Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
-
Wine Enthusiast
Only the second release of this Otago wine after Pyramid Valley’s shift in ownership, and it’s already showing great promise. It’s lightweight but not without substance or layers. Gentle berry notes mingle with savory, mushroom and soy sauce nuances. It really comes to life on the palate, which is both vivacious and structured, the chalky tannins and crunchy acidity jiving with juicy, silky fruit. Elegant, poised and highly drinkable. Drink now and over the next five to eight years.
-
Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2018 Pyramid Valley Appellation Series Pinot Noir is an outstanding effort showing excellent purity. TASTING NOTES: This wine is wonderfully bright with aromas and flavors of vivid red fruit, savory spices, and light chalky notes. Serve it with grilled salmon fillets. (Tasted: March 8, 2021, San Francisco, CA)
-
James Suckling
This has attractive violet and rose florals and a wealth of cedary and spicy oak weighing in. The palate has a fine-cut tannin texture that drives savory and tangy at the finish.
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Showing touches of cola and mocha from its oak aging, the 2018 Central Otago Pinot Noir also comes from a warmer vintage, so it is a slightly bigger, more powerful wine than the 2017 or 2019 versions. Ripe cherries are underscored by entwined herbal tendrils in this medium to full-bodied effort, framed by gently dusty tannins and a long, silky-textured finish.
-
Wine Spectator
Intense and succulent cherry, blood orange and cranberry flavors are fresh and refreshing, with details of cigar, clay, clove and cedar, gaining momentum on the finish. Drink now through 2030.
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.