Pinot meunier

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Pinot Meunier

Pinot Menuier grapes in Champagne
Species:	Vitis vinifera
Also called:	Meunier, Schwarzriesling, Müllerrebe, Miller's Burgundy
Origin:	France?
Notable regions:	Champagne (France), Württemberg (Germany), Oregon (USA)
Notable wines:	Champagne

Pinot meunier, also known as Meunier, Schwarzriesling, Müllerrebe, and Miller's Burgundy, is a variety of black wine grape most frequently used in the production of Champagne. It was first mentioned in the 1500s,^[1] and gets its name and synonyms (French meunier and German Müller - both meaning miller) from flour-like dusty white down on the underside of its leaves.

1 Origin
2 Distribution and wines
3 Vine and Viticulture
4 References

[edit] Origin

Pinot meunier is a mutation of Pinot noir^[1]. Paul K. Boss and Mark R. Thomas of the CSIRO Plant Industry and Cooperative Research Centre for Viticulture in Glen Osmond, Australia, found that the meunier strain has a mutation (VvGAI1) that stops it from responding to gibberellic acid, a plant growth hormone. This leads to different leaf growth, and also to a slight stunting in growth, explaining why Pinot meunier plants tend to be a bit smaller than Pinot noirs. The mutation exist only in one cell layer of the cultivar, the L1 layer of the epidermis, making Pinot Meunier a chimera. This makes it possible, through tissue culture, to separate out plants containing both the mutant and non-mutant genotypes, yielding a normal Pinot noir type and an unusual looking mutant vine with compressed internodes and thickly clustered leaves. The mutants could not produce full-grown tendrils, it seems that gibberellic acid converts grapevine flower buds into tendrils.

Ferdinand Regner has proposed^[2] that Pinot meunier (Schwarzriesling) is a parent of Pinot Noir but this work has not been replicated and would appear to be superseded by the Australian work.^[3]

The Wrotham (pronounced "rootum") Pinot is an English variety of Pinot Noir that is sometimes regarded as a synonym of Pinot meunier. The Wrotham Pinot does look somewhat similar to meunier, with white hairs on the upper surface of the leaves. But it is particularly resistant to disease, has a higher natural sugar content and ripens two weeks earlier than meunier.^[4]

[edit] Distribution and wines

Pinot meunier is one of the three main grapes used in the production of Champagne (the other two are the black Pinot noir and the white Chardonnay). Until recently Champagne makers did not acknowledge Pinot meunier, preferring to emphasise the use of the other noble varieties but now Pinot meunier is gaining recognition for the body and richness it contributes to Champagne. It is ineligible to receive grand cru status, and all-meunier Champagnes are far rarer than those made from all-Pinot noir.

Sparkling wine makers in other areas have planted Pinot meunier in an attempt to duplicate the taste of Champagne, but Pinot meunier is not often found as a varietal.

It can make an enjoyable dry red wine, like a more fruity and rustic Pinot noir with a slight bitter tone and with a hint of grey in color. Places it can be found as a varietal include wineries in Oregon and British Columbia. Germany also makes red wines from it, under its synonym Schwarzriesling. The style of those wines rages from simple, light, off-dry (halbtrocken) to rich, dry with substantial flavours. More recently, Schwarzriesling is used also to make dry white wines with a fresh, fruity character. Most German plantings of the variety (1,795 hectares out of 2,424, or 74%, in the year 2006) are found in Württemberg.^[5] Despite the variety's connection with Champagne, it only recently become popular to use Schwarzriesling in the production of sparkling wines Sekt, often not blended with its Champagne partners but as pure brut Schwarzriesling "Sekt".