Winemaker Notes
Ruby jeweled color with aromas of raspberry, spice, dark toast and forest floor. The mouthfeel is bright and perky on entry with soft, savory flavors and supple acidity. The structure is built on fine grain and chalky tannins with a lingering juicy finish.
Professional Ratings
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Vinous
The 2020 Pinot Noir is balanced and harmonious, offering a seductive mouthful of refined fruit. A come-hither Pinot Noir, it coats the palate with its suave and mellow texture. The tannins act like the water coming from a shower edge, bathing the side of the cheeks from top to bottom with a seamless, savory coating. The finish is lengthy and sinewy, drawing out the palate and leaving a fragrant ending - all tea leaf, earth, cedar, red cherry and more.
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.