Top Pinot Noir wines outside Burgundy – Updated

Fruit from the northern part of Willamette Valley, aged in French oak. Full and ripe on the palate, with raspberry aromas developing to truffle and earthy notes. Well balanced, with a spicy finish. two-thousand cases produced.

Measly yields (around 270 grams of fruit per vine), the product of high density planting, account for Pinot pioneer and obsessive Phillip Jones’ success. From five rows of ‘precocious’ vines, the Reserve displays great power, depth and layer delivered with superb equilibrium and intensity, with spice and earth sluiced plum, cassis and beetroot and a supple underlay of cool, silty tannins. A full-bodied but very buoyant, complex Pinot with terrific length.

New Zealand’s most expensive Pinot. It’s a barrel selection made from the oldest Pinot vines in Martinborough and possibly New Zealand. Dense, rich and complex, revealing nicely layered flavours including plum, chocolate, wood smoke, old leather and truffle. Bone dry but certainly not an austere wine with an impressively lingering finish. 1,800 bottles made.

Powerful and scented in a restrained, elegant style. Pure, perfumed wine with a finegrained texture and very lengthy finish. It is approachable now but will repay decanting for at least 30 minutes before serving.

I found this wine hard to read when first poured, but it expanded in the glass to reveal a Pinot Noir of great power and purity with a rapier-like focus and an incredibly lengthy finish.

The best North American Pinot Noir I’ve ever tasted, husband-and-wife team Terry and Frances Leighton produced only two barrels of this magical wine to commemorate the death of tonnelier Gaston Billon, one of Burgundy’s great artisanal barrel makers. The wine soars from the glass in a blaze of cocoa powder, rich earth, cinnamon, violets and lovely red-black fruit tones—a nose of kaleidoscopic complexity. On the palate the wine is seamless, vibrant and effortlessly balanced, evoking a top Côte de Nuits grand cru—the only standard against which it can be measured.

‘I want something more than pure fruit – I want structure, grip and bones,’ says Errazuriz winemaker and technical director Francisco Baettig. This Aconcagua Pinot adds another dimension to Chilean wine: it’s piercing, tense, aromatic; exponential yet elegant. Glorious, in a word.

The Kupé vineyard was originally planted on its own roots in 1999, and is now slowly being replanted due to phylloxera - damn aphid. The 2016 season was warm and dry, producing a complex and harmonious wine here. Escarpment is known for its use of whole bunches, and this contains a whopping 70%. The wine fills the mouth with fragrances of pure damson, with spicy cinnamon and herbal elements. An abundance of resolved tannins coats the palate, melting harmoniously on the long, drawn out, tea-leaf finish.

Very attractive nose with lots of layers sweet hay, lavender, cherries/berries, iodine and Campari. A similar spectrum on the palate, which is very structured with firm, dry tannins, concentrated fruit to support, almost a touch drying on the finish. A bold, rich expression that is seemingly at odds with the generally more elegant Ata Rangi style but the personality and intensity will win many fans. A warmer year with reasonable yields, fruit arrived in perfect condition.

The nose offers captivating aromatics of cinnamon, red cherry and blood orange. These are followed by a beautifully balanced, deep and sappy wine. While the aromatics are already blossoming, allowing the wine to spend a little more time in the cellar will be rewarded with more amplitude on the palate.

The 2013 South Block is superb, and it's hard to imagine it being anything other than Oregon's Pinot Noir of the vintage. A complex bouquet blossoms with extended aeration, revealing notes of red cherry, coniferous forest floor, black tea and spice. On the palate the wine is elegant, sapid and intense, its fine tannins cloaked in a deep core of vivid fruit. Its impact is expansive but still precise, with a long and penetrating finish. Ideally cellar this for a decade, but if serving now consider decanting.

Outstanding Williams Selyem’s Pinots show pert red and/or black fruit (depending on vineyard source) and crackling acidity. This bottling from its new estate vineyard has more heft and tannin, yet it remains suave and elegant, with blackberry, beetroot, kirsch and sassafras notes.

The Kammerberg straddles the German-French border, thus creating an arch-European wine. Limestone bedrock and the masterful hands of Pinot-pioneer Friedrich Becker senior and his son (also called Friedrich) make this a world-class wine. Strikingly dark, the elegant palate has smooth fullness and silken tannins. It's dense and concentrated but unobtrusive, with freshness which runs like a vein. The length of fine Morello cherry on the finish is wonderful and promising.

A beautiful and elegant Pinot Noir nose of red cherries, raspberry, kirsch liqueur and ripe rhubarb, giving an overall exotic and herbal complexity. Whole bunch fermentation has built structure and tannic elegance with pale colours and balanced alcohol. A truly delicious Pinot that has excellent value for money. The vineyard is less than four miles from the coast, at an elevation of 300m above sea level, allowing these grapes cool nights needed to create fresh acidity. Ex-NASDAQ trader Jamie Kutch is without doubt a winemaker to watch.

Bright and youthful all round: red cherry, spice and coconut aromas; clean and vibrant. Elegant medium- weight palate, of succulent, sweet fruit – utterly delicious. Will be long-lived.

After the untimely death of his father Bernhard, young Julian Huber has continued in an even finer vein. Grown on a steep slope of weathered fossil limestone, this starts with restraint and leads onto a taut palate that reverberates with red-fruited verve and freshness. The tart fruitiness seems layered, presenting wave after wave of aromatic purity. A fine, firm, silken veil of tannin holds everything in place. The flavours echo long.

While the Wallis is more of black-fruited and opulent, and Coolart Road unusually dense and savoury, this vintage of the McCutcheon single-vineyard is beautifully balanced, exotic and decadent, packed with red cherry, bright blue berries, lifted florals and an earthy bracken note. It spends 12 months in barriqies, 25% new, giving firm structure, alongside refreshing acidity. Gorgeous!

Cherry and cranberry fruit plus a herbal uplift dominate this whole bunch fermented Pinot Noir; it is complex and gamey with raw wild raspberry freshness. It has a long finish full of tight acidity and fine tannins. Made from a 3ha plot of iron-laden clay over loam. Winemakers Rajat Parr and Sashi Moorman have pushed the boundaries with this wine, proving that Santa Barbara is capable of producing truly elegant Pinots.