Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This pinot has an x-factor that sets it apart. There’s an almost peppery edge to the violet, blueberry and red-cherry nose with sappy and earthy elements, as well as roasted game and fragrant baking spices. The palate has a very plush, attractive and fresh array of vibrant and detailed pinot fruit on offer. Long and precise. Drink or hold. Screw cap.
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Wine Enthusiast
Winemaker Larry McKenna's Pinots all possess a signature style, while also being incredibly terroir-expressive. The Kupe is a gorgeous example of this, rippling with waves of raspberry, strawberry and black-cherry fruit, white-pepper spice, crushed rose petals and warm tarmac. The palate is poised and balanced with slinky red fruit, streaks of minerality and fine, granular, powerful tannins. Some French oak shows but should integrate with time. Drink through 2029.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Made from own-rooted Abel Clone fruit grown near the winery off Te Muna Road, the 2017 Kupe Pinot Noir boasts the lowest alcohol level (12.5%) I recall seeing on an Escarpment Pinot Noir. It's done a great job integrating the 70% whole-bunch fermentation, leaving behind spicy, black cherry-laced aromas and flavors. Despite the modest alcohol, it's full-bodied, plush and rich, with a long finish and complex herb and spice shadings.
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Wine Spectator
Distinctive, with dense fruit flavors, velvety tannins and a delightful aromatic profile, showing off whiffs of mahogany and cigar box. Complex black truffle, blackberry pie and cedar notes wrap around the muscular core, showing off tremendous harmony on the long finish. Drink now through 2035. 250 cases made, 50 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.