Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2023 Te Muna Road Vineyard Pinot Noir is powerful but framed within an ethereal structure of ductile tannin. The fruit is eminently red, and the wine feels elegantly integrated at all levels. It's a lovely expression of Martinborough, and it manages restraint and measure at every opportunity. The acidity is fine and saline, the balance is there and the oak merely supports. There is a savory herbal nuance through the finish, but it all works. Recommended. 12.5% alcohol.
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Wine Spectator
Firm acidity and density offer appealing traction for the cherry, cranberry and strawberry flavors in this red, with herb, forest floor and black tea accents. Drink now. 200 cases imported.
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.