Winemaker Notes
Ruby-red in color, this wine offers aromas of bold cherry and fresh red berries underpinned by savory notes and spicy oak. On the palate, it is smooth, with dark fruit flavors, juicy acidity, and fine tannins flowing into a long finish.
Mud House Pinot Noir will age beautifully over thenext 5 years. This food-friendly wine pairs particularly well with dishes like Coq au vin with creamy mashedpotatoes, or meats slow-roasted over the BBQ
Professional Ratings
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Tasting Panel
From the best Kiwi area for Pinot Noir, this wine is earthy and complex, with dry notes of cherry and spice. Serious and intense, not to mention available at a very good price.
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Wine Enthusiast
This is an easygoing Pinot with heaps of bright cranberry and cherry fruit backed by more earthy, mushroomy, floral notes. In the mouth, there’s an appealing raspy texture to the combo of savory, spicy tannins and silky red fruit. It’s medium-bodied and drinking well now or could hold up well over the next few years.
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.