Man O' War Exiled Waiheke Pinot Gris 2020

Description

• Medium-dry style
• Blood orange
• Smoked lime
• Clean & refreshing

The 2020 Exiled Pinot gris is totally exotic almost like a tiki drink with its mysterious blood orange seared stone fruit and smoked lime characters married to a demerara edge of sweetness and a salty tangy finish coming off clean and refreshing! Bottled with a natural spritz left over from the fermentation process the 2020 Exiled is the best goddamned drink you can have for breakfast lunch and dinner – word.

Pinot Gris fruit for the Exiled comes from the St Helena clone of Pinot Gris and is grown on both Waiheke and Ponui Islands.

2020 was an excellent year for grape quality with a long dry summer and very little rain during the harvest months. The Pinot Gris was lusciously ripe without the presence of botrytis and we picked multiple blocks over a range of ripeness levels without any real weather pressure.

The fruit is lightly crushed and pressed then settled in tank before being racked with light solids into tank for fermentation. A mixture of un inoculated and cultured yeast ferments are used with each vineyard fermenting slowly until the desired balance of acid, tannin and sugar is reached. The wines are then chilled to below zero to stop the fermentation before blending, the blend is held at low temperatures in the cellar until bottling to retain as much of the natural carbon dioxide as possible.