Anyone pouring a top Pinot Noir from Germany today sometimes forgets how bumpy the road has been. Especially in cooler regions, where Pinot Noir is mercilessly honest. In the past ten years, however, this grape has made incredible progress in quality.

I vividly remember the first time I, as a young sommelier (2004), poured a Nelles Pinot Noir at restaurant Aneth in Bruges. That was a very different wine than what we know today. The structure was rougher, the oak more pronounced, the finesse still searching. Not a bad wine, but a Pinot Noir that primarily showed how difficult it was to achieve true elegance and refinement in our region.

Anyone tasting a Nelles Pinot Noir today – especially from the vintages after 2020 – is drinking a completely different wine. The comparison with then is actually no longer valid. This is no coincidence, but the result of years of consistent choices in the vineyard and cellar.

What has changed?

The quality increase of Pinot Noir over the past decade is the result of an interplay of factors:

Deeper vineyard work: lower yields, better clone selection, and a much finer tuning between soil and grape.

Better timing: harvesting based on phenolic ripeness instead of solely on sugars, ensuring ripe fruit without heaviness.

Greater precision in the cellar: less extraction, gentler vinification, subtler use of oak, and more confidence in the fruit.

Experience: today's winegrowers know their plots inside and out. What was once experimentation is now craftsmanship.

Today's style

In recent years, a new path has clearly been taken. Pinot Noir evolved into wines that:

elegant and refined, pure fruit-driven with a deep yet fine structure.

They are no longer muscle-bound, but wines with tension, precision, and length. Pinot Noir with a clear identity, that doesn't try to impress with power, but with subtlety.

What makes this evolution so special is that it is widely supported. Not one domain, but an entire generation of winegrowers has learned to let Pinot Noir speak instead of controlling it. You can taste that. And that makes Pinot Noir perhaps more exciting today than ever before.

For those who have been around for a while, it sometimes feels like a small revolution. For new enthusiasts, it's simply a revelation.

Hilde Jonckheere