A super tasty, super smooth Pinot Noir made from grapes grown in Martinborough and vinified in Hawke’s Bay at Clearview Estate. This is a superb red fruited wine with its lively and youthfully fruity Pinot summer berry flavours. It’s great value for a wine that just sneaks in under $30. Clearview Estate Winery in Hawke’s Bay sourced grapes from Ferry Road in Martinborough to make this tasty Pinot Noir and this is the second time it’s been produced (2019 was the first). The wine was made at Clearview Estate with about 40% whole bunch fermentation, all wild fermented followed by aging in French oak, 18% new, for a year. 

About Clearview Estate

Clearview Estate is one of oldest, most well established wineries in Hawke's Bay and is situated on the Te Awanga Coast, south of Napier. It's a great place to visit for tastings at the cellar door as well as lunch in the dappled shade of the established courtyard area. The winery was founded by Tim Turvey, winemaker and co-owner. The current winemaker is the multi talented Matt Kirby.

This Pinot Noir is from block with clay soil, which is planted in 2003. This wine shows full of charming red to dark fruits. A very charming wine to go with food.

Akitu A2 Pinot Noir is an approachable and complex Pinot Noir made from three different Pinot clones which receive 35% whole bunch fermentation and a modest 7% new French oak in the maturation process. This makes for a smooth but subtle softness in a lush Pinot, which Akitu owner Andrew Donaldson suggests matching with Peking duck pancakes. Hear hear. Any duck would flatter this wine’s lush flavours, for that matter. Volumes: 1096 cases were produced and the wine was bottled on 19 March 2020.

The home of Akitu 

Andrew Donaldson planted his vineyard with 100% Pinot Noir in 2002 and has since developed three distinctive styles of wine from this great red grape variety. Two reds (Akitu A 1 and Akitu A2) lead the production while a Pinot Blanc is now part of the high quality stable of wines from this producer. 

Donaldson employs winemaker P J Charteris to make the wines. 

At Mt Barker, in New Zealand's South Island, in a high glacial valley of sunshine and rain shadow on the edge of the earth, each season leave its own vivid imprint on our vintage.  Extreme temperature variations, alpine air, altitude, adversity... all the wild elements of this exhilarating land combine in a Pinot Noir of great quality from the world's southernmost wine region.

Beautiful bright black cherries are captured in a structured full bodied Pinot Noir with delicacy and light notes of earth, spice and summer berries. This is the best Whitehaven Pinot Noir yet, made mostly from grapes grown in Marlborough's Southern Valley sub-region.  A stunner and incredibly good value for money. 

This wine drinks beautifully now (in 2024) and will certainly age well for at least five years. 

Whitehaven Wines began life in 1994 as a romantic business for a couple of corporate escapees, Sue and Greg White, who had given up life in the rat race of Auckland for another kind of life aboard their yacht. When sailing around the country, they took shelter in the Marlborough Sounds from Pacific storms and fell in love with the region. An easy thing to do when harbouring in the spectacularly pristine waters of the Sounds. They decided to settle there on terra firma once more and try their hands at wine production, hiring a winemaker and beginning a business which has now been around for 26 years. Greg has sadly passed away now, leaving a legacy as well as his wife and daughter, Sam, to run the winery. Their winemaker is Peter Jackson.

Prima Donna is the top Pinot Noir and best red from Pegasus Bay Winery, made from a blend of barrels tasted by the winemaking team and chosen for their quality and superior style. It is produced by Mat Donaldson and his winemaking team, who aim to create the most complex and balanced Pinot Noir possible in this wine, which is part of Pegasus Bay’s reserve series wines. 

Traditional Burgundian winemaking sees the inclusion of approximately one third of the grapes in this blend fermented as whole bunches. The maturation is in French oak, approximately 45% new, for 18 months, using oak barriques from selected artisan Burgundian coopers.

This wine drinks well now and can also age superbly for 10 years and further, in cool cellar conditions.

* Prima Donna Pinot Noir is produced only in vintages regarded as exceptional quality. 

