2024 Whitehaven Single Vineyard Series Tussocks Skin Contact Pinot Gris
$35.00
TASTING NOTE
Whitehaven’s single vineyard range of wines speak to the importance of terroir in creating unique, premium quality wines, and allow us to showcase outstanding, smaller parcels of fruit identified by our winemakers each vintage. Reflecting the exclusive nature of these wines, each bottle is individually numbered.
We have used a lightweight bottle to lessen this wine’s impact on the environment.
Colour / Appearance: Bright, elegant rose-gold in colour from 24 hours juice skin contact.
Aroma / Bouquet: Freshly cut stonefruit such as nectarine and apricot, and overlapping notes of rose petal, white florals and baking spice on the nose.
Palate: Juicy core of ripe nectarine, pear and baking spices, with a gentle twist of orange zest. Dry to taste, this wine is full in body and finishing with fine, peppery tannins.
Cellaring: We recommend drinking our 2024 Skin Contact Pinot Gris while it is young and fresh, but the wine can develop nicely beyond five years if carefully cellared.
Food Match: This Pinot Gris is made to be enjoyed with food. We recommend dishes featuring richer seafoods, mushrooms, light game and poultry.
Serve: Lightly chilled.
WINE ANALYSIS
Alcohol: 14.0
Residual Sugar: 2.0g/L
Titratable Acidity: 5.53 g/L
pH: 3.33
VITICULTURE
Harvest Date: 28th March 2024.
Grape Growing: The fruit used to make this wine came from our Tussocks Vineyard, located in the Inland Awatere Valley. One of our favourite blocks, J block – Barrie clone, was used to make this wine. Picked at the end of vintage, ideal conditions provided grapes that were fully ripe and clean when harvested, a perfect fit for this style of wine. Vineyard manager: Dane Forrester.
Climate: Unlike the previous two years, the growing season leading into the 2024 vintage began after a dry winter, with the soil water balance in deficit. Fewer inflorescences generally and then a protracted flowering window in November and December, resulted in poor fruit set and fewer berries per bunch than the average in most areas. Dry conditions persisted for the duration of the growing season, minimising disease threats and resulting in clean fruit at harvest. A spell of warm weather through late December and January, in combination with the lighter crop, resulted in a rapid physiological advancement against the long term average. This trend continued until the start of harvest in early March, ahead of earlier predictions in late 2023. Fortuitously, the headwaters of the Wairau and Awatere river systems received enough rain to keep irrigation schemes open through the season and into harvest, at which point a return to cool, crisp days became the norm. Fruit was harvested at more elevated sugar levels than the previous two seasons. Peak intake for the winery was from the 13th March through to the 29thMarch.
VINIFICATION
Winemaking: The hand-picked fruit was de-stemmed then crushed, before loading into our small bag-press. To maximise flavour with gentle extraction, the must was then let to sit in the press overnight (roughly 24 hours), before pressing off. The clean juice was then transferred to tank, and after 24 hours this juice was racked and warmed. We then inoculated with a selected yeast strain. The wine was fermented until dryness, at a moderate ferment temperature (14-16 deg). After ferment the wine was let to sit on light lees for 4-5 months. We then stabilised and filtered this wine and finally bottled it on the 29th August, 2024.
ACCOLADES
