Winemaker Notes
Pairs well with venison, lamb, wild game and game fowl, Asian-style duck, seared tuna and swordfish.
Professional Ratings
-
Wine Spectator
Elegant and plush, with fresh cherry flavors that are supple and smooth, accented by hints of cream soda and red licorice. Offers bright acidity and lingering clove nuances. Drink now through 2026.
-
Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
A hauntingly beautiful Pinot Noir, the 2014 Astrolabe Province exhibits stylish hallmarks of a well-balanced red wine. Its pretty red fruit flavors and perky palate bite make it an excellent foil for lightly roasted salmon steaks. (Tasted: September 11, 2017, San Francisco, CA)
-
Wine Enthusiast
This medium-bodied wine successfully blends several disparate notes into a harmonious whole. Hints of just-turned earth, cola, root vegetables, clove and fresh greens join on the nose, while the palate adds fruitier overtones of red cherries and berries. The tannins are silky, the acids vibrant.
-
Wine & Spirits
The spice of oak introduces this meaty pinot noir, fleshed out by strawberry richness and black-plum-skin tannins. This feels concentrated, needing six months to a year for the tannins to integrate.
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.”
An icon and leading region of New Zealand's distinctive style of Sauvignon blanc, Marlborough has a unique terroir, making it ideal for high quality grape production (of many varieties). Despite some common generalizations, which could be fairly justified given that Marlborough is responsible for 90% of New Zealand's Sauvignon blanc production, the wines from this region are actually anything but homogenous. At the northern tip of New Zealand’s South Island, the vineyards of Marlborough benefit from well-draining, stony soils, a dry, sunny climate and wide temperature fluctuations between day and night, a phenomenon that supports a perfect balance between berry ripeness and acidity.
The region’s king variety, Sauvignon blanc, is beloved for its pungent, aromatic character with notes of exotic tropical fruit, freshly cut grass and green bell pepper along with a refreshing streak of stony minerality. These wines are made in a wide range of styles, and winemakers take advantage of various clones, vineyard sites, fermentation styles, lees-stirring and aging regimens to differentiate their bottlings, one from one another.
Also produced successfully here are fruit-forward Pinot noirs (especially where soils are clay-rich), elegant Riesling, Pinot gris and Gewürztraminer.