Professional Wine Consultants - Milwaukee Wine - Sommeliers

Oh the red wines of Burgundy. When I was the Wine Director for a local restaurant, my favorite area to navigate with our guests on our list was the two pages devoted to Pinot Noir. Granted there are plenty of wines that have dizzyingly steep prices on those pages. Like all wine making areas of the world, certain wines and winemakers command exorbitant prices. Sometimes I get criticized for having some of these wines on the list. But I often say, (mostly to myself) “If you are going to have a French wine list, there are things that must be on it.” And those things are usually the most expensive. But there are some wonderful selections in Burgundy that are under $100.00 and some that are just a touch over that are well worth seeking out in a retail outlet.

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My love affair with Pinot Noir began in the late eighties when I was a retail wine buyer for a group of wine stores in Portland Oregon. (Pronounced OAR-eh-gn, not Oar–eh-GOHNE.). Of course the Willamette Valley has become to be known as a mecca for domestic Pinot along with the Russian River AVA in Sonoma County and the Santa Ynez Valley AVA in Santa Barbara County, California. Even though the world may not have known how fabulous they were back then, all of us Oregonians knew it.

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