Winemaker Notes
A floral and delightfully perfumed nose immediately engages and enthrals. Sweet fruit opens the palate exposing layers of dark cherry, spice and complex earthy notes. The sense of immediacy and open appeal is quickly tempered by its structural and mineral tannins: a mouthfeel characteristic of Calvert’s deep and heavy silt soils. They contribute a stature and seriousness to the proposition: contemplative and sincere.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Tasted at bottling, this has very attractive, floral and sappy aromas with ripe red cherries, blueberries, blood oranges and orange zest. The oak is very subtle. The palate is very smooth and deeply creamy with a super succulent and rich array of juicy, lithe tannin , carrying to a long, fleshy and fluid finish. From biodynamically grown grapes.
Range: 94-95 -
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Calvert Pinot Noir displays intertwined briary notes of red raspberries and resinous herbs. It's medium-bodied, with supple, slightly dusty tannins, but there's also a wiry backbone of acidity that further brightens the wine and imparts terrific length on the mocha-tinged finish.
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Wine Spectator
Distinctive, firm and focused, with a note of minerality weaving around the dried berry and cherry flavors at the core. Touches of spice, black tea and dark chocolate linger. Drink now through 2034.
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.”
Home to the globe’s most southerly vineyards, which are cultivated below the 45th parallel, Central Otago is a true one-of-a-kind wine growing region, but not only because of its extreme location.
Central Otago is more dependent on one single variety than any other region in New Zealand—and it isn’t Sauvignon blanc. They don’t even make Sauvignon blanc there.
Pinot Noir claims nearly 75% of the region’s vineyards with Pinot Gris coming in a far second place and Riesling behind it. This is also New Zealand’s only wine region with a continental climate, giving it more diurnal and seasonal temperature shifts than any other.
The subregion of Bannockburn has enjoyed the most success historically but the area’s exceptional growth has moved to the promising regions of Cromwell/Bendigo and Alexandra districts. Central Otago is known for its fruity and full-bodied Pinot noir. With the freedom to experiment here, growers and winemakers are easily exhibiting the area’s great potential.