Winemaker Notes
The color is bold, moving into dusk-purple. The nose is a perfume of violets, black plums and smoked mushroom. Flavors of ripe cherry and black berry fruit flood the mouth, with forest floor and root spices. The palate is elegant and velvety, giving the wine a warming yet clean feel, carrying intense flavors into a seamless, lingering finish.
Food matches: Game, lamb or savory vegetarian dishes
"Lithe and distinctive, with a definite minerality and a touch of loamy earth to the ripe cherry and currant flavors, lingering beautifully on the generous finish. Tannins are well-submerged and its sense of delicacy is welcome. Drink now through 2011."
-Wine Spectator
Professional Ratings
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.