This is a robust and concentrated style of Marlborough Pinot Noir from an excellent Pinot Noir vintage. It was grown on the clay soils of the Wairau Valley's southern hills and exhibits aromatics and flavours of dark brambly fruits including cherry and plum with notes of herbs and spice. With its subtle oak influence, this is a fruit forward style and a fine match with food.

The grapes for this wine were sourced from two key vineyards; one in the Awatere valley, giving bright fruit aromas and the other in the sub-region of the Southern valleys, contributing ripe, structured tannin. The vines are trained on an upright vertical shoot positioned trellis and managed intensively to produce low yields of excellent quality fruit. Shoot thinning, bunch thinning and leaf plucking are all undertaken in the pursuit of quality.

Despite early season weather concerns, Marlborough has had a superb vintage across all varieties with superb quality and yields being above the long-term average. The fruit remained clean with vibrant flavours and the resulting wines are looking outstanding. With high soil moisture levels leading into the season from heavy winter rain events, the vines got off to a good start with strong canopy growth setting up a strong ‘solar panel’ to ripen the crop. Temperatures hovered just over the long-term average; cool enough to extend the growing season and develop great depth of flavour and bright natural acidity in the fruit. With more elongated, looser grape bunches, there was very little berry squeeze, which coupled with dry weather from veraison through to harvest, resulted in low disease pressure.

The fruit was destemmed and soaked before fermentation with wild yeast in open topped fermenters. Hand plunging employed to gently extract tannin and colour. When dry the wine was pressed to both tank and barrel for malolactic fermentation. The wine was then aged in French oak barriques for 11 months before blending and bottling.

Enjoy with a wide range of meat and game dishes including duck, salmon and tuna.