Pinot-Bloody-Noir: The Top 50 list of the grape winemakers love to hate
Pinot noir, bete noire. That about sums up the attitude of winemakers who ritually bemoan the behaviour of Burgundy’s famously fickle Black Grape. One small winemaker who submitted his produce to an Australian wine show this year even highlighted his frustrations with black pinot by naming his wine “BFL”. (Tip: it doesn’t stand for Best For Less).
Our list of Australia’s Top 50 Pinot Noirs is dominated by Tasmanian efforts, as one might expect. The grape thrives in cooler climates and now ranks as the Apple Isle’s biggest wine variety by volume. This also helps explain the island state’s growing dominance of the Australian sparkling market given pinot noir’s role in partnering with chardonnay to produce bubbly’s white blend base.
Tasmanian pinots accounted for nine of our Top 20 with the Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula coming second with six of the top 20. Three of these were from the same producer (Coldstream Hills). The rest are scattered around the misty contours of the Adelaide Hills, the Yarra Valley and even Orange in NSW. New Zealand, which is the other great regional producer of pinot noir, also features in the list but suffers from our methodology which favours results from the bigger and more numerous Australian shows. A few kiwi pinots make our list lower down but would ordinarily rank well against their local counterparts in a toe-to-toe tasting.
Now is perhaps also a good time to explain to our growing band of followers a little about the provenance of our lists. They are drawn exclusively from the impossibly deep and pure wells of the Australian and New Zealand wine show systems. That collection of about 70 shows generated nearly 40,000 scores last year.
To put the vastness of this resource into perspective, an enthusiastic wine retailer waxing lyrical about a “mystery label” pinot he was flogging boasted to his readers that this particular wine was ranked fifth highest by a single source critic who had tasted 300 pinot noirs from the 2015 vintage.
That’s nice dear but, as in so many things, size matters. That’s particularly true when it comes to statistical comparison. Our list draws upon more than 2500 individual pinot noir scores awarded by panellists to 1170 individual wines. Of these, 620 were from the 2015 vintage alone – twice as many wines as our respected and hardworking critic was able to taste.
Wine shows are also governed by strict protocols that guarantee their independence and rigour. The winner isn’t revealed until all the judges agree the score. The same can’t always be said for critics who often taste the wines at the winery itself. Put all that together and we’re confident that no other wine list can match ours for breadth, depth, independence or rigour.
So, without further ado, we present Vinloco’s Top 50 list of Australian and NZ pinot noirs:
| 1 | Bay of Fires Pinot Noir 2015 |
| 2 | Eddystone Point Pinot Noir 2015 |
| 3 | Eddystone Point Pinot Noir 2014 |
| 4 | Windowrie Estate Family Reserve pinot noir 2015 |
| 5 | Abel?s Tempest Pinot Noir 2015 |
| 6 | Coldstream Hills Hazeldene Pinot Noir 2015 |
| 7 | Nepenthe Altitude Pinot Noir 2015 |
| 8 | Sidewood Estate pinot noir 2015 |
| 9 | Coldstream Hills Deer Farm Pinot Noir 2015 |
| 10 | Rochford Wines L’Enfant Unique Pinot Noir 2015 |
| 11 | Montalto Pennon Hill Pinot Noir 2015 |
| 12 | Little Cathedral Pinot Noir 2015 |
| 13 | Bream Creek Pinot Noir 2013 |
| 14 | Cellarmasters Riversdale Centaurus Pinot Noir 2014 |
| 15 | Coldstream Hills Pinot Noir 2015 |
| 16 | Bay of Fires Pinot Noir 2014 |
| 17 | Paringa Estate Estate Pinot Noir 2015 |
| 18 | Montalto Estate Pinot Noir 2015 |
| 19 | Heemskerk Pinot Noir 2015 |
| 20 | Home Hill Wines Kellys Reserve Pinot Noir 2015 |
| 21 | Sidewood ?777? Pinot Noir 2015 |
| 22 | Giant Steps Sexton Vineyard Pinot Noir 2015 |
| 23 | Montalto Merricks Block Pinot Noir 2015 |
| 24 | Nepenthe Good Doctor Pinot Noir 2014 |
| 25 | Dawson James Pinot Noir 2014 |
| 25 | Basalt Wines Pinot Noir 2015 |
| 25 | Clarence House Estate Reserve Pinot Noir 2015 |
| 25 | Tolpuddle Vineyard Pinot Noir 2015 |
| 29 | Rapaura Springs Reserve Pinot Noir 2015 |
| 30 | Wolf Blass Yellow Label Pinot Noir 2015 |
| 31 | Cooks Lot Allotment 9 Handpicked Pinot Noir 2015 |
| 32 | Milton Vineyard Pinot Noir 2015 |
| 33 | Brown Brothers Tamar Ridge Pinot Noir 2014 |
| 34 | Lerida Estate Cullerin Pinot Noir 2015 |
| 35 | Red Hill Estate Single Vineyard Pinot Noir 2014 |
| 36 | Nautilus Awatere Valley Pinot Noir 2014 |
| 36 | Yealands Estate Winemaker’s Reserve Awatere Valley Marlborough Pinot Noir 2015 |
| 38 | Rocky Point Pinot Noir 2015 |
| 39 | Scotchmans Hill Pinot Noir 2015 |
| 40 | Villa Maria Reserve Marlborough Pinot Noir 2014 |
| 41 | Giant Steps Applejack Vineyard Pinot Noir 2015 |
| 42 | Hardys Eileen Hardy Pinot Noir 2014 |
| 43 | Brown Brothers Devil’s Corner Mt Amos Pinot Noir 2015 |
| 44 | Home Hill Wines Estate Pinot Noir 2015 |
| 45 | Oakdene Single Vineyard Peta’s Pinot Noir 2015 |
| 46 | Seville Estate Pinot Noir 2015 |
| 47 | Aldi Stores Tudor Pinot Noir 2015 |
| 48 | Robert Oatley Signature Series Yarra Valley pinot noir 2015 |
| 49 | Josef Chromy Pinot Noir 2015 |
| 50 | Thornbury Pinot Noir Central Otago 2015 |