The most striking transformation of American wine can be expressed in two words: pinot noir. Consider this: Burgundy, France, the mother lode of pinot noir, has 24,000 acres planted. California has the exact same acreage. What makes this even more impressive is that not only has California equaled Burgundy’s pinot noir acreage, but it has done so in little more than 20 years. Burgundy has been at the pinot noir game for 1,000 years. Granted, a sizable proportion of California’s pinot noir acreage is dedicated for sparkling wine, but 24,000 acres is still a whopping amount of pinot noir by anybody’s measure.

Then there’s Oregon. A major player with 7,300 acres of pinot noir, Oregon has staked its image and reputation on the variety, nearly all of which is consecrated to still wine rather than sparkling. This is daring indeed, as western Oregon’s cool, variable climate creates, well, variable-quality pinot noirs. Its reputation has roller-coastered accordingly.

As recently as the 1980s you could fill a good-size auditorium with vocal doubters about America’s pinot noir possibilities. This was especially true for California. In the 1970s and 1980s naysayer after naysayer – including winemaking school professors at UC Davis – insisted that California was too warm to grow successful, finesse-full pinot noir. (Full disclosure: I, too, was among the doubters.) Boy, were we ever wrong.

Today, California’s most exciting wine is pinot noir. Although Oregon has proven pinot noir aptitude – more about that in a moment – California, by virtue of its size, has many more climates and soils. Those, in turn, create true terroirs – places which consistently give a wine particular, even singular, flavors and textures.

For example, a good taster given accurate-to-the-location examples of pinot noirs from such California districts as Carneros (Napa/Sonoma), Russian River Valley (Sonoma), the westernmost section of Sonoma Coast (Sonoma), Anderson Valley (Mendocino), Santa Rita Hills (Santa Barbara), and Santa Maria Valley (Santa Barbara) could beat the statistical odds in identifying them in a blind tasting.

Oregon, for its part, has one trump card: the cool, temperate climate of its Willamette Valley. This is a place that the Burgundians themselves feel is closest to their own model. They’re disconcerted by California’s baffling, fog-inflected coastal climates.

Western Oregon, like a farmer’s favorite cow, is reassuringly temperate and predictable, shaped by forces familiar to Burgundians, such as northerly latitude (Portland, Ore., is farther north than Portland, Maine), rainy autumns, and a soothing gentility of sun, soil, and cultural style. (Oregon growers are much less likely to call you “dude” than Californians, which comforts the conservative Burgundians.)

The usual overbroad generalization has California pinot noirs as powerful and penetrating while Oregon pinot noirs trade on finesse and delicacy. Is it true? To a degree, yes. But in warmer vintages, such as 2002 in Oregon, the pinot noirs are ripe enough to be called – dare I say it? – Californian. And the old canard of California lacking delicacy is just that: an unwarranted smear. It ain’t so. The best California pinots – even the big boys from Sonoma Coast or Santa Rita Hills – can have as much finesse as a lay-up rolling off the fingers of Shaquille O’Neal.

HERE’S THE DEAL

EVESHAM WOOD “WILLAMETTE VALLEY” PINOT NOIR 2003 One of the best-kept secrets among Oregon’s numerous small pinot noir producers is Evesham Wood. Owner-winemaker Russ Raney is a self-effacing sort who consistently makes some of Oregon’s finest pinot noirs yet prices them noticeably lower than the competition.

Like many Oregon producers, Evesham Wood offers small lots of different pinot noirs. All are made in an austere, almost signature-free winemaking style that emphasizes purity of fruit rather than splashing on the dime-store cologne of vanilla-scented oak. More than most Oregon pinot noirs, Evesham Wood bottlings are demonstrably age-worthy, improving with upwards of a decade in the bottle.

This 2003 vintage bottling – a very warm year – is Evesham Wood’s most available wine. To call it “basic” or “entry level” would be doing it a disservice, as Evesham Wood’s 2003 “Willamette Valley” bottling is too refined, detailed, and savory to be just any old (or young) pinot noir. This is Oregon pinot noir as it should be: succulent, filled with finesse, and genuinely comparable to a good red Burgundy. The price is mouthwatering for the quality: $16.95. Worth hunting down.

EVESHAM WOOD “LE PUITS SEC” PINOT NOIR 2002 The best Oregon pinot noirs are usually produced in such tiny quantities that a) you have to be clued in, and b) you have to be right there at the release. Consider yourself duly informed and notified. Le Puits Sec (the dry well) is Evesham Wood’s 7.5-acre estate vineyard, nearly all of it planted to pinot noir.

This is, in this taster’s opinion, Evesham Wood’s finest pinot noir. (Another bottling, called Cuvee J, is frequently cited as Evesham Wood’s best. In fact, it’s about 85% from Le Puits Sec, which tells you something right there.) Such delicious quibbles aside, this is profound pinot noir. The 2002 vintage was exceptionally ripe-tasting, which shines through in this wine.

This is flat-out great American pinot noir, the sort you’d serve (blind) to a Burgundian and watch with pleasure as he or she gushed over its “surely-it’s-French” goodness. Not much is made, just 300 cases total. New York gets about 10% of that. But it’s just been released and you can get it – which you should. It’s a steal for the money. $29.95.

SAINTSBURY “GARNET” PINOT NOIR 2003 The temptation with pinot noir – often with reason – is that if you can find it, how good can it be? (Burgundy crazies are particularly subject to this, hunting down small growers who are unknown to their own first cousins.) After all, pinot noir is a wine of small places. Unlike, say, cabernet sauvignon, it won’t grow successfully – which is to say offering the variety’s distinctive berryish scent and taste – just anywhere.

Saintsbury, in the Carneros district straddling Napa and Sonoma, gives the lie to this notion of inevitable exclusivity. The winery issues its proprietary named Garnet pinot noir in ample quantity. Yet the quality, never better than in this brand-new 2003 bottling, is superb. This is pinot noir good enough to make you glad you aren’t tasting it blind, because I’ll bet hard cash you’d call it a red Burgundy – and a good one at that.

Actually, Garnet 2003 is better than nearly any Burgundy currently on the market at its asking price. It’s lovely pinot noir, filled with the signature berry taste and scent allied to a degree of finesse that no one believed possible not too long ago. Saintsbury pinots improve in dimensionality and finesse seemingly every year. The 2003 Garnet is marvelous pinot noir for the money, a benchmark even in pinot noir value. $17.95.