Benières Grande Réserve Pinot Noir: The Wine I Am Waiting to Open With My Father

My father visits Edinburgh fairly regularly. Every time he does, we end up at Nectar, which is as it should be. He sits at the bar, catches up with the team, and then does the thing that still makes me laugh every single time: he orders a cocktail.

This is a man who almost exclusively drinks wine and beer. He is Czech, which means he was raised on some of the finest lager in the world, in a country that takes its brewing with a seriousness that most nations reserve for things considered more culturally prestigious. Czech beer is not a casual beverage. It is a point of national identity, and my father is a faithful representative of that tradition.

When he drinks wine, he drinks it properly. He is the kind of person I think about when I pour a glass of the Montepulciano: a wine drinker with opinions, with a point of comparison, with a palate that has been formed over decades rather than assembled from tasting notes. He does not need to be told what he is tasting. He already knows.

And yet. Every time he visits Nectar, something happens that defies everything I know about him. Panos says hello, the cocktail menu appears, and my father, the man who drinks wine and Czech beer and almost nothing else, orders a cocktail. Then another one. By the end of the evening the wine list has not been touched and I am standing there looking at the Benières Grande Réserve Pinot Noir thinking: next time.

The Benières is my favourite red wine on the Nectar list. It has been since we put it on the menu. And my father, one of the best wine drinkers I know, has still not tried it.

One day. Probably not the next visit. But one day.

Why a Pinot Noir from southern France surprises everyone

The first question most people ask when I describe this wine, before they have tried it, is some version of: how is a light, elegant Pinot Noir coming from the south of France?

It is a reasonable question. The Pays d'Oc is a large wine denomination covering the Languedoc-Roussillon region along the Mediterranean coast of southern France, stretching from the Rhône valley in the east all the way down to the Pyrenees. It is a hot region. A dry region. The kind of place where the sun does not apologise for itself and where the vines spend their summers in conditions that most people associate with full-bodied, sun-drenched reds rather than the delicate, aromatic style that Pinot Noir is known for.

Pinot Noir is notoriously difficult everywhere it grows. It is thin-skinned, susceptible to disease, sensitive to heat, and capable of producing wines of extraordinary elegance in the right conditions or wines of profound disappointment in the wrong ones. It has been called the heartbreak grape for good reason, and the conventional wisdom has always been that it belongs in cool climates: Burgundy, the Côte de Nuits, the valleys of Alsace, the Central Otago high country in New Zealand. Not the sun-baked garrigue of the Languedoc.

What that conventional wisdom misses is the variety within the Pays d'Oc that the denomination's sheer size produces. The Languedoc-Roussillon covers 230,000 hectares of vineyard, ranging from coastal plains to mountain ranges with altitudes above 300 metres, from heavy clay soils to the limestone and chalk terraces that run through its interior. In the elevated plots and north-facing slopes within the denomination, nighttime temperatures drop significantly even when the days are warm, which creates the diurnal temperature variation that allows Pinot Noir to retain its natural acidity and aromatic complexity rather than cooking into something overripe and heavy.

The Pays d'Oc IGP classification, which stands for Indication Géographique Protégée, permits 58 different grape varieties across its vineyards, making it one of the most flexible wine designations in France. That flexibility is what allows a winemaker to grow Pinot Noir in territory where a stricter appellation system would never permit it, and to produce, when the conditions are right and the winemaking is thoughtful, something genuinely surprising: a southern French red that tastes nothing like you expect southern French reds to taste.

The Benières Grande Réserve is exactly that. A Master of Wine named Peter McCombie, who ran a masterclass on Pays d'Oc Pinot Noir at the London Wine Fair, called it the great alternative, and that phrase captures it well. Same grape, fraction of the Burgundy price, and a quality that consistently surprises the people who encounter it without preconceptions.

What is in the glass

The Benières is produced from grapes harvested early in the season, which is a deliberate decision to preserve the varietal elegance rather than waiting for maximum ripeness. In a warm climate, picking early keeps the natural acidity and the freshness of the fruit intact, which is why this wine drinks like something from a cooler region than its geography would suggest.

Fermentation takes place in stainless steel tanks at a controlled temperature between 26 and 28 degrees Celsius. Over 15 days, daily punch-downs are carried out to enhance colour and tannin extraction from the skins, which is the traditional technique for developing structure without forcing it. Then a portion of the finished wine is matured in French oak, which adds aromatic complexity and contributes to the smooth, silky structure that is the signature quality of a well-made Pinot Noir.

