Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Perfumed and fragrant aromas of dark cherries, blackberry bushes, spices, wet bark and rose petals. The palate is medium-bodied with firmly integrated tannins and bright acidity, giving notes of redcurrants, wild raspberries, citrus peel and lead pencil. Refined and pure with an underlying power and tension. Drink or hold.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2022 Burn Cottage Vineyard Pinot Noir is light and fine, with a delicate array of cherry, strawberry, red apple and freshly pressed linen notes. Woven throughout is sweet tobacco, graphite, white tea and finely ground pink peppercorns. In the mouth, the acidity works with the tannins to penetrate the palate with flavor, and it has an ethereal quality to it, which marks it as distinctly different from the Sauvage Pinot Noir. This is an eminently pretty Pinot Noir and comes highly recommended.
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Wine Spectator
A stunning red, offering an aromatic and expressive mix of blueberry, raspberry and maraschino cherry, along with notes of dried rose petal, sandalwood and toasted cumin seed, plus a touch of fresh mint. Plush and velvety, with details of black walnut liqueur, white pepper and palo santo that linger on the long, expressive finish. Drink now through 2039.
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Vinous
If you're looking for a pure and unadulterated Central Otago Pinot that shows class but won't break the bank, you'll find it in the 2022 Moonlight Race. It's suave and comfortable in itself. This is a chilled out, no worries Kiwi Pinot with plenty of class. Supple, concentrated and savory with fine-grained cocoa-like tannins. It is all oh-so-Central black cherries with orange peel, subtle clove and garrigue. It's a wine you can happily drink now but has the frame and fruit content to see out the decade. Being impatient, I will struggle to wait that long.
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.”
Home to the globe’s most southerly vineyards, which are cultivated below the 45th parallel, Central Otago is a true one-of-a-kind wine growing region, but not only because of its extreme location.
Central Otago is more dependent on one single variety than any other region in New Zealand—and it isn’t Sauvignon blanc. They don’t even make Sauvignon blanc there.
Pinot Noir claims nearly 75% of the region’s vineyards with Pinot Gris coming in a far second place and Riesling behind it. This is also New Zealand’s only wine region with a continental climate, giving it more diurnal and seasonal temperature shifts than any other.
The subregion of Bannockburn has enjoyed the most success historically but the area’s exceptional growth has moved to the promising regions of Cromwell/Bendigo and Alexandra districts. Central Otago is known for its fruity and full-bodied Pinot noir. With the freedom to experiment here, growers and winemakers are easily exhibiting the area’s great potential.