Winemaker Notes
Deep ruby red with red hues. Bright red cherry, blackberry and dark plum with dark chocolate, dried thyme and violets. Mouth filling and concentrated with sweet red fruit and lovely minerality. Silky texture with fine grained tannins and a persistent red berry finish.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This is a beautiful expression of Central Otago. It’s poised and polished—but not overly so—with waves of red berries, florals and a gentle peppery spice. The palate is oh-so-elegant, fresh, high-toned fruit threaded with fine savory tannins. There’s both an easiness and a complexity here, making this a delicious drink now but also a classy candidate for the cellar until 2029 or so.
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Wine Spectator
Bursting with fresh pureed raspberry, match green tea and white pepper notes, with fresh loamy earth, dried lavender, toasted cumin and a touch of cocoa powder on the finish. Terrific concentration and density; the tannins have an appealing muscular note, finishing with tremendous complexity.
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James Suckling
A very rich, baked-raspberry and cherry-pastry nose with a wealth of supple and succulent fruit that offers detailed and vibrant palate texture. Plenty of deep, black-cherry and blackberry flavor here. Long and dense.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The debut vintage for this offering, the 2018 Cru Kawarau Pinot Noir comes from Central Otago's Gibbston Valley. Wisps of smoky oak accent black cherries and plums in this ultra ripe expression of Gibbston fruit, which often shows some herbal characters. Full-bodied, round and generous, it's a plush, almost California-esque Pinot for immediate gratification—or at least to drink over the next 4-5 years, not to cellar for the ages.
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.