Mt. Beautiful North Canterbury Pinot Noir 2017

Description

As a personal favorite of Mt. Beautiful’s owner David Teece, it’s incredibly important for our Pinot Noir to showcase the best aspects of the varietal. Subtlety is the secret inside this wine. It begins with sophisticated floral fragrances of violets and blackberries, while showcasing an elegant mediumweight palate that features ripe blackberry fruit, earthiness and subtle tannins.

This Pinot Noir is planted on the Southern section of our vineyard, which has the highest elevation, providing extra warmth and less exposure to frost. In addition, our vines are closely planted to reduce vigor, resulting in lower crop levels and allowing us to ripen these grapes to achieve a true expression of this variety. We hand tend all our Pinot Noir throughout the season and at harvest. This mix of Pinot Noir clones were specifically chosen for their flavor profile with 50% of the vineyard planted in Burgundy clones. Clone 667 fills out the middle palate, while 777 provides a long finish. The rest of the vines are a mixture of eleven other clones, including UCD 5, UCD 6, 114, 115, Mariafeld, AM10, 4, 5, 943 and Abel. The aim of these selections is to build sound palate structure in the wine, providing a vibrant ruby colored wine with ripe fruit, subtle tannins, great length and persistence of flavor.

2017 was an interesting vintage for Pinot Noir. A very hot start to the season led to great shoot growth and bunch formation. Towards the end of the season the weather cooled significantly, and we experienced rain events at tricky times. This led to a slower ripening period, which was great for acid retention, but touchy for sugar levels. Picking started on the 31st of March and finished on the 18th of April; nine days later then 2016. The fruit was 100% handpicked, bunch sorted and destemmed. The Pinot Noir then went through a cold soak for five days, then a fast and hot fermentation followed by an extended period of post ferment maceration. A combination of very gentle pumping over and plunging was used. All our Pinot Noir blocks were fermented separately in varying sized vessels which helped preserve each block’s individuality and unique character. The hot fermentation and gentle handling give us the soft subtle tannins in this wine. Once the tannins have integrated to our liking, the skins are gently pressed, keeping the free run and pressings separate. Our 2017 Mt. Beautiful Pinot Noir was barrel aged for 10 months in a combination of 20% new and used French oak barrels. Malolactic fermentation occurred in barrel before being racked and lightly fined with egg whites. The wine was then bottled on the 16th of March 2018.

Food Pairing: Pair our Mt. Beautiful Pinot Noir with Miles Davis, rare roast beef and horseradish sauce, hard salty cheeses like Pecorino Romano or moussaka on a rainy night.