PINOT GRIS / PINOT GRIGIO: THE UNDERRATED GRAPE VARIETAL

Ask most wine drinkers what Pinot Grigio tastes like and they will describe something neutral and forgettable, and they’re probably not wrong considering the market for Pinot Grigio here in the United States, but they are seriously wrong if they think they have experienced the true essence of the grape varietal. As such, we are going to introduce you to its origin and we’ll explain why it acquired a bad reputation.

First off, because of how it is marketed in the US, many may be surprised that the varietal is native to France. Pinot Gris is the French name. Even more surprising to most is that it is a direct genetic mutation from a red grape that could not have more of an opposite reputation to the Pinot Grigio we described in the opening sentence: Pinot Noir. That’s correct, scientists from UC Davis have confirmed that the DNA profiles of the two grapes are virtually identical, and it’s not hard to believe given that the leaves of the vines, the vine structure, and the cluster shape of the grapes are indistinguishable between the two grape types. Scientists describe Pinot Gris/Grigio as a somatic mutation of Pinot Noir that happened in Burgundy at some point during the Middle Ages, meaning that a single genetic change caused a vine of Pinot Noir to produce berries with dramatically different pigmentation. And, in fact, the only meaningful difference between the two grapes is the color of the skin. Pinot Noir produces berries with deeply pigmented black-red skin and Pinot Gris/Grigio produces berries with skin that ranges from pinkish-gray to grayish-blue to coppery-brown, depending on the clone and the growing conditions. “Gris” means gray in French and “grigio” means gray in Italian. The grape is, literally, the gray Pinot.

Because the skins carry more color than any other varietal classified as a white grape, Pinot Gris/Grigio is particularly unique. For one, instead of just being able to produce an “orange wine” when fermented with its skins, with long enough contact it can make rosé, or even a light red if the contact is long enough. But with no skin contact and immediate pressing, the wine is pale and delicate. With just overnight skin contact, it takes on a coppery-salmon hue, and with mere days it starts to take on a coppery hue, which the Northern Italians call “ramato” (coppered).

By the fourteenth century the relatively recently mutated grape had spread from Burgundy to Switzerland and Germany, where it is known as Grauburgunder (gray Burgundy) or Ruländer. By the seventeenth century it had already become one of only four white grapes permitted in Alsace Grand Cru wines. Because single-varietal Pinot Gris wines in Alsace were weighty and spicy and often vinified with residual sugar (RS) they became known as Tokay d'Alsace, a name that was banned by European Union regulation in 2007 to eliminate confusion with Hungary's unrelated Tokaj wines, some of which retain RS for sweetness, also. In Italy, the grape arrived in the northeast in the regions of Friuli, Trentino, and Veneto and took on the Italian name Pinot Grigio, where for centuries it was prized for mineral precision. But then by the late 20th century, modern industrial winemaking changed the reputation of the varietal. Beginning in earnest in the 1970s and accelerating through the 1990s and 2000s, mass-market demand rose for "Pinot Grigio," which was fun to pronounce, especially in the United States with its large Italian American population. High-yield viticulture, mechanical harvesting, and industrial winemaking stripped the variety of everything that made it interesting.