Hello, I'm Chris Barlow. Welcome to Hospitality Crew's website on wine information. Today, we are going to be looking at the grape Pinot Noir.

Now, Pinot Noir has its home in Burgandy, France. Its the noble red grape of Burgandy now planted all over the world and particularly in cool regions of Australia and New Zealand, California, Oregon and various parts of the United States. ts a grape that is traditionally very difficult to grow and it has particular requirements in terms of soil and climate and because of that its perhaps not as popular grape for wine makers as other varieties.

The example we are looking at today is from New Zealand, its from the Marlborough Region and Pinot in the south Island of New Zealand has a particular style all of its own. Its becoming regarded around the world as a leader in new world Pinot Noir making. Traditionally Pinot exhibits qualities of cherry, spiciness, there's a certain spiciness in there and when it has some age on it, it gets into the sort of mushroom spectrum, a bit of a mushroomy forest floor characteristic. Those are qualities that you will hear mentioned about Pinot Noir, as it ages in particular.

In terms of food matching with this wine if you look on menus in Europe you'll find that things like duck and mushroom dishes, of course as I mentioned before, the flavours of mushroom and truffle. Those kind of dishes work incredible well with Pinot. Lighter sauces - you can't get into very heavily flavoured sauces with this wine or it tends to get blown away.

I don't know if you can pick up there but we'll have a look at the a bit closer later, but Pinot is a light to medium bodied red wine. It has a fairly thin skin, therefore the colour extraction during the fermentation process is not as deep and rich as Cabernet or Shiraz for instance. So it has a more delicate nature to it and therefore that medium bodied quality will match up with certain foods really well but not others.

Pinot in Australia is grown in cooler areas that is Southern Victoria, Tasmania and the Southern tip of Western Australia know as the Great Southern Region. The fact that Pinot Noir has a very thin skin means that it is also susceptible to mold and rot in the vineyards. Its often a very difficult variety to grow because of certain climates that have a high humidity. When it gets close to ripeness, sometimes we have that problem of rot coming to the vineyard and it causes many wine makers any number of problems.

However, a beautiful delicate wine light body that can take a bit of a chill in summer time. You don't want to be drinking this when its too hot, and please enjoy next time you perhaps visit an Asian restaurant and you feel like some duck. Peking Duck and Pinot Noir is a marriage made in heaven. So perhaps give that a try next time.

Cheers!