Butterworth Te Muna Martinborough Pinot Noir 2020

Description

Herbal, Oak, Redcurrant

"Redcurrants, cranberries, dried herbs and sweet spices on the nose. Some cedar, too. It’s medium-bodied with lively acidity. Fruity and crunchy with vibrant character, tension and balance. Succulent finish. Drink or hold" James Suckling, Oct 2022

Deep garnet, purple hue. Cardamom, blueberries, dark fleshed cherries with flecks of freshly crushed vanilla pod leap from the glass. Rich dark toasty characters add to the Te Muna bright acid line. The tannins are youthful and fine boned, adding to the mid palate interest. An iron fist in a velvet glove.

2020 was a golden year: Warm dry days, cool nights meant to 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. The fruit was hand harvested over a series of picks by clone for optimal ripeness.

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 cool summers and low rainfall providing the optimum long ripening conditions for grapes.

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 20-23 days on skins, before being drained and pressed to oak barrels. The wine spent 11 months in oak, before the first racking. No fining agents were added, and the wine received a light filtration before bottling.