Try an Array of Tasty Pinot Noirs from Hahn Family Wines

So as not to bury the lede, let’s start with which Hahn Family Wines bottles you should buy now. We’ll get a bit more into the creation of these wines and their differences later.

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The Hahn SLH Pinot Noir 2021. This wine retails for $30 and is everything you could want or need a pinot noir to be. It has good legs on the glass and a lovely dark garnet color. It is full of fresh fruit flavors of cherry, raspberry and vanilla spice. It is medium to full-bodied, without being overly heavy.

This is an extremely food-friendly wine. It’s not relegated to pair with just red meats, but it is layered and structured enough to enjoy with creamy pastas and even richer salads, like avocado or goat cheese salads. Each sip beckons you to drink more. This is not the Hahn SLH Reserve Pinot Noir, which costs just a bit more and tastes somewhat different.

If you want to splurge on an exceptional pinot noir retailing for $60, you can’t go wrong with the Lucienne Lone Oak Vineyard Pinot Noir 2021. This wine is a gorgeous garnet color, has beautiful legs and is bursting with notes of cassis, licorice, smoke and cinnamon. It has a heady, intoxicating nose and a bright, fresh finish. It is luxuriously full-bodied, but with lifted flavors that make this yet another versatile food-friendly wine.

A little more info on the wines to keep in mind when shopping: The Lucienne Lone Oak Vineyard Pinot Noir 2021 is a single-vineyard wine. This means, simply enough, that the grapes used in this wine are all sourced from one vineyard. The reason winemakers craft wines from single vineyards is to really capture the most precise expression of terroir, the place of the grapes.

Paul Clifton, the director of winemaking for Hahn Family Wines, crafts wine in such a way that there is as little human intervention as possible. And he crafts each of the pinot noirs in the same way or as close to the same way as he is able. This allows even small differences in terroir to be noticed and appreciated. But, it is also something buyers need to be aware of when reading labels. Look at the small print.

Hahn Family Wines also creates other pinot noirs with similar-looking labels, but with grapes sourced from other vineyards — the Lucienne Doctor’s Vineyard Pinot Noir 2021, and the Lucienne Smith Vineyard Pinot Noir 2021. Both also retail for approximately $60.

The Lucienne Doctor’s Vineyard Pinot Noir 2021 has an earthier nose, and it is darker in the glass. This is a richer wine, with more subdued fruit flavors. It pairs great with steak.

The Lucienne Smith Vineyard Pinot Noir 2021 is extremely approachable, exceedingly food-friendly and just slightly lighter-bodied than its counterparts.

The Hahn SLH Pinot Noir 2021 and the Hahn SLH Reserve Pinot Noir 2021 are created from a blend of grapes sourced from each of the other single vineyards.

When a winery creates wines from different vineyards, read the labels carefully. The difference in taste and cost may be far less subtle than the differences in the labels.

Please note that the Lucienne Lone Oak Vineyard Pinot Noir pictured is 2019; the wine discussed here is 2021.