Escarpment Te Rehua Pinot Noir 2014
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Enthusiast
Product Details
Your Rating
Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Robust and intense, with plenty of fresh earth notes, muscular tannins and smoky tea, rosemary and roasted plum flavors. Complex and generous on the finish, ending harmoniously. Drink now through 2026.
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Wine Enthusiast
This doesn't have the same floral notes on the nose as the other 2014s from Escarpment, but instead offers aromas of baking spices, vanilla and black cherries. In the mouth, it's crisp and medium in weight—not the most generous wine right now—but the tart, lingering finish suggests it should age well.
Other Vintages
2020-
James
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James
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Robert
Parker
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Robert
Parker - Vinous
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James
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Wilfred
Wong -
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Robert
Parker
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James
Suckling -
Robert
Parker - Decanter
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.