food to round out and cut down the concentrated, saturated flavors. I love elegant berry fruit, and I love the chalky finish that this wine shares with some of its Loire Valley pinot cousins. But without some acid or some food to tame this natural wonder, the wine occasionally wore on me. So I’m left confirming my initial impression: This is really wonderful, well-made wine. But for once, the intensity of a naturally made wine was too much for me to handle on its own.

I wonder if the salmon dish with a bit of lemon I made the day after might not have made this sing to me. I’ll give that a try next time, but if anyone has other ideas, send them my way.