Power To Pinot

At a celebration of pinot noir, Australia’s top sommeliers presented the bottles that best speak to the grape’s pulling power, writes MAX ALLEN.

- Max Allen

When the organisers of this year’s Pinot Celebration invited six of Australia’s top sommeliers to speak at their biennial talk-and-taste festival on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, they were hoping for a report on how pinot noir is travelling in restaurants around the country. What they got was one of the most engaging and insightful sessions of the two-day event, illuminated by the pinots that each of the somms chose to present, but covering much broader ground than just the grape variety itself.

Attica’s Jane Lopes selected the 2016 Holyman ($50) from Tasmania, a pure and crunchy pinot with lovely perfume and freshness. Lopes has been in Australia for only two years, having moved to Melbourne from New York, where she worked at Eleven Madison Park, and despite having tasted and travelled extensively since arriving, she still brings a valuable outsider’s view.

“There’s a whole world of pinot noir here that we don’t see in the US,” she said. “Soon after I moved here I was invited to a retrospective tasting of Joe Holyman’s pinot and was blown away by how well they age. Since then I’ve come across new producers cropping up all the time as well as the older producers. And I’ve been impressed by what good value pinot is here in an international context.”