• French oak
• Red & black cherries
• Cinnamon & nutmeg
• Polished tannins

"Dark chocolate, walnuts, dried flowers, orange peel, and lead pencil. Medium-bodied with firm and racy tannins that give a linear feel and focus to this wine. Compact and polished tannins that run deep into the wine. Solid and curated texture" James Suckling, Jamessuckling.com, Nov 2023

A deliciously spicy Marlborough pinot, bursting with ripe fruit fragrance. Red and black cherries, super-ripe strawberries, dark-fleshed plums and juicy blackberries – poached with a stick of cinnamon, some cloves and a sprinkle of nutmeg. The ethereal, but finely structured palate combines concentrated varietal character, with earthy nuances and a distinctive smoky complexity.

All fruit was grown in Marlborough’s Southern Valleys and principally sourced from the Yarrum Vineyard, situated on the Brancott/Ben Morven ridge. Typical of this sub-region, the wind-blown loess soils are comprised of clay-loams with differing degrees of gravel content. The various source blocks are cultivated to a mixture of pinot noir clones, predominantly the Dijon clones 115, 777 and 667, with smaller parcels of UCD5 and AM 10/5. The vineyards are primarily hillside plantings trained to two-cane VSP (vertical shoot positioning) with a high vine density of 3800 plants per hectare.

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 February 2022. The wine was bottled in June with alcohol 13.6%, pH 3.72 and acidity 5.3 g/l.