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Pinot Grigio, or Pinot Gris, as it’s known in France makes very different wines depending where it’s grown, how it’s treated and the winemaking process. In Alsace the wine is rich, heady and spicy with real depth of flavour and vibrancy. The wines age beautifully and are sometimes picked late – vendange tardive – to create sweet, luscious, astonishingly beautiful wines. In New Zealand and the northern parts of the US, the grape also makes tasty, characterful wines. However, in northern Italy, where it’s cool and volume is more important than concentration of flavours, Pinot Grigio makes vast amounts of complete rubbish. This is wine for people who don’t really like wine and certainly don’t want it to taste of much.
The fashion for Pinot Grigio is absolutely beyond me, except that I know about those people who just want a glass of something cool – in both senses of the word. The world is full of wine, at these lower prices, that has character, flavour and something, just something, to notice. Cheap Pinot Grigio, by which I mean anything under £6, is blander than vanilla blancmange.
Anyway, it has become enormously popular, despite its blandness and this at the same time as rosé is the must have drink. It was only a matter of time until the two came together and, in the mode of the Americans, the marketing people decided to call it Pinot Grigio Blush. In fairness, it is a lighter colour than most pink wine – quite a tasteful, onion skin colour. However, that’s the only tasty thing about it.
One wine was reasonable – not at all disgusting - Italia Pinot Grigio Rosé 2006 from Waitrose at £4.99. I had a cool glass of it the next day and quite enjoyed it. It was leaps ahead of the competition. It smelt, fairly attractively, of crème soda. It was dry, with good acidity and, as wine number 7 out of 8, was the first valid wine we’d tried.
Breganze PG Ramato Superiore 2006, which is £5.49 from Majestic, smelt of pink marshmallows and was nicely dry. Alex thought M&S’s La Prendina Estate, at £6.99 smelt of strawberry jelly cubes and it made us shudder with its sourness.
Vino Italiano PG Ramato, which is only £3.99 from Aldi smelt of pink shrimps and vanilla flavouring and was searingly dry. If you served it freezing cold, to mute the smell, it wasn’t too bad. Echo Falls, which is from California, via Morrisons, was nowhere near as bad as I expected. It smelt like a pink car air freshener and the medium dry taste reminded Nikki of tinned strawberries.
The Co-op’s Maresco Pink PG smelt of wet wool and pink washing up liquid. It was strawberry flavoured and rather dull.
The smell of Radcliffe’s PG Blush reminded Karen of sick and the taste was nastily sour.
Rosé can be a great drink. It perhaps doesn’t reach the heights that are achieved by high quality wine because it is made for very early drinking and much of the greatness of wine happens after the bottle leaves the winery. However, it can be a delicious, interesting and refreshing wine. Not in this case.