‘Intriguing Pinot Gris’ is not an oxymoron!

While I seldom venture near a grape that often renders flabby, unctuous wines with high alcohol and cloying sweetness; Pinot Gris’ potential to also make slaking wines with a mineral purr and layers of intrigue, was revealed when last in Germany, sweating over a broken hard-drive on my Mac while in Baden. Frustrated beyond belief I was ready to cancel my next appointment and yet I reminded myself that before feeling the incessant need to pulverize my thinking into sound-bursts of tasting notes, I once simply wrote a few thoughts down and left it at that. Before that, I recalled, I had simply tasted wine and drank what I liked. On this particular day in Baden I decided that I was going to return to that approach, driven by curiosity and a visceral drive, rather than any sense that I had to look professional, cart my computer around and clatter away in front of a fifth-generation winemaker sitting on a wooden stool. Oh, the stolid juxtaposition!

I soon realized that my rediscovered self took pleasure in the evanescent; the wines that meandered and shimmied rather than those of just intensity and concentration. After all, subtle wines can boast intensity of purpose, if their purpose is simply to be drunk all too easily! So it was that while Salwey’s wines can hardly be called meek given their stony rasp, skeletal textures and richness; I had discovered something incredibly delicious and drinkable in Grauburgunder, or Pinot Gris, as it is more commonly known. I had seen a bushel of light and while not incandescent, I had walked into Weingut Salwey to grasp that Grauburgunder, or Pinot Gris, could indeed make wines that I wanted to not only drink, but almost guzzle.

And so it was again, just the other day at a tasting in Tokyo, that I came across another Pinot Gris that struck me at the first whiff, in a sort of carnal way: creamed corn of my childhood, ripe pears and crunchy apple. The palate is a textural panoply-’skinsy’ yet fresh-with some sweetness on the finish but not too much. The wine is long and resinous following handling in large ovals, with lots of solids and ambient yeasts. It is weighty but mellifluous. It glows and makes me see yellow fruits. Most importantly, it makes me reach for another glass and then another. The Holly’s Garden Pinot Gris 2009 is made by Moondarra, a Pinot Noir-focused winery in Victoria’s Gippsland. The fruit is from elevated King Valley vineyards in Australia’s lower alpine region. The wine is a bright spark on a vapid landscape, much like Mount Fuji shimmering against the industrial vista seen from my window, on this glorious late winter day in Tokyo. And oh, it goes very well with soft creamy cheese and green curry chicken, but I am sure that you can work that out for yourself.

Both Holly’s Garden and Moondarra are imported into Japan by Vortex.