Escarpment Te Rehua Pinot Noir 2013
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James
Suckling -
Robert
Parker - Decanter
Product Details
Your Rating
Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
The Te Rehua Pinot Noir is bright ruby red and offers a complex bouquet with notes of black cherries and plum fruit. There is lovely softness and texture in the mouth. Grown on the Barton Vineyard, Huangarua Road, Martinborough from 21 year old vines, the vines always rewards with a classic example of New World Pinot Noir.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
The most brooding of the Escarpment pinot noirs, this has a dark, mineral nose with graphite and slate, building to earth-crusted herbs, toasted nuts, dark chocolate, glacé orange peel, wet earth and crushed violets. The complexity is deeply integrated. On the palate there's striking clarity and focus, and the tannins are fine-tuned, super-smooth and rippling with energy. They drive long, smooth, clear, while dark-cherry and plum fruit flavors run alongside and wash up through the finish. A classic rendition of pinot in the iron-fist-and-velvet-glove style. Drink in 2019. Range: 96-97
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Medium ruby-purple colored, the 2013 Te Rehua Pinot Noir has a pretty floral scented nose of violets and roses over a core of Bing cherries, cranberries and pomegranate. Medium-bodied, it offers a delicately flavored palate of red berries and subtle earth inflections supported by finely grained tannins and balanced acid, finishing with some minerals.
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Decanter
Subtle, yet complex nose of dried herbs, red and black fruit and cedar spice; silky palate with structure and fruit in balance. Rather good in an unflashy way.
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Escarpment Vineyard was established in 1999 as a joint business venture between Robert & Mem Kirby (of Australia's Village Roadshow) and Larry & Sue McKenna. Collectively, these four directors bring to Escarpment a world of experience, skill and understanding to the nurturing and making of fine, deliciously sublime wine. It goes without saying the impetus behind establishing this vineyard came from the four's deep love for Pinot Noir. Meeting by chance in 1999 through Dr Richard Smith, Larry and Robert quickly hit it off and realised they had more than a love for the grape in common. Serious talk about establishing a definitive New World vineyard began in earnest even then and the 'idea whose time has come' has resulted in one of the most significant vineyard developments in the New Zealand district of Martinborough. Escarpment is accredited with Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand, an industry initiative directed through New Zealand Winegrowers. With a growing trade and consumer demand for environmentally friendly products, it provides an important platform to promote the New Zealand wine industry as a world leader in clean, green wine production.
Thin-skinned, finicky and temperamental, Pinot Noir is also one of the most rewarding grapes to grow and remains a labor of love for some of the greatest vignerons in Burgundy. Fairly adaptable but highly reflective of the environment in which it is grown, Pinot Noir prefers a cool climate and requires low yields to achieve high quality. Outside of France, outstanding examples come from in Oregon, California and throughout specific locations in wine-producing world. Somm Secret—André Tchelistcheff, California’s most influential post-Prohibition winemaker decidedly stayed away from the grape, claiming “God made Cabernet. The Devil made Pinot Noir.”
Part of the Wairarapa region in the southern end of the country’s North Island, Martinborough is a bucolic appellation full of artisan, lifestyle wine producers. Above all else, their goals are to tend vineyards for low yields and create wines of supreme quality. Pinot noir is the main grape variety here, occupying over half of the land under vine.
Comparing topography, climate and soils, the region is nearly identical to Marlborough except that it produces top quality reds on the regular.