Pinot noir (, ), also known as Pinot nero, and Spätburgunder is a red-wine grape variety of the species Vitis vinifera. The name also refers to wines created predominantly from Pinot noir grapes. The name is derived from the French words for pine and black. The word pine alludes to the grape variety having tightly clustered, pinecone-shaped bunches of fruit.
Pinot noir is grown around the world, mostly in cooler climates, and the variety is chiefly associated with the Burgundy region of France. Pinot noir is now used to make red wines around the world, as well as Champagne, and sparkling white wines such as the Italian Franciacorta, along with English sparkling wines. Regions that have gained a reputation for red Pinot noir wines include the Willamette Valley of Oregon; Carneros in Napa and Sonoma, Central Coast, Sonoma Coast, and Russian River AVAs of California; the Elgin and Walker Bay wine regions of South Africa; the Mornington Peninsula, Adelaide Hills, Great Southern, Tasmania, and Yarra Valley in Australia; and the Central Otago, Martinborough, and Marlborough wine regions of New Zealand. Pinot noir is the most planted varietal (38%) used in sparkling wine production in Champagne and other wine regions.Wine & Spirits Education Trust Wine and Spirits: Understanding Wine Quality pp. 6–9, Second Revised Edition (2012), London. .
Pinot noir is a difficult variety to cultivate and transform into wine. The grape's tendency to produce tightly packed clusters makes it susceptible to several viticultural hazards involving rot that require diligent canopy management.
The thin skins and low levels of phenolic compounds lend pinot to producing mostly lightly colored, medium-bodied and low-tannin wines that can often go through phases of uneven and unpredictable aging. When young, wines made from Pinot noir tend to have red fruit aromas of cherries, raspberries, and strawberries. As the wine ages, Pinot has the potential to develop more vegetal and "barnyard" aromas that can contribute to the complexity of the wine.
Description
Pinot noir's home is France's Burgundy region, particularly Côte-d'Or. It is also planted in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, northern parts of Croatia, Czech Republic, England, the Republic of Georgia, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Hungary, Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Moldova, New Zealand, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Switzerland, Ukraine, United States, and Uruguay. The United States has increasingly become a major Pinot noir producer, with some of the best regarded coming from Oregon's Willamette Valley, and California's Sonoma County with its Russian River Valley and Sonoma Coast appellations. Lesser-known appellations are found in Mendocino County's Anderson Valley, the Central Coast's Santa Lucia Highlands appellation, the Santa Maria Valley, and Sta. Rita Hills American Viticulture Area in Santa Barbara County. In New Zealand, it is principally grown in Martinborough, Marlborough, Waipara, and Central Otago.
The leaves of Pinot noir are generally smaller than those of Cabernet Sauvignon or Syrah. The vine is typically less vigorous than either of these varieties. The grape cluster is small and conico-cylindrical, shaped like a pinecone. Some viticultural historians believe this shape similarity may have given rise to the name. In the vineyard, Pinot noir is sensitive to wind and frost, cropping levels (it must be low yielding for the production of quality wines), soil types, and pruning techniques. In the winery, it is sensitive to fermentation methods and yeast strains and is highly reflective of its terroir, with different regions producing very different wines. Its thin skin makes it susceptible to bunch rot and similar fungal diseases. The vines themselves are susceptible to powdery mildew, especially in Burgundy infection by leaf roll, and fanleaf viruses cause significant vine health problems. These complications have given the grape a reputation for being difficult to grow: Jancis Robinson calls pinot a "minx of a vine" and André Tchelistcheff declared that "God made cabernet sauvignon whereas the devil made Pinot noir". It is much less tolerant of harsh vineyard conditions than the likes of Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Merlot or Grenache.
However, Pinot noir wines are among the most popular in the world. Joel L. Fleishman of Vanity Fair describes them as "the most romantic of wines, with so voluptuous a perfume, so sweet an edge, and so powerful a punch that, like falling in love, they make the blood run hot and the soul wax embarrassingly poetic". Master Sommelier Madeline Triffon calls them "sex in a glass".
The tremendously broad range of bouquets, flavors, textures, and impressions that Pinot noir can produce sometimes confuses tasters. Broadly, the wines tend to be of light to medium body with an aroma reminiscent of black and/or red cherry, raspberry and to a lesser extent currant and many other fine small red and black berry fruits. Traditional red Burgundy is famous for its savory fleshiness and "farmyard" aromas (this latter is sometimes associated with thiol and other reductive characters), but changing fashions, modern winemaking techniques, and new easier-to-grow clones have favored a lighter, more fruit-prominent, cleaner style.
