Let's talk Pinot Grigio

I do not really know much about Pinot Grigio. I have always considered the wine to be a harmless and uninteresting, something that someone looking for a harmless sip of wine with dinner or just sitting outside in the sun. My experience has been that if a person well advanced in years is not drinking white zinfandel it is a good bet that they are drinking Pinot Grigio.

I cannot point to statistics, I cannot say that I have surveyed this possibility among a sample population, but I think it is true. My personal opinion of the wine is negative. Sorry for having an opinion.

Not really sorry though.

Then I was sent a bottle of Tenuta Ca'Bolani Pinot Grigio 2007 from Friuli. Friuli is in the north eastern corner of Italy. Ca'Bolani seems to be the largest estate in Friuli and is owned by the Zonin Family Vineyards. Pinot Grigio makes up roughly 1/6 of the Ca'Bolani land under vine. The rest is a wide variety, including, Pinot Blanco, Chardonnay, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Riesling, Tocai, Prosecco, and more.


I tasted the wine with a variety of other white wines (I was having a samples tasting day of wines such as Torrontes, Albarino, and Sauvignon Blanc) and found that I really enjoyed the wine. There was some nice peach with a little hint of cream on the nose and very zesty, tangerine and lemon zest on the tasting. It was a sipping wine, not a wine so intensely citric as a Sauvignon Blanc that it would need food. I am not saying that the wine would not go well with food, but it does not need it.

Worth a try. I found it online listed for $20 at its highest, and $7 at its cheapest, which means one of those retailers is ripping people off like CRAZY.