Winemaker Notes
The 2018 Escarpment Te Rehua Pinot Noir has a unique site derived complexity and texture combined with black cherry/plum fruit flavors. It will continue to develop for up to 10 years and will always be a wonderful counterpart to any game food.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Once again, this 30-year-old vineyard has delivered the goods. The 2018 Te Rehua Pinot Noir has some slightly over-prominent stemmy notes on the nose at this early age, but there is so much substance here that I'm confident they'll integrate nicely over time. Even now, they lend a slightly herbal-briary edge to the raspberry and cherry fruit that makes those flavors more savory and complex. On the palate, the wine is medium to full-bodied, generous and richly textured, with terrific concentration and length on the mocha-tinged finish.
Rating: 93+
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Vinous
A rich, fleshy style with a totally different tannin structure than the Kiwa block, which is just around the corner. This is a slightly warmer site and so the fruit is a little riper, offering damson skin and cherry, while there's plenty of succulence too. It's mouth-filling, and those tannins build over the course of the wine, coating the entirety of the palate with melted chocolate texture. A high percentage of whole bunch gives this wine an athletic line and an herbal scent lingers on the long finish. Drinking window: 2021 - 2028
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.