Commercial description

Single-vineyard, premium Pinot Noir.  

A wine whose character has intrigued us throughout its development.  Flavours flowed and receded throughout ferment.  Texture shifting from weighty to silky.  It was deceptive, multifaceted.  Not to be taken at face value.  This is a princess in overalls.  A poet painting fences.

Lit with a pure bright brilliance in colour. Classic Wairarapa expression - complex savoury flavours on a silky bed of pert & poised acidity & complementary tannins.

For us, flavours evoked include dark cherry, vanilla & mushroom.  There's a sense of black liquorice strap & dark cocoa too.  Whatever you find, very confident you will agree this is sensuous, balanced & complex wine.  Sophisticated & powerful. Worthy of your time.  Will cellar well.

Hand-harvested by neighbours & friends.

TASTING NOTE
This is a highly concentrated Pinot Noir from low yielding vines. This single vineyard wine displays rich dark fruit aromas of cherries and plums together with smoky and earthy undertones. Full bodied with immense depth of fruit flavours layered with forest floor complexity and great tannin structure. The densely layered palate of this wine shows all the complexity and richness of flavours making it ripe yet elegant wine with great structure and a juicy finish.

WINEMAKING
Ripe fruit was hand harvested and completely destemmed, but not crushed, with the aim of achieving a significant percentage of intact berries in the ferment. Grapes were put on cold soak for 4-5 days prior to undergoing wild fermentation. The wine remained on skins post fermentation to optimise tannin extraction whilst locking in the deep, ruby colour. This wine was drained and pressed and then aged in old French barriques for nine months during which time it underwent a complete malolactic fermentation. In pursuit of the highest quality this wine has not been fined.

FOOD MATCHING
Serve alongside a roasted beef or lamb and dark rich gravy and mushrooms. These dishes will complement the rich flavours and complexity of this wine.

CELLARING POTENTIAL
Crafted to be enjoyed within 3-5 years of vintage date.

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.

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.

Here's a surprising fact - nearly one third of Germany's vineyards are planted in red grapes – but until quite recently most of these wines were made specifically with the country's own tastes in mind.

Now there is a generation of winemakers producing riper, fuller bodied Pinot Noirs made in a modern style - and one which takes both Burgundy and New Zealand Pinot Noir styles into account. Winemaker Gerd Stepp is at the forefront of this cultural change and this fabulous Pinot Noir illustrates this in this savoury, smooth and finely tuned Pinot Noir, which tastes like the ultimate match with roast duck or aubergine and then again, is equally beautiful on its own. 

This is a thought provoking Pinot Noir which offers exceptional value for money.

The fruit contained a mix of four Pinot Noir clones – 777, 115, Abel & UCD5. Fruit was spilt into three fermenters – one containing 100% whole bunch, 70% whole bunch, and the other 100% de-stemmed. Fermented with natural yeast. Gentle winemaking techniques were used to avoid excessive extraction. 23 days on skin, pressed to 100% old French oak barrels. 12 months in barrel, and allowed to undergo malolactic fermentation naturally in spring, before being racked and allowed to naturally settle and integrate in tank. Unfined and unfiltered.

Hand Harvested: 6th and 12th April 2021
Bottled: 8th June 2022
pH: 3.69
TA: 5.9g/L
Alcohol: 13.5% v/v

Juicy and refreshingly succulent pale ruby Pinot Noir, which has body and structure, building on winemaker Jannine Rickards' previous Waikura Rosé and is a lighter bodied red wine with structure and flavour interest but freshness that suits being served as a lightly chilled wine. 

Made from old vine 10/5 Pinot Noir (25% whole bunch with gentle pump overs) and new plantings of Abel clone Pinot Noir, all grown on the Stad_Ko Vineyard; the new name for the old Arapai Vineyard in Martinborough.

Smooth earthy flavours intermingle with dark cherry flavours in this new Pinot Noir which is made with grapes grown on a well established, older vineyard site which has a new lease of life, in the centre of Martinborough. The 3.5 hectare vineyard was established by the Brodies who sold it to Eva and Ross Mackay in 2018. The new name is Dublin Street Wines, the first vintage being from the high quality 2019 vintage followed by the great 2020 one. Both years were beautifully high quality ones for wine with dry settled weather, which produced great quality grapes that translated into very good wines. 

The vineyard is entirely devoted to Pinot Noir and planted with five different clonal variations (114, 115, 667, 777 and 5). 

The aim of the game now is to reduce oak use in the wines, replacing it with whole bunch and wild yeast fermentations; two winemaking tools that can accentuate structure and savoury flavour aspects, without dominating. 

This is an excellent value Wairarapa Pinot Noir. The grapes are carefully selected to create a great New Zealand Pinot with a medium body and a fruit forward and complex palate.  

Mon Cheval is a small family owned wine brand in the Waipara Valley, which is the heart of the North Canterbury wine scene - one of New Zealand's highest quality Pinot Noir regions.

This Pinot Noir is one of our favourites and comes from Wellington's closest wine region, the Wairarapa; Gladstone, to be precise, where winemaker Karl Johner has what you might call a foot in both camps. The German born winemaker produces wine at his winery in Gladstone in the New Zealand summer. In our winter, he hot foots it back to Germany to work harvest at his winery there.

The wines from both places are classic, elegant expressions of aromatic grape varieties; high points are Pinot Noir, Riesling and Pinot Gris; made in a range of styles.

This Pinot Noir is a dry, medium bodied, earthy and smooth. Bottled unfined and unfiltered. This wine ticks the vegan friendly box.

Here is a Pinot Noir that shows how good Marlborough Pinot can be. Smooth with a hint of spice here and a touch of dark red cherry flavour there, this is complex and delicious. It drinks well now and can also age for a further three to four years.

Clos Henri began 22 years ago in Marlborough when the French Bourgeois family expanded their winemaking from the heart of Sancerre in the tiny village of Chavignol to Blenheim, in 2001. Now that their vines are 22 years of age , the family feels that they are only now starting to reflect and express the taste of the land. This family retains their land and winemaking in Chavignol where they have made wine for 11 generations.

Odyssey Wines is owned by winemaker Rebecca Salmond, who sources grapes from a number of different regions. She produces exceptionally good value wines, including this full bodied, creamy big Chardonnay from Gisborne; the fifth biggest wine region in New Zealand - and aptly named the country's Chardonnay Capital.

A pinot noir that undergoes carbonic maceration and is designed to be enjoyed chilled.

Red, purple hue. The nose has fragrant characters of Bright blackberry and plum with floral undertones. Beautifully balanced by savoury oak notes, with tobacco and cracked pepper. The palate is refined and tight, with real texture. Fruits form early but the wine is carried by a lovely savoury tone and whole bunch structure and tannins. The wine has the classic gladstone salinity running through it.

13.5% Alc | 750ml