Greywacke Marlborough Pinot Noir (750ml)

TASTING NOTE 

Imagine a dark chocolate brownie, baked in a wood-fired oven and finished with a dollop of plum compote. Deeply coloured and exhibiting both sweet and savoury aromatics – think pumpernickel, bramble berries and the soft scent of lilac. The palate rivals in complexity, with tamarillo, wild cherry and grilled nectarine flavours, underpinned by dusty tannins and a long, driven finish.

VITICULTURE

All fruit was grown in Marlborough’s Southern Valleys and principally sourced from the Yarrum Vineyard, situated on the ridge between the Brancott and Ben Morven Valleys. Other smaller parcels came from the Omaka Valley and hillsides around the mouth of the Brancott Valley. Typical of these sub-regions, the wind-blown loess soils are comprised of clay-loams with differing degrees of gravel content. The vineyards are cultivated to a mixture of clones, predominantly the Dijon clones 115, 777 and 667, with smaller parcels of UCD5, 828, 943 and AM10/5. The vineyards are all hillside plantings, trained to two-cane VSP (vertical shoot positioning) with a high vine density of 3800 plants per hectare.

WINEMAKING

The grapes were hand-harvested and chilled overnight prior to hand-sorting. Most of the fruit was then destemmed into open-top fermenters, the majority of which also had a percentage of whole-bunch inclusion. The fruit was left to soak on skins prior to the onset of indigenous yeast fermentation, then plunged daily. After fermentation, the wine was pressed, racked and filled into French oak barriques (30% new). Individual clones were barrel-aged separately for 11 months, prior to blending in January 2024. The wine was bottled in June with alcohol 13%, pH 3.65 and acidity 5.6 g/l.