Escarpment Kupe Pinot Noir 2018
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Robert
Parker - Vinous
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Winemaker Notes
The season was cooler than normal with correspondingly lower alcohol something we have been moving towards to gain better balance and elegance. It has created fruit harvested in brilliant condition giving ripe flavours and soft tannins.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
From close-planted, slightly younger vines than the other single-vineyard bottlings, Escarpment's 2018 Kupe Pinot Noir ratchets up the intensity. Floral, oaky notes complement the whole-bunch aromas, while the berry and black-cherry fruit is crisp and even a bit edgy at this age. Medium to full-bodied, with velvety but plentiful tannins and a long, dusty finish, I expect this wine will benefit from a couple of years' cellaring, then evolve positively for up to a decade after that.
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Vinous
Hailing from a 20-year-old vineyard, Kupe is a little younger than some of the other single vineyards but has higher-density planting - around 7,000 vines per hectare. However, being on its own roots, it is being slowly replanted. (The fruit from these young vines is not included in this cuvée.) This is a mouth-filling and muscular style and those muscles are honed; the palate is coated by an abundance of tannins. There's plenty of density here, with around 50% new oak, giving both a smoky tone and a vanilla-like character to the brooding black cherry and dried herb flavors, but it's in keeping with the wine's substance. With a whopping 70% whole bunch, this is a little “stemmy” in that those tannins offer a furry firmness. There's no way this wine is ready to be poured yet, so squirrel it away in the cellar. . Drinking window: 2023 - 2030
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Escarpment Vineyard was established in 1999 as a joint business venture between Robert & Mem Kirby (of Australia's Village Roadshow) and Larry & Sue McKenna. Collectively, these four directors bring to Escarpment a world of experience, skill and understanding to the nurturing and making of fine, deliciously sublime wine. It goes without saying the impetus behind establishing this vineyard came from the four's deep love for Pinot Noir. Meeting by chance in 1999 through Dr Richard Smith, Larry and Robert quickly hit it off and realised they had more than a love for the grape in common. Serious talk about establishing a definitive New World vineyard began in earnest even then and the 'idea whose time has come' has resulted in one of the most significant vineyard developments in the New Zealand district of Martinborough. Escarpment is accredited with Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand, an industry initiative directed through New Zealand Winegrowers. With a growing trade and consumer demand for environmentally friendly products, it provides an important platform to promote the New Zealand wine industry as a world leader in clean, green wine production.
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.