Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Deeply perfumed and floral, with aromas of wild blackberries, mulberry bush, violets and wet bark. The palate is finely tuned with seamless tannins, bright acidity and a creamy texture, giving notes of dark cherries, graphite, boysenberries, spices and rose petals. High tension with a savory edge. Incredibly well balanced.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2023 Pinot Noir is the third in a run of La Niña vintages, and the wine is darker in the glass than the preceding years. It is spicy, supple and silky, and the fruit has great intensity. This vintage shows its whole bunches, but they are counterbalanced by so much fruit that it works so well through the finish. This is perfumed and structured and saturated in flavor. 13.5% alcohol.
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.