Winemaker Notes
#21 Wine Spectator Top 100 of 2018
This is the family’s favorite variety, with loads of concentrated berry fruit and wild herbs. It is perfectly balanced with fine acidity and length, just what you would expect out of this region.
Ideal with pâtés and salami, this wine matches beautifully with beef and lamb dishes, and try also pairing with game. Don’t be afraid to serve with a dark chocolate mousse either. Drink now or cellar for up to 5 years.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Smooth, silky raspberry coulis and maraschino cherry notes are impressive for their purity, with accents of white chocolate, thyme, red licorice and cedar. Spicy cigar box accents emerge on the long, expressive and detailed 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.”
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.