Winemaker Notes
Ripe red cherry, plum & spice. This complex Pinot delivers with a mix of powerful fruit, focused structure and a long, silky finish.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This is a very good pinot, delivering a mix of powerful fruit and a focused structure. Violets and ripe red cherries sit amid gently stony, flinty nuances, leading to a palate that has a succulent, lithe and juicy core of vibrant cherries and chalky tannins. Great pinot.
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Wine Enthusiast
This vintage of renowned biodynamic winemaker Rudi Bauer’s single-vineyard Pinot, from the Bendigo subregion, is an expressive and highly pleasurable drop now, but, like all of his Pinots, also has cellaring potential. Billowing from the glass are plums, blueberries, violets and heaps of baking spice, then more savory, earthy notes of black olives, stones and a slight sanguine character. The spiciness, from both the fruit and the oak, is more prominent on the palate, but combine it with juicy fruit, pristine acidity and poised, laser-focused tannins and the result is a wine of depth and elegance that speaks of its place. Drink now–2028.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Mocha, loam and charred beet root appear on the nose of the 2017 Single Vineyard Pinot Noir. It's a boldly flavored, assertive wine, medium to full-bodied, with silky tannins and crisp acids. From Bendigo, a warm subregion of Central Otago, it's true to winemaker Rudi Bauer's signature style, maybe a touch less tannic than some of his previous efforts but still flavorful, complex and long.
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.