On a warm Tuesday evening in early June, Steve Charters MW invited seven colleagues from the Wine Marketing programme at the Burgundy School of Business to a blind tasting of seven Pinot Noirs from around the world. I was lucky enough to be the invitée d’honneur as Steve had curated this opportunity to talk about our new Pinot Noir Project and forthcoming symposium in Oxford in July 2025. As we ascended the narrow staircase of the oldest gothic house in Dijon, the Maison Millière, built in 1483 and run by Marion Lieutet and her family since 1998, none of us quite knew what awaited us… 

After a brief tour of the historic house and garden, we took our places at the tasting table and agreed to taste the wines one by one, pausing for discussion after each but not proposing a particular provenance or exact year.  

At the end, we tried to guess where they were from, with more surprises than correct answers!  

 I’ve summarised our collective blind reactions here:  

1 – Moorooduc Estate Pinot Noir 2019 – Mornington Peninsula, Australia 

Ripe cherry nose and palate, good acidity and balance, bright clear colour, alcohol a little high for some 

2 – Nutbourne Vineyards Pinot Noir 2020 – West Sussex, England 

Raspberry nose and very fruity palate, high acidity and green grippy tannins, over-extracted, early harvested, darker colour, linear palate 

3 – Domaine de la Vougeraie Beaune 1er Cru Les Grèves 2018 – Burgundy, France 

Floral herbaceous nose and rounder fruity palate, savoury elegant tannins, but a little too young for full enjoyment, whole cluster 50% 

4 – Jean Stodden Herrenberg Spatburgunder GG 2019 – Ahr, Germany 

Closed nose lacking fruit, palate dominated by wood, cigarbox tannins, attempting to make a serious statement for a signature wine, but lacking in complexity and savoir-faire 

5 – Felton Road Bannockburn Pinot Noir 2022 – Central Otago, New Zealand 

Young fresh fruity sweet nose and palate in perfect congruence, oak and fruit in balance, alcohol a little high for some 

6 – Creation Pinot Noir 2022 – Walker Bay, South Africa 

Closed nose, dark fruits on the palate with tannic oak, slight floral notes, introverted and not yet defined in its identity 

7 – Rose Rock Drouhin Oregon Pinot Noir 2015 – Eola – Amity Hills, Oregon, US 

Atypical bold herbaceous nose and palate, almost medicinal, aged and well balanced 

If we could draw any cultural conclusions from such a limited sample group, it would be reasonable to surmise that Burgundy’s confident and careful winemaking still privileges terroir over any other consideration. Mornington Peninsula and Central Otago have achieved a clever balance of varietal expression and a sense of place, which includes slightly higher alcohol. Oregon has earned its place in Pinot Noir culture and can boldly go where none have gone before, whereas Ahr and Walker Bay have not yet worked out their own identities, either overstating or underdelivering or both. West Sussex is the newest Pinot Noir wine culture and it shows up in the comparative tasting, but it may well fast-track its way into the pantheon if the planet continues its warming. Until then, I’d rather indulge in English sparkling.