STONIER WINES, ON the Mornington Peninsula just to the east of Melbourne, is particularly known for pinot noir. Stonier’s chardonnay and cabernet merlot are lovely wines but it is pinot that catches everyone’s imagination. Stonier sponsors an annual international pinot noir tasting and this year it was held in March at the Windsor Hotel in Melbourne, and the public was able to buy tickets.

Everyone gets 14 wines, initially served without clues to identity, and at the front of the room there is a distinguished panel of experts who make comments. Each table for the public has a wine expert as a ‘table captain’, who has the job of leading the group to get more out of the tasting. I was one of the table captains, and was also asked to comment to the whole room about the second set of wines.

It is an interesting format and is excellent for any passionate wine taster. A vote is taken on the preference of wines on a table-by-table basis, the table captain guiding the eight participants to a consensus. Each of the two brackets of seven wines is initially tasted for 10 minutes in silence. When an outbreak of chatter started up in a section of the room, the chairman, Brian Stonier, sternly reminded everyone they were sitting in front of tasting portions of wine that were worth hundreds of dollars and it must be taken seriously.

Later, the audience discovered that the learned panel would comment on the wines - but only after each table had voted for their favourites. This resulted in a fresh burst of scrutiny because the competitive element present wanted to be seen to get the same results as the experts.

The experts were formidable. Tod Dexter is the winemaker at Stonier, and Len Evans is the father figure of Australian wine. James Halliday is a prolific wine writer with dozens of books to his credit. Halliday was also the founder of Coldstream Hills winery in the Yarra Valley in the late 1980s and went on to become known as one of Australia’s top pinot makers. Brian Croser is chairman of the super-premium winery Petaluma, and also Distinguished Vineyards that is now the wine division of brewing giant Lion Nathan.

Once the 10 minutes of silence had been observed and each taster had formed an opinion on each wine, there was 15 minutes of table discussion during which time the table captain filled out the voting form that was then collected. At this stage the die was cast and each table had committed to their judgement. The expert panel then commented on the wines, giving their ranking of the seven wines, and various table captains were asked to make additional comments. Only at the end of the two brackets, 14 wines later, were the identities revealed.

It is an interesting process because 99 per cent of the time tasters know what they are drinking and are influenced by the label. Even at supposed masked bottle tastings, participants learn clues - the brown paper doesn’t cover the label properly, or you get a glimpse of the neck capsule, or you see the thicker glass on the bottle rim that indicates imported wine, or a careless remark by the organiser betrays a clue. At this event all the wines were poured in another room and trolleys of glasses were wheeled in. There was no glimpse of bottles possible.

Pinot noir is a difficult grape to turn into wine because it is light-bodied and pale in colour. Winemakers have to employ special techniques to coax out the flavour, and often the techniques are not done well, or not done enough. Or the grapes themselves don’t have much flavour and the result is a light fruit, insipid red wine. Pinot noirs have a high price tag because of these difficulties.

While the top examples of other varieties such as riesling, chardonnay, shiraz, cabernet and so on, are expensive, very acceptable wines are available with budget price tags. This is not the case with pinot noir; the cheapest start at about $16 and most are more than $22 with the better ones starting at about $30. Plenty of these are light, fruity, ‘pretty’ wines but without depth of flavour, and hence there is plenty of debate, controversy and often downright disappointment. There are passionate followers of the wine - the ‘pinophiles’ - who maintain they know the good and bad.

Pinot production in Australia is very much dominated by small boutique producers. The winemaking techniques require lots of labour intensive hands-on procedures that are regarded with caution by the large wine companies. Stonier started off as a small producer and grew to a medium size. Pinophiles are used to exploring and discussing the wines with small passionate producers. Such producers have inconsistent vintages and there is much talk of the quest for a great wine. Great pinot noir is wonderful. It is the red grape of Burgundy where it makes great and also poor wine. Great Burgundies are rare and expensive. At the Stonier tasting there were three Burgundies with price tags of $175, $580 and $350 per bottle.

At my table, we concentrated on the characteristics that make a pinot noir good. Most tasters dwell on the aroma. We decided that it was automatic that a good example would have an attractive aroma no matter where in the flavour spectrum it fitted - some are fruity with strawberry and raspberry, some have spice and mocha coffee, and some have meat extract and farmyard smells. We looked for plenty of palate flavour and particularly for tannins and firmness to balance the silkiness that good wines show.

I am pleased to report that our table did a good job and the learned panel agreed with us on all the wines! The top wines were from Burgundy - all from 1999 and consisted of Vosne-Romanee from Robert Arnoux, Le Musigny from Comte Georges de Vogue, and Le Chambertin from Bouchard. These were followed by Australian wines Stonier Reserve 2000 ($45), Bass Phillip Premium 2000 ($105) and Coldstream Hills Reserve 2000 ($54); American wines Argyle ‘Nuthouse’ 1999 from Oregon ($95), Foxen 1999 from Monterey ($70) and Acacia Lee 1998 from Carneros ($70). A group of New Zealand wines were a little inconsistent - Martinborough 2000 ($64) and Fromm La Strada from Marlborough ($53) were excellent but Felton Road Block 5 from Otago ($55) and Giesen Reserve from Canterbury ($70) were soft and forward in fruity flavour and did not have the depth of taste of the others. Apsley Gorge from Tasmania ($45) was similar, with bright clean strawberry fruit but a simple style.

Many of the tables were seduced by and preferred the soft but simple fruit style that was criticised by the panel who liked better the Burgundy model with its firm tannin and persistent flavour. The arguments and discussion went on long into the night!