Hi Ed,
I kept my Nanny Goat - I am checking out maturing CO to see if it will ever properly satisfy me. If it gets worse, Marks get it back. Internet receipts last for a very long time
I'm drinking a 2004 CO pinot at the moment - Silky, Not bad, but NOT nicely evolved, nothing tending towards elegance. Modern producers are using a too heavy a dose of sulphites in NZ at the cheaper end. I need to reveal how CO pans out with bottle age. When I have sampled some over the next 12 months, I hope to convey some truth for traditional Pinot lovers, that many of the tabloid / daily rag wine writers don't bother to deal with.
At the affordable end, they side step anything to do with potential elegance and evolution from bottle age, cellaring and proper wine making. May as well be baked beans in a tin with some of them, a sort of Yes or a sort of No.
I believe I do understand where some part of that candy / confected element comes from now. But, I will have to move up the money to find something special in CO to avoid it.
At the moment - I'm damn near bloody sure that producers are chaptalising with a little sucrose, or inoculating the must for body and mid palate sweetness. Trouble is, I only really know what ripe Cote d'Or pinot tastes like.......To find this Holy Grail - if Hugh Johnson and many others are to be believed, one needs to spend more money than you, and the rest of us first thought.
I will get closer to understanding CO pinot noir - I hope.
At the mo, I realise that I appear to be as anal as Goose is about correct ( in his opinion) SB and MSB.
I like my affordable burgundian pinot tailored to the flavour that fairly ordinary french restaurents in the north country serve. So learning CO is a 1st step.
One or two Roaring Meg next
I wear Next kit, but don't eat much of Cadbury's stuff, except fruit and nut, when out sailing or on country walks. 
