Winemaker Notes
Pairs well with all game dishes.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
The final Escarpment Pahi due to vineyard ownership changes, this offers an intense expression on the nose with iodine, tarry elements, bracken, graphite, darker cherries and biscuity spices. The palate unfurls at a smooth and even pace, delivering a ball of supple red cherry-flavoured pinot noir fruit flesh and silky, sweeping waves of tannins. Always good to go out on a high, this is superb.
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Wine Spectator
Vibrant, with blood orange and plum flavors that are juicy and expressive. Mineral and herb notes linger in the background. Dense, muscular tannins provide the framework.
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.