Winemaker Notes
A very strong year for Pinot Noir at Tolpuddle. There is complexity and power, balanced by pure fruit notes and cool season spice. It shows powerful fruit, with ripe red cherry, smoked meat, and olive notes, framed by fine but firm tannins. Great length of flavor. An exciting vintage.
Professional Ratings
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2022 Pinot Noir is very much like the 2022 Chardonnay, in that it is quieter in expression, placid in shape and restrained. This is a beautiful wine, one that very much sits in the zone of complexity and pleasure, freshness and detail. This vintage has slightly less whole-bunch fruit than normal, given the seasonal conditions, and I must say I love it; it exudes a gentleness and clarity of fruit that speaks of this place so clearly. 13.5% alcohol.
-
Decanter
Tolpuddle has firmly cemented its position at the pointy end of the Tasmanian pinot noir pyramid, consistently producing knockout wines that have become a benchmark for the region. Nothing changes with the 2022 release, which shows wonderful fruit intensity and oodles of pinosity in a graceful package. Lovely pure dark cherry and wild strawberry fruits, cut with exotic spice, charcuterie, roasting game, shiitake broth, amaro herbs, purple floral tones and complex forest floor notes. Textural and elegant yet with an undercurrent of latent power and intensity, a tight tannin frame and a long finish that shows balance and poise. Just wonderful stuff.
-
Australian Wine Companion
Tolpuddle has firmly cemented its position at the pointy end of the Tasmanian pinot noir pyramid, consistently producing knockout wines that have become a benchmark for the region. Nothing changes with the 2022 release, which shows wonderful fruit intensity and oodles of pinosity in a graceful package. Lovely pure dark cherry and wild strawberry fruits, cut with exotic spice, charcuterie, roasting game, shiitake broth, amaro herbs, purple floral tones and complex forest floor notes. Textural and elegant yet with an undercurrent of latent power and intensity,a tight tannin frame and a long finish that shows balance and poise. Just wonderful stuff.
-
James Suckling
Very good Tassie pinot. Root spice and earthy forestry notes of dried porcini dashi, autumnal leaves and loganberry, set in relief against a swathe of darker cherry. The spiky whole bunch inclusion is evident across the finish reeling off a whiff of dill and mezcal, yet it is largely buried by the extract and density. This should age very well, as the record at this address attests.
-
Wine Spectator
Plush, fleshy, juicy black cherry, plum and blackberry flavors show plenty of spice hints, including clove, cardamom, oregano and star anise, with savory accents of dried porcini, palo santo and malty Assam tea. There's a wonderful seamlessness and freshness to this red, lingering through on the long, epic finish.
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.”
Directly south of the city of Melbourne and the Mornington Peninsula wine region, the cool-climate island of Tasmania has earned an honorable reputation as the country’s finest producer of Sparkling Wine. Naturally the region also excels in top quality still wines from Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Riesling, all distinguished because of a high natural acidity. Most of the Tasmania vineyards cluster around the eastern side of the island from north to south.