Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Elegant and highly detailed, with plush, ripe red raspberry and cherry flavors that are fresh and juicy, joined by black tea, clove, sassafras and sage notes. Smooth and tasty, gaining momentum on the finish.
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Wine Enthusiast
Craggy's Pinot style has been trending away from overt fruitiness and toward this sort of complex umamifest of meat, parsnip and mushroom, with just enough black cherry fruit to support all of these components. This 2010 has a firmly structured core surrounded by plush tannins and ample length on the finish. Drink now–2023.
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Wine & Spirits
The rich cherry intensity of this wine carries spice along in its wake, bringing cedar and ancho-chile scents through its chocolate layers of tannins. It's tightly built, the flavors lasting on fruit, suited to several years of bottle age.
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.