Word: pinot
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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What's legally defined as "champagne" in most of the world comes only from a specific 84,000-acre (34,000 hectares) region. An 80-year-old French law carefully maps where the grapes--pinot noir, pinot meunier and chardonnay--can be grown. The Institut National de l'Origine et de la Qualité (INAO) determines exactly how much the winegrowers can produce--this year's harvest is expected to bring in 400 million bottles. With a steadily increasing demand, winemakers have asked French regulators to commit what would once have been considered heresy: to redefine or even expand the boundaries...
Investors are drinking it in. Bill Sweat and his wife Donna Morris quit their day jobs at Fidelity Investments in Boston, and last year moved to Dundee, Ore., where they bought a 20-acre vineyard, now called Winderlea, in a Pinot Noir region. The couple had long been collectors and felt the time was right to jump in. "We come from a business where you make money every day, so we didn't get into this solely because of our passion," Sweat says. "We definitely got into it because we thought we could make some money...
...great Pinot may taste heavenly, but it's a devil of a job to get it into your glass. Birds love the sugar-laden grapes (hence the surreal sight in early fall in Central Otago of what appear to be snow-filled valleys, which are in fact a vast expanse of white nets). If the grapes aren't picked exactly as they reach maturity, the thin-skinned berries shrivel on the vines--which, because they thrive on steep slopes, demand that harvesting be done by hand. Yields are low--about 2 tons per acre (5 metric tons per hectare, which...
...Sauvignon Blancs of the Marlborough region farther to the north--including Cloudy Bay, now owned by French luxury group Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton--that really put New Zealand wines on the map. Yet plenty of wine connoisseurs remained skeptical about Central Otago Pinot Noir. Neill makes sure to credit his mentors: the late Rolfe Mills of Rippon winery, who started to plant in 1976, and Alan Brady, who today co-helms a two-man boutique winery called Mount Edward. "It's a small region, and we cooperate with each other," says Neill. "Everyone helps everyone else and pools their...
Crushpad is the creation of Michael Brill, a former home winemaker who once ripped up his San Francisco backyard to plant Pinot Noir and Syrah vines. He found that lots of people shared his desire for a wine-country lifestyle but lacked the millions of dollars needed to make their dream come true. Tired of his career in software marketing, he quit his job and created Crushpad in 2004 to connect amateur winemakers with West Coast vineyards. It's the best of both worlds. Customers get access to far finer grapes than they could grow themselves, at a fraction...