Butterworth Tactician Martinborough Pinot Noir 2020

Description

Oak, Spice, Vanilla

"An excellent bouquet of ripeness, variety and complexity along with youthful energy and power-drive. Aromas and flavours of fresh cherry flesh, raspberry and baking spices. Tannins and acidity frame the core fruit flavours with fine textures and backbone leading to tautness and textured mouthfeel. There’s some fine dried herb qualities, perhaps some whole bunch savoury layers that need time to integrate into the wine more. Well made and lengthy with best drinking from 2028 through 2036+" Cameron Douglas, Master Sommelier, Aug 2024

Deep garnet, purple hue. Dark-fleshed fruit, rose blossom and the hint of vanilla and cigar box meld together for an aromatically complex nose. Weight and flesh are the identifiers, the ability to cut through the fragrance of cigars. The 16 months on oak has tempered the tannins to match the Te Muna iron bar of acidity.

After a 12+ hour day in the winery, the winemaker was driving through town and spotted the owners, Brad and Warren, enjoying cigars outside the iconic Martinborough Hotel after a hard day’s picking. In his exhaustion-addled mind, an inspiration came: What if we could make a Pinot Noir that could be heavy enough to enjoy a cigar with? An Icon was born.

The soils of Te Muna Terraces are free-draining alluvial gravel, which are rich in minerals making it ideal for growing grapes. The climate is an extension of Martinborough and similar to Burgundy, being only slightly cooler due to higher altitude, but with long summers and low rainfall providing the optimum long ripening conditions for grapes.

2020 was a golden year: Warm dry days, cool nights meant diurnal temperature variation was perfect for growing the perfect fruit. The frost season and a slight rain over flowering lead to natural attrition of the bunches in the vines, otherwise the year was very dry leading to the vines shutting down for longer ripening time. The hand harvested fruit was sourced from two adjacent clones in our premium Ranger block, on the edge of a 35m high Escarpment.

The fruit was placed into 2.2-ton fermenters, and hand plunged once daily, with a maximum ferment temperature of 32°C. The wine spent 25 days on skins, before being drained and pressed to oak barrels with a proprietary press cut system. The wine spent 16 months in oak, before the first racking. No fining agents were added, and the wine received a light filtration before bottling.