Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Matured for 11 months in French oak, 20% new, the 2009 Pinot Noir provides a medium ruby-purple color and intense aromas of black cherry and black raspberry with some floral/wilted roses and lavender nuances plus whiffs of forest floor and black truffles. There’s stunning purity and nervy intensity on the palate with a high level of racy acidity cutting through the rich, medium to full bodied fruit and textured by a medium to firm level of finely grained tannins. The finish is long.
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Wine Enthusiast
This is a fairly big, muscular Pinot Noir, with beefy black-cherry fruit and oaky overtones of brown sugar. Give it a year or more to smooth out, because the long, intense finish filled with berry fruit shows tremendous promise. Drink 2013–2020.
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.