2017 Whitehaven Marlborough Pinot Noir
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TASTING NOTE
Colour / Appearance: Deep ruby, with a garnet hue.
Aroma / Bouquet: Lifted blueberry and spiced plums, with oak char, cinnamon and nutmeg spice, with violet hints.
Palate: A medium bodied wine with fine tannins a silky texture and richly structured. The red and blue fruit flavour are balanced with the oak spice, and linger on the long, bright finish.
Food Match: Try this wine with game meats such as duck or venison.
Serve: Room temperature.
WINE ANALYSIS
Alcohol: 13.5%
Residual Sugar: 1.8 g/L
Titratable Acidity: 5.6 g/L
pH: 3.56
VITICULTURE
Harvest Dates: 28th March – 15th April 2017
Grape Growing: The fruit for this wine was mainly sourced from 2 vineyards located in the Awatere and Southern Valley sub-regions of Marlborough. All fruit for this wine was grown on a standard 2 cane trellis system. Shoot thinning was carried out during the growing season to ensure a healthy open canopy, and fruit thinning occurred later in the season to ensure all the fruit had concentrated ripe varietal flavours.
Climate: The budburst timing was slightly later than normal and the vines experienced typical spring like conditions of variable temperatures, winds and rain. Early varieties, such as Pinot Noir, flowered in cooler conditions leading to smaller yields. In mid-December, the weather became warm and dry. January was notable for strong winds that parched the landscape. The later part of the season recorded lower sunshine hours and higher humidity, resulting in delayed sugar ripeness and a later start to harvest.
VINIFICATION
Winemaking: The fruit for this wine was hand harvested in the cool Marlborough autumn mornings. Most was de-stemmed and transferred to various open top fermenting vats in the winery. Approximately 5% of the fruit was added to the fermenter as whole clusters. The fruit was then left to cold soak for 5-6 days prior to fermentation. The fermentation occurred spontaneously with yeast native to the vineyard. Extraction was done by hand-plunging (pigeage) 3-4 times daily to ensure gentle colour and flavour extraction. The temperature was allowed to peak at 32°C. The wine was then pressed off as soon as it reached dryness, and then racked to new (30%), 1 and 2 year old French oak barrels. The heavy pressings were kept separate. The wine was left to mature in barrel and underwent natural malo-lactic fermentation in spring. After 11 months the wine was removed from barrel, blended and filtered before bottling in March, 2018
Winemaker: Rowan Langdon.