In the glass, the colour is a glossy, deep ruby. On the nose, there are intense aromas of black fruit, cherry and raspberry in particular, followed by hints of vanilla and clove from the oak. The oak is present but not dominant: it adds a warmth to the aromatics without obscuring the fruit underneath.

On the palate, the tannins are fine-grained and velvety. The acidity is vibrant and alive, which is what keeps the wine feeling fresh rather than heavy. The finish is long and touched by mocha, which is the quality that I find most distinctive about this bottle: it lingers in a way that invites another sip rather than resolving cleanly and disappearing.

It is not a complex wine in the intellectual, slightly demanding way that a great Burgundy is complex. It is complex in the way that a very good song is complex: everything in the right place, nothing fighting anything else, a quality that reveals itself across the length of the experience rather than all at once.

Why I describe it as vibrant and succulent

The word light in wine contexts sometimes carries an unfair negative connotation, as if lightness is a quality that comes from not having enough of something. With the best Pinot Noirs, lightness is a quality in itself: the result of precise winemaking, the right climate, and a grape variety that at its best produces more flavour from less weight than almost any other red grape in the world.

The Benières is light in the way that Pinot Noir should be light: you can see through the glass to a degree that would alarm you with a Shiraz or a Malbec, but the flavour does not reflect the colour. It is immediately more present than the pale ruby suggests it will be. The fruit is generous. The acidity is energetic. The finish surprises you with its length.

Surprising is the word I keep returning to with this wine because it describes the experience of drinking it rather than the wine's objective qualities. People pick up the glass expecting one thing based on the label, the region, the price point, and the colour, and then they taste it and something shifts. That gap between expectation and experience is where the most enjoyable bottles live, and the Benières occupies that space consistently.

Where it sits on the Nectar wine list

The wine list at Nectar is built around the food and the identity of the bar: predominantly Greek and Mediterranean in character, with wines chosen because they pair naturally with what Margarita's kitchen produces rather than because they fill a conventional category slot. The Assyrtiko Sauvignon Blanc is the white wine that most directly reflects the Greek identity of the list. The Xinomavro Syrah Merlot from the same Apeiron producer is the red that best expresses the depth and structure of what northern Greece can produce.

The Benières sits in a different position entirely. It is the wine that does not announce its identity before you taste it, the bottle that travels well across different moods and different dishes, the one I reach for when the occasion calls for something that does not need to be explained or contextualised before it is enjoyed.

It pairs naturally with a wide range of the menu. The chicken skewer is an excellent match: the clean, herb-marinated protein and the vibrant acidity of the Pinot Noir create the kind of combination where both the food and the wine taste more alive together than they do separately. The cheese filo pastry works beautifully too, the honey echoing the vanilla and the subtle sweetness of the oak while the saltiness of the feta sharpens the fruit in the wine. Even the veggie platter suits it: Pinot Noir's natural affinity with mushrooms, which is one of the oldest food and wine pairings in French culinary tradition, makes it a natural companion for earthy vegetarian dishes in a way that a bigger, more tannic red never quite manages.

The bottle I am still waiting to open

I have thought about why I am so attached to the idea of opening this specific bottle with my father. Part of it is straightforward: it is genuinely excellent wine and I want him to try it. But part of it is something else.

My father is a man who knows what he enjoys. He has strong opinions about cocktails, about food, about most things worth having opinions about. And he is from Zurich, which means those opinions are delivered with a certain quiet certainty that does not leave much room for argument. When he orders a Warmth Within, he has considered his options and made a decision.

But I think if he tried the Benières alongside a chicken skewer on a Tuesday evening when the bar is a little quieter and the mood is right, he would pause in the way that people pause when they taste something they did not expect to be as good as it is.

That is the moment I am waiting for. Not to be right about the wine, because wine recommendations between family members are rarely as satisfying as they are in the imagination. But because that particular kind of surprise, the recalibration that happens when something exceeds what you expected from it, is one of the things I find most enjoyable about working in a bar with a wine list worth caring about.

My father will order a cocktail on his next visit. I am fairly certain of that. But one day the timing will be right.

Book a table at Nectar Bar and order the Benières while you are here. Consider it practice for when my father finally lets me open it for him.

Opening hours Tuesday to Thursday: 5pm to 11pm Friday: 5pm to 1am Saturday: 12pm to 1am Sunday: 12pm to 11pm Monday: Closed

Nectar Bar, 73 Broughton Street, Edinburgh EH1 3RJ