Winemaker Notes
Dark cherry with a crimson hue. Dark aromatics with notes of ripe cherry, sage, dried bark and thyme emerging. Wonderful integration of ripe red fruits and velvety tannins across the palate. It has great density yet carries a very elegant feel as it flows towards the savory dry finish.
Pairs well with duck dishes.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Plenty of rich, red and darker-cherry aromas with spices and woody allure. There’s a supple and silky feel to the ripe fruit here. This has attractive depth and concentration with a wealth of fleshy, fine yet sturdy and tightly woven tannin, carrying ripe, succulent red and dark-cherry flavors. Drink or hold. Screw cap.
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The Somm Journal
Grapes from the higher of the vineyard’s two terraces are fermented with indigenous yeast to produce this wine, whose notes of candied watermelon and raspberry play out with searing acidity. A gossamer of cherry, beetroot, red tea, and cocoa creates a delicious elegance
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Wine Enthusiast
A sturdy and harmonious expression of Martinborough Pinot, this bottling opens with ripe cherry fruit, licorice, earthy spice and mineral nuances, backed by some mealy oak. The palate is medium in weight, the tangy fruit cinched by sinewy, drying tannins. It’s a touch woody, but there’s enough fruit and spice to balance it out.
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Wine & Spirits
Plush with cranberry jam flavors, this wine takes some time to unpack. Forget it in a decanter for a few hours and you’ll find a more delicate pinot noir with pretty raspberry freshness, gentle tannins and cool rose scents that last. Then break out the duck prosciutto.
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.