We list all the medal winners from this year’s Pinot Noir Masters, including some great-tasting expressions for less than £10, proving that it’s possible to craft palatable, inexpensive wines from this pernickety grape.

IT’S BEEN almost 10 years since we held our first Global Pinot Noir Masters – which sees wines judged without prior knowledge about their source – and yet it has taken until this year ’s competition for me to revise my view of the grape. Known for being hard to manage in the vineyard, it’s a variety requiring special care, responding best to hands-on management, which makes it relatively expensive to grow.

Couple this with its pernickety climatic requirements – like Goldilocks, it prefers something that is neither too hot nor too cold – and Pinot becomes an especially challenging grape from which to make reliably good, affordable wines.

With that in mind, cheap Pinot tends to be a disappointment, either veering towards the thin and green, or heavy and jammy, depending on how it’s handled and where it’s grown. As a result, I’ve felt it’s best to look to other varieties when you’re on a tight budget.

However, this year ’s competition in particular showed me that the style and quality of entry-point Pinot, by which I mean not just less than £15 at retail, but less than £10, is good. Today, it seems you can find a tasty drop for £8-£10 that has Pinot’s appealing sweet red berry fruit and delicate, soft texture.

In other words, when you want a bottle of red, and change from a tenner, you can head to the Pinot section in the shops – or the digital aisles – and find something palatable (even though, in my view, the choice and value is still better when it comes to Grenache).

As for the names to pick, as you can see from the following tables, it’s Romania’s Cramele Recas that produces reliably good, inexpensive Pinot Noir, along with Chile’s Cono Sur, although we also found some excellent examples from other producers in Chile, New Zealand and, a stand-out sample from California’s Trinity Oaks, which, although not stated on the label, has a touch of Syrah in the blend to add a bit more colour and flesh to the wine.

Moving over £10 but staying beneath £15, which is still a low price band for Pinot, we even had as many as four Golds in 2022, an impressive achievement for this grape, which also highlighted the fine value of Pinot hailing from New Zealand – three of them were from Marlborough. Such quality at relatively low prices proves that producers appear to have cracked making fine Pinot on a budget, not only finding suitable sites, but mastering its requirements in the vineyard so the fruit retains its desirable traits, even when yields are quite high.

Further up the price scale, we had many outstanding examples, with my favourites written up over the following pages. Whether they were wines at the lower or upper end of the scale, the Pinots this year were a pleasure to taste, with a fine balance struck between ripe fruit and fresh acid. For the most part, the wines had an appealing weight to them, neither too light, nor heavy, and tannic. Finally, there were far fewer ‘reduced’ Pinots compared with past competitions.

There’s a reason people love Pinot Noir, and that’s because it delivers a drinking experience rarely found in a red wine: a mix of sweet berry fruit with a light texture, and a fresh finish. And the medallists this year had those characters, even if the flavours varied according to source area and cellar handling.

If there were one criticism to be made, it was that the riper styles, often the most seductive Pinots, tended to be over 14% ABV – a point at which, with this grape especially, the alcohol tends to be detected on the palate, bringing a burn to the finish, which, for Pinot, should ideally feature nothing other than lingering layers of appealing flavours.

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1. Sparkling: The trio of cheap sparklers was very ordinary.

2. Rosé: Chapeau to the Germans for picking up a silver medal in the under £10 bracket. The Australians also picked up a silver, but this was a lot more expensive (£20-30 bracket).

3. Unoaked Pinot Noir: The Romanians were the star performers here, with two wines winning Silver medals despite being under £10. The Italians deserve a mention, also getting a Silver but at a higher price point (the £15-£20 bracket).

4. Oaked Pinot Noir Under £10: The plaudits go to New Zealand for outshining the others with a Silver medal.

5. Oaked Pinot Noir £10-£15: New Zealand delivered again, picking up our first Gold of the day.

6. Oaked Pinot Noir £15-£20: There was some good stuff here, and at a sensible price. Yet again New Zealand scored heavily, with a Master and a Gold. Chile picked up the other Gold medal in this section.

7. Oaked Pinot Noir £20-£30: Australia came to the fore in this bracket, with two Golds. However, it was California that bagged the Master.

8. Oaked Pinot Noir £30-£50: Australia and New Zealand shared the honours here, with Golds.

9. Super-Expensive Pinot Noir: I suppose it was only fitting that our final Gold medal went to a Red Burgundy in the £100+ bracket.

10. Which country won? In terms of overall bragging rights, on the day it was a toss-up between wines from New Zealand (Marlborough) and Australia (predominantly Yarra Valley).

About the competition

With high-quality judges and a unique sampling process, The Global Pinot Noir Masters provides a chance for your wines to star.

The 2022 competition was judged on 17 March at The Hippodrome, London, employing experienced judges. The top wines were awarded Gold, Silver, or Bronze medals according to their result, and those expressions that stood out as being outstanding in their field received the ultimate accolade – the title of Pinot Noir Master. This report features the medal winners only.

Please visit The Global Masters website for more information, or, to enter future competitions – giving you the chance to feature online and in print – please call: +44 (0) 20 7803 2420 or email Sophie Raichura at: sophie@thedrinksbusiness.com