The wine's color, when young, is often compared to that of garnet, frequently being much lighter than that of other red wines. This is entirely natural and not a winemaking fault, as Pinot noir has a lower skin anthocyanin (coloring matter) content than most other classical red/black varieties. Callistephin, the 3-O-glucoside of pelargonidin, an orange-colored anthocyanidin, is also found in the berry skins of Pinot noir.
However, an emerging, increasingly evident style from California and New Zealand highlights a more powerful, fruit-forward, and darker wine that can tend toward Syrah (or even new world Malbec) in depth, extract, and alcoholic content.
Pinot noir is also used in the production of Champagne (usually along with Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier) and is planted in most of the world's wine-growing regions for use in both still and sparkling wines. Pinot noir grown for dry table wines is generally low-yielding and of lesser vigor than many other varieties, whereas when grown for use in sparkling wines (e.g., Champagne), it is generally cropped at significantly higher yields.
In addition to being used for the production of sparkling and still red wine, Pinot noir is also sometimes used for rosé still wines, Beaujolais Nouveau-style wines, and even vin gris white wines. Its juice is uncolored.
History, mutants and clones
Pinot noir is almost certainly a very ancient variety that may be only one or two generations removed from wild Vitis sylvestris vines. Its origins are nevertheless unclear: In De re rustica, Columella describes a grape variety similar to Pinot noir in Burgundy during the 1st century CE; however, vines have grown wild as far north as Belgium in the days before phylloxera, and it is possible that pinot represents a direct domestication of (hermaphrodite-flowered) Vitis sylvestris.
Archaeological evidence of the variety's presence in France was further solidified by a 2021 excavation at the Great Hospital in Château-Thierry. In 2026, DNA analysis of grape seeds recovered from a 15th-century hospital latrine confirmed they were genetically identical to modern Pinot noir, proving the variety has remained virtually unchanged for at least 600 years.
Ferdinand Regner argued that Pinot noir is a cross between Pinot Meunier (Schwarzriesling) and Traminer, but this claim has since been refuted. In fact, Pinot Meunier has been shown to be a chimerical mutation (in the epidermal cells) which makes the shoot tips and leaves prominently hairy-white and the vine a little smaller and early ripening. Thus, Pinot Meunier is a chimera with two tissue layers of different genetic makeup, both of which contain a mutation making them non-identical to, and mutations of, Pinot noir (as well as of any of the other color forms of pinot). As such, Pinot Meunier cannot be a parent of Pinot noir, and, indeed, it seems likely that chimerical mutations which can generate Pinot gris from other pinot (principally blanc or noir) may in turn, be the genetic pathway for the emergence of Pinot Meunier.
Pinot gris is a pinot color sport (and can arise by mutation of Pinot noir or Pinot blanc), presumably representing a somatic mutation in either the VvMYBA1 or VvMYBA2 genes that control grape berry color. Pinot blanc is a further mutation and can either naturally arise from or give rise to Pinot gris or Pinot noir; the mutation-reversion path is multi-directional, therefore. The general DNA profiles of both Pinot gris and blanc are identical to Pinot noir; and other Pinots, Pinot mour, and Pinot teinturier are also genetically similarly close. Almost any given Pinot (of whatever berry color) can occur as a complete mutation or as a chimera of almost any other pinot. As such, suggestions that Pinot noir is the fundamental and original form of the Pinots are both misleading and highly tendentious. Indeed, if anything, Pinot blanc may be the original human-selected form of Pinot, although given the genetic variability of this longstanding genetic line, thinking of Pinot as a familial cluster of grapes sharing a fundamental and common genetic core is almost certainly nearest the truth. It is this core around which the sub-varietally identifying color variations (blanc, rouge, noir, gris, rose, violet, tenteurier, moure, etc.) occur, along with the more striking chimeric morphological mutation that is Pinot Meunier, and the interesting further mutations of this variety as Pinot Meunier gris and as the non-hairy mutation which the Germans classify as 'Samtrot' (effectively 'Pinot red velvet').
A white berried sport of Pinot noir was propagated in 1936 by Henri Gouges of Burgundy, and there is now 2.5ha planted of this grape which Clive CoatesClive Coates, Cote D'Or (1997) pp. 144 and 457 calls Pinot Gouges, and others call Pinot Musigny. There is, however, no published evidence, nor any obvious reason, to believe that this is other than a (possibly quite fine) form of Pinot blanc, having simply arisen as a selected natural mutation of the original Pinot noir in the Gouges' vineyard.