Murdoch James Estate Pinot Noir 2013
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Robert
Parker
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Pale to medium ruby-purple in color, the 2013 Estate Pinot Noir offers an expressive nose of black raspberries, pomegranate and black cherries with nuaces of loam, moss and cumin seeds. Elegantly styled with a medium-body and very fine tannins supporting the red and black berry flavors, it has a long mineral laced finish.
Murdoch James Estate vineyards enjoy premium grape growing soil conditions with a mixture of calciferous lime, clay and river silts with a high mineral content. The action of the Australian tectonic plate, scraping the bed of the Pacific plate millions of years ago, gave rise to the limestone rich hills of the High Block Vineyard of Murdoch James Estate, Martinborough. The lime and clay based soils of the vineyard allows white wines a vibrant fruit flavor with a long, lingering, mineral finish, and red wines of complexity and character. True to their terroir, the wines of Murdoch James Martinborough are rich in flavor and elegant in structure.
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.