Mt Difficulty Roaring Meg Central Otago Pinot Noir 2023

Description

Blackberry, Oak, Spice

"A bright, vibrant, intensely youthful red roaring (excuse the pun) with blackcurrant, plum, blueberry and black cherry complexity on the nose and palate and finishes with charm and lushness. Elegant, refreshing and spice-soaked" Dish Magazine, Top NZ Pinot 2025

Red, blue and black berry fruit aromatics typical of a warmer vintage. The palate is harmonious with rich dark berries and a savoury line underneath. A hint of spice and dried thyme complement the succulent fruit. Fine tannins frame the wine with a great flow and finish. Roaring Meg Pinot Noir will improve for three to five years given optimal cellaring conditions.

The grapes for this wine come from our Cromwell basin vineyards managed by our dedicated viticