Stalking the great gray grape

Pinot Grigio is widely considered an easy-to-drink, uncomplicated wine. Don’t be deceived. The “gray Pinot” is a devious grape. It changes identity like a spy, according to local climate and popular taste.

Whether you catch up with it as Italian Pinot Grigio, French Pinot Gris or an American white going by either name, it’s almost always a wonderful wine at a decent price. In all its guises, this wine is made from the same gray Pinot grape, but it appears in a wide range of styles: lean and racy, ripe and full-bodied, and variations in between.

The Pinot varieties are probably the oldest and therefore most genetically diverse of all wine grape families. The best known is Pinot Noir, the great red grape of Burgundy. Another red cousin, Pinot Meuniere, is prolific in Champagne. Pinot Blanc, the true white Pinot, is a fairly recent mutation of the variety. It produces a fairly full-bodied wine that’s often hard to distinguish from wine made from the Chardonnay grape (which is genetically half Pinot Noir).

The gray Pinot developed somewhere between noir and blanc. And like a lot of middle siblings, it’s a little confused.

A single cluster of ripe Pinot Grigio grapes may have fruits that range in color from golden yellow to brownish pink, and an individual grape can show the entire rainbow of hues on its skin. There’s never enough pigment to impart more than a deep golden color to the wine. But there can be plenty of flavor, especially in a warm climate.

Most of us are familiar with the fruity Pinot Grigios from cool northern Italian vineyards, whether we know it or not. According to the beverage industry tracker Impact Databank, Italian Pinot Grigio is the best-selling imported table wine in the U.S., accounting for more than 6 million cases in 2002 and totaling more than 12% of the total imported wine consumption.

Look for Pinot Grigios from the Friuli region in northeast Italy. Large producers such as Bolla and Folonari are dependable for light, fruity versions. One of my favorites is Ecco Domani, a wonderfully fruity Pinot Grigio produced in Italy by California’s Gallo.

To taste the pure, vibrant beauty of the grape, look for a bottle of 2001 Schiopetto Collio. For a more upscale and serious Pinot Grigio, try the 2001 Alois Lageder, with its glowing fruit offset by a fine edge of minerality from the limestone soil of the Alto Adige region.

Alsatian renditions of the gray Pinot, known there as Pinot Gris, are typically rich, full-bodied and sometimes sweet, but balanced by the grape’s abundant acidity. Trimbach’s 2001 Pinot Gris is perfumed, round and fruity, yet brisk. The 2001 Hugel Pinot Gris is a little more unctuous and honeyed, yet an undercurrent of ripe acidity keeps it as clean and juicy as a bite of fresh white peach. Deiss 2001 is another ripe version, with floral aromas and layers of peach, apricot and plum flavors.

Oregon’s Willamette Valley has proved to be hospitable to the gray Pinot. King Estate, near Eugene, made an early commitment to the variety and has a track record of excellent bottlings. King Estate Pinot Gris 2001 shows the honeyed peach side of the varietal’s character in a dry but wonderfully fruity wine that manages to be crisp and mouth-filling at once.

Napa Valley seems like an unlikely source of Pinot Grigio. Isn’t that terrific Cabernet climate too warm for dry, fragrant whites? Yet the valley has produced a number of remarkable Sauvignon Blancs over the years and promises to further demonstrate its diversity with Pinot Grigio, especially in the cooler southern parts of the valley.

Predictably, Napa Valley Pinot Grigios tend toward a ripe, full-bodied style. Yet while the California sun brings out the grape’s more exuberant fruit and flower flavors, the cool nights preserve enough acidity to keep the wines fresh and juicy.

Benessere Pinot Grigio 2001 (Napa Valley) is a good example. Its balance of zip and ripe fruit flavor, especially the high-toned peachiness, makes it one of those wines you can open while cooking and continue to drink through the meal. Pavi Pinot Grigio 2002 (Napa Valley) is another purely California beauty. The bright lemon and nectarine flavors say Pinot Grigio, but the focused weight on the palate and the long, clean, peach-inflected aftertaste say California. Amazingly, the flavor lingers on and on while remaining clean and refreshing.

Luna Pinot Grigio 2001 (Napa Valley) quells any doubt about the grape’s nobility. It’s a majestic white, with the concentrated flavor of a small crop from cool clay soils; a full, round body from fermentation in barrels; and the creamy texture of a wine aged on its lees. Luna founder John Kongsgaard makes all his wines on a heroic scale, and this radiant Pinot Grigio from southern Napa Valley is no exception. The wine is deeply concentrated; the flavors unfurl from the radiant acidity with precision, snapping like signal flags in a brisk ocean breeze.

Wines like these take the classical Italian Pinot Grigio style to new heights. So does a particularly impressive rendition of the French Pinot Gris model from Chalk Hill Estate in Sonoma County.

Chalk Hill Estate Pinot Gris 2001 is the California epitome of the French model. Here, the grape’s hallmark acidity is the framework for layers on layers of sumptuous flavors -- buttery, ripe pear is just the beginning -- and intricate, silky texture. Where the Luna seems precisely detailed, the Chalk Hill is all about rich, harmonious sensation.

These bigger, riper Pinot Grigios from California and Oregon represent a distinct New World incarnation of an old grape. Inevitably, the distinctions between the classical European models are blurred by new terroirs and winemaking practices.

And perhaps this evolving new identity calls for the devious gray Pinot to acquire yet another alias.