Neuchâtel Pinot Noir 2004, Domaine E. De Montmollin
22nd November 2007
“In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace — and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.” Harry Lime, The Third Man
And good Pinot Noir, he might have added. You don’t hear much about it because the Swiss tend to keep it to themselves. Until very recently only two percent of the country’s wine was consumed abroad. The Swiss wine industry was heavily protected, and its winemakers had little reason to seek foreign attention. For the same reason, quality varied wildly.
From the 1990s onwards everything changed. The protections were dismantled and the industry had to start competing. The government brought in new regulations covering everything from grape yields to permitted blends. International expos were set up, in which the local product could be directly compared with foreign rivals.
One of the more interesting of these expos is the Mondial du Pinot Noir. As the name implies, this event is devoted exclusively to wine made from the Pinot Noir grape. About a third of its most recent entries were from outside Switzerland, including such serious Pinot Noir countries as France, Germany, New Zealand and the United States. The tasting is blind and the results deserve to be taken seriously.
The winner of the 2006 silver medal was this wine, from Domaine E. de Montmollin in Neuchâtel. You would expect Pinots from this part of the world to be of a high standard – Neuchâtel is just across the border from Burgundy – and Montmollin’s barrique version does not disappoint. It is light-to-medium bodied, coloured garnet with orange highlights. The nose is excellent – sweet vanilla and cherrywood – the tannins are soft, and there is a fine array of flavours, including leather and persimmon. The finish carries the vital gamey or farmyard quality essential to all serious Pinot Noir. $30 in the US, $20 in the UK – if you can find it.