Provenance is the name of the top Pinot Noir from Big Sky, one of the most spectacularly beautiful wineries in Martinborough. This wine is a stunning expression of New Zealand Pinot Noir at its best; savoury, full bodied and over flowing with gorgeous ripe dark fruit flavours underpinned by firm tannins giving the wine structure and a commanding presence in the glass. 

This is a wine to drink now and cellar into the future. 

The Big Sky story

Jeremy Corban and Katherine Jacobs founded Big Sky Wines in the Te Muna Valley, Martinborough, in 2005. They have since expanded their small vineyard, which is predominantly planted in Pinot Noir and also has a little Sauvignon Blanc, which they give extra textural complexity to with a little time in old oak on lees. 

Whitehaven Wines began life in 1994 as a romantic business for a couple of corporate escapees, Sue and Greg White, who had given up life in the rat race of Auckland for another kind of life aboard their yacht. When sailing around the country, they took shelter in the Marlborough Sounds from Pacific storms and fell in love with the region. An easy thing to do when harbouring in the spectacularly pristine waters of the Sounds. They decided to settle there on terra firma once more and try their hands at wine production, hiring a winemaker and beginning a business which has now been around for 26 years. Greg has sadly passed away now, leaving a legacy as well as his wife and daughter, Sam, to run the winery. Their winemaker is Peter Jackson.

Appealingly aromatic, this Pinot Noir reveals notes of Morello cherry and bramble ont he nose. On the palate - fine, silky tannins and juicy acidity provide an elegant structure, with complexity coming from gentle toast and woodsmoke characters.

VINEYARD - The fruit from this wine was sourced from a single Waipara Valley vineyard.  The fruit is left on the vine to ripen until the berries start to lose moisture and shrivel, concentrating the flavours and producing a rich style of Pinot Gris. 

SOIL TYPE - Alluvial gravels

WINEMAKING - The fruit was hand-picked and meticulously hand sorted. The juice was fermented warm by indigenous yeasts in aged French oak barriques.

TASTING NOTES - Wonderfully fruited and fragrant, the bouquet shows mango, golden peach, poached pear and rich floral aromas, leading to a splendidly flavoursome palate offering opulent fruit flavours with spicy nuances, finishing long and delicious. Gorgeously styled with rich tones of ripe fruit intensity backed by juicy acidity. Sam Kim - Wine Orbit.

Soft spicy and flavoursome red made from Gamay (the Beaujolais grape), only in this case grown on the Two Terraces Vineyard at Maraekakaho in Hawke's Bay. Lifted fruity aromas accentuate the soft, intense perfume of the Gamay grape, which expresses itself with full force in this fragrant lovely red fruited wine. 

The wine was fermented with indigenous yeasts and given 100% carbonic maceration and aged in a combination of large clay amphora from Spain and older oak barrels. The wine was bottled unfined and unfiltered. 

Chardonnay lovers will be all over this wine made from hand picked grapes grown on the Heretaunga Plains in Hawke's Bay. Grapes were whole bunch pressed and
barrel fermented with wild yeasts, which provides rich depth of flavour and a smooth palate mouthfeel; Lees stirring enhances softness and builds structure and weight to this wine, which was aged for 11 months in barrel.

Bold, powerful, creamy Chardonnay with bright deep citrusy flavours. This wine is made 100% from the Om Santi Vineyard in Martinborough, which is in conversion to organic certification with BioGro NZ.

All grapes are handpicked, whole bunch pressed with a portion to oak barrels and a portion to stainless steel tanks. The tank portion is cold settled over night and then racked to French oak where fermentation is with vineyard yeasts and the occasional stirring to add texture and complexity to the wine. 

The wine gains weight, smoothness, spicy notes and texture from 12 months in oak. It is bottled unfiltered to provide a close reflection of site and season.

Chardonnay is what made Gisborne famous and one sip of this and you?ll see why. Complex with layered citrus- and stone fruit aromas, lifted by savoury yeast and nutty oak characters, the palate sensation is both fresh and textured. The wine delivers Gisborne?s bold elegance with a long and seamless finish. Ripe and weighty fruit flavours without the heat of excess alcohol. Big wine, beautiful wine, with a taste that will linger for ages.