• French oak
• Dark cherries
• Baked plum
• Silky tannins

"A vibrant, fresh and ripe fruited bouquet filled with aromas of baked red berries and dark cherry, the layer of mineral silty soil attributes add complexity as well as distinctiveness. There’s concentration as well as a core varietal message before oak and fine winemaking enter the equation. Delicous, fresh, fruity, varietal and lush on the palate. Flavours of red berries and toasty barrel spices are held against fine to moderate tannins and refreshing acid line leading to a lengthy, youthful finish. A lovely example ready for drinking from late 2023 through 2029+" Cameron Douglas, Master Sommelier, Jul 2022

"Sweetly ripe and beautifully fragrant, the bouquet shows Black Doris plum, blueberry, floral and subtle spice aromas, leading to a succulent palate delivering supple mouthfeel and fine-grained tannins, offering delightful drinking. At its best: now to 2027" Sam Kim, Wine Orbit, Jul 2022

"Dark opaque crimson hue. Complex, heady and ripe on the nose with aromas of dark cherry and boysenberry ripple ice cream with funky hints of bacon, sage and seaweed. Soft, lush, textural wine with nice acidity balancing and precise, firm tannins. Not overly complex but warm and comforting and better still with some more time" NZ Wine Rater, Oct 2022

Very vibrant appearance with deep ruby/burgundy colour. Dark cherries, baked plum, violets, lavender and silty earth. All nice things to smell in a Pinot! A good bit of quality oak adds to the intrigue. The palate ticks all of the high quality Martinborough Pinot boxes; plush and silky tannins with rich ripe berry flavours and text book earthy and savoury tannins. Really smooth and moresish, showing the qualities of a concentrated, high quality vintage. Delicious right now and definitely has the balance and concentration to improve with 5 plus years in the cellar.

The 2020/21 growing season was a stark reminder for many of us in the grape farming community that we deal with a seasonal crop and a vineyard is a business without a roof over it! Mother nature doesn’t care that cold, wet springs are really, really tough on us! One factor which made the previous harvest such a pleasure was the long warm Autumn we experienced during picking. The Indian summer continued through the winter months of June and July with plenty of blue-sky days and little rainfall. Winter did eventually arrive, but it arrived in spring! We battled a record number of frost events and had to deal with persistent cold, wet southerly fronts throughout the key flowering period in late October/early November. Normally flowering takes place over a week or so and ideal conditions are dry with moderate winds. We got the opposite in the extreme! A good grape farmer will plant and cultivate a diverse array of clones and varieties in part to help negate challenging growing conditions. Different clones/varieties flower at different times, some early, some much later. In any given season there will be clones/varieties which do much better than others and this is normally down to the conditions during the key flowering stage. By having diversity you can better ensure a consistently good outcome. So goes the theory! Yields across all varieties and all clones were well down in 2021. Pinot clones Abel and 777 fared much better than pretty much all the rest. Our Pinot Meunier, normally a real stalwart, suffered as well. Syrah flowers much later so was largely unaffected. White varieties did a little better but still well down. In the end we were down on yields by around 30-40% ... Ouch! Luckily, for us at least, due to an excellent long and dry ripening period, the quality of what was harvested was outstanding.

As always, crafted using 100% Estate grown Pinot Noir harvested from both of our vineyards. Majority harvested from the younger vines growing on the clay/limestone hillside of the Blue Rock Vineyard. All fruit is de-stemmed and gently transferred into 6 ton open top temperature controlled stainless steel fermenters. The fruit is chilled down and held for a 5-6 day ‘cold soak’ to aid in colour and flavour extraction. Once the cooling is turned off the ferment begins as the fruit slowly comes up to ambient temperature. Once fermentation is in progress the ‘ferment’ is plunged twice daily. Temperature is closely monitored with a peak of around 30 degrees C allowed towards the end of the fermentation. Total maceration time was between 15–30 days before gentle pressing followed by oak maturation for 10 months. Bottled following minimal fining and gentle filtration. Contains no animal products.

Food Pairing: Seared Venison back strap with blackberry sauce.