Winemaker Notes
The 2015 Nautilus Pinot Noir is dark ruby in color. The nose reveals gentle floral aromas, ripe wild blackberries, cherries and spices. The palate is medium bodied with good structure. Refined and balanced, this elegant wine shows good intensity and a lengthy finish.
Professional Ratings
-
James Suckling
A smart pinot noir from the get-go with bright strawberry, boysenberry and cherry fruits on offer, as well as nicely judged oak influence and a gentle reductive inflection. The palate has a smooth flow of fine tannins carrying plenty of red cherry fruit flavor. Attractive resolve here.
-
Wine Enthusiast
This wine combines so much of what we've come to love about New Zealand Pinot. It's light and bright but serious too, with plenty of site expression. Raspberry and blueberry compote, violets, baking spices and sun-baked stones all dance together on the nose. There's plush fruit on the palate but a savoriness too, framed by sinewy tannins and finishing on a stoney, mineral note. Editors' Choice.
-
Wine Spectator
Spice, cola, clove and black licorice notes linger in the background of the fleshy blackberry and cherry flavors, finding plenty of harmony and a little bit of tannic muscle on the finish. Drink now through 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.”
An icon and leading region of New Zealand's distinctive style of Sauvignon blanc, Marlborough has a unique terroir, making it ideal for high quality grape production (of many varieties). Despite some common generalizations, which could be fairly justified given that Marlborough is responsible for 90% of New Zealand's Sauvignon blanc production, the wines from this region are actually anything but homogenous. At the northern tip of New Zealand’s South Island, the vineyards of Marlborough benefit from well-draining, stony soils, a dry, sunny climate and wide temperature fluctuations between day and night, a phenomenon that supports a perfect balance between berry ripeness and acidity.
The region’s king variety, Sauvignon blanc, is beloved for its pungent, aromatic character with notes of exotic tropical fruit, freshly cut grass and green bell pepper along with a refreshing streak of stony minerality. These wines are made in a wide range of styles, and winemakers take advantage of various clones, vineyard sites, fermentation styles, lees-stirring and aging regimens to differentiate their bottlings, one from one another.
Also produced successfully here are fruit-forward Pinot noirs (especially where soils are clay-rich), elegant Riesling, Pinot gris and Gewürztraminer.