Pinot Noir reigns over the Valais vineyards: this grape variety is widely planted on slopes whose diversity of soils and micro-climates offers it ample opportunity to display its many faces. This is an early harvest variety whose vines show a marked preference for limestone outcrops, gravelly areas. It is happiest in vine parcels that do not become too hot. There is no other Vitis vinifera (European wine grape) variety that has as many genetic offshoots. A rigorous selection is therefore essential – a too-bountiful harvest is particularly harmful to the quality of Pinot Noir. The canton of Valais has banned the selection of large grapes, such as Mariafeld, considered over-productive. Valais Pinot Noir is at its best when it adds to a concentrated, delicate and subtle fruit the aromatic freshness and elegance of which this grape is capable. To achieve this, harvest must take place when the grape is fully mature. Talented winemakers have understood this and today produce startlingly fine wines, some matured in barrel. Pinot Noir blends beautifully with other wines, always as the main grape. It gives Dole needed structure and backbone. It artfully folds Gamay and other reds from Valais into its flesh, its juices.

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