8th Annual Pinot Noir Shootout
&
Summit Results

Pinot Noir Shootout Overview and Process

The Pinot Noir Shootout is the most comprehensive and focused tasting of Pinot Noir in the US, utilizing an incredibly diverse tasting panel comprised of wine industry professionals from varying disciplines including restaurant and retail trade, winemakers, wine writers, wine educators, and viticulturalists.

Pinot Noir lovers are adventurers, always seeking the next great and best ever Pinot Noir and will often go to extremes to find a unique or new Pinot Noir that they have heard about. They are willing to taste through a lot of wines to find it. Some may call us obsessed. Perhaps Pinot Noir lovers belong on the psychiatrists’ couch too. So call our Pinot Noir panel a little bit crazy.

Our panel is very fortunate indeed to have the opportunity to taste these wonderful wines and we are very cognizant of the fact that our conclusions matter and have impact, so we take our responsibility very seriously.

The incredible lineup of 277 top quality Pinot Noirs submitted from growing regions the world over were critically reviewed by a diverse panel of 40 wine professionals.

The process and manner utilized by Affairs of the Vine and International Wine Review for assessing and judging entries is unique within competitions in that it employs the following procedures:
•        All wines are tasted blind. (How could you ever do it differently?)
•        All wines are tasted without reference to producer, appellation or price.
•        Each wine is judged and reviewed on its own merit.
•        All wines are tasted by at least two tasting panels before the finals.
•        A maximum of 32 wines is tasted per day – four flights of eight wines each. We have arrived at this formula and find that in this format, each wine can be tasted with clarity and concentration without palate fatigue.
•        The wines are rated using a 100 point scale. Copious notes are required and the notes and the ratings must have continuity or the scores are not recorded.
•        Although we would prefer not to use a point system to rate the wines, we have not come up with an alternative method that allows us to select the top wines that are tasted by our final panel and those tasted at the Pinot Noir Summit.
•        For the Pinot Noir Shootout, The wines were placed into flights and evaluated by teams of judges over a period of two months. The top 64 wines selected were then submitted to two final tasting panels for review. Each panel tasted only 32 wines. 

Wines were submitted from 49 appellations around the globe. Wines were tasted from: Reims, Champagne and Vin d'Pays D'oc from Languedoc-Roussillon in France; Central Otago, Lowburn, Marlborough, Martinborough, and Waipara Valley in New Zealand; PravPav in Italy; Anderson Valley, Arroyo Grande Valley, Arroyo Seco, Los Carneros, Central Coast, Edna Valley, Marin County, Mendocino County, Monterey County, Napa Valley, Russian River Valley, San Benito County, San Luis Obispo County, Santa Barbara County, Santa Cruz Mountains, Santa Lucia Highlands, Santa Maria Valley, Santa Rita Hills, Sierra Foothills, Sonoma Coast, Sonoma Mountain, Sonoma Valley, True Sonoma Coast, and York Mountain in California; Cavas from Spain; Colchagua Valley in Chile; Finger Lakes in New York; Hungary; Leelanau Peninsula in Michigan; Willamette Valley, Red Hill, Umpqua Valley, and Yamhill-Carlton District in Oregon; South East Australia and Mornington Peninsula in Australia; New Jersey; Twenty Mile Bench in Canada; and Washington State.

The wines range in price from $6.99 to $125.00 per bottle.
The wines worthy of note are reviewed here. They each get a numerical score and are recommended "from the heart with the additional reference of  's designating the following:
   
Key:
= Love at First Sip
= An Affair to Remember
= Will Provide Fond Memories