Oregon Pinot: Amazing And Now Affordable

"God made Cabernet.  The Devil made Pinot Noir"

I recently began teaching a community learning class at the local community college.  The course is an introduction to wine appreciation and involves the tasting, analysis and scoring of about a dozen wines.  Because it is an introductory class, I try to focus on the basics of wine tasting and the “big name” grapes.  Thus, we taste the obligatory cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay, merlot, pinot noir, syrah and sauvignon blanc. 

In selecting the wines, I try to give the students as broad an experience as possible by choosing bottles from a variety of regions.  But I also have to stick within a fairly tight budget.  For most of the varietals, this is relatively easy.  I’ve written before about the ease of finding affordable California cabernet and merlot or cheap-but-good syrah from Australia (usually called Shiraz).  But, as I’ve also written here before, pinot noir has traditionally been a tricky one. 

One of the greatest winemakers to ever live, Russian immigrant Andre Tchelistcheff, summed it up succinctly in speaking about the difficulties of making wine from the pinot noir grape:  “God made Cabernet.  The Devil made Pinot Noir.”