Mt Beautiful North Canterbury Pinot Noir 2018

Description

As a personal favorite of Mt. Beautiful’s owner David Teece, it’s incredibly important for this Pinot Noir to showcase the best aspects of the varietal. Subtlety is the secret inside this wine. It begins with sophisticated floral fragrances of sweet spice and ripe soft red berry fruits, while showcasing an elegant medium-weight palate that features fragrant strawberry and bramble 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 vigour, 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. The 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 flavour.

2018 was a complete contrast to the previous few vintages. The growing season was considerably warmer and wetter than normal, and our Pinot Noir did very well. Good flowering followed by enough rain to fill out the grape bunches had us hand harvesting our fruit 10 days earlier than usual, starting the 21st of March. Fruit ripened fast and was picked with excellent sugar levels and good acidity however we had some variability in tannin ripeness. The harvest was 100% destemmed and whole berries were sent to open fermenters. After a cold soak of 5-10 days, a fast fermentation ensued. The wine was gently plunged twice daily and left on skins for a further period. Some cuvees were pressed quickly to retain freshness and fruitiness, whilst others that had better tannin structure were left on skins for an extended period. The wines were all aged in French oak barrels, 20% of which were new, for 11 months where they underwent malolactic fermentation prior to blending and bottling 12 months following harvest.

Food Pairing: Pair this 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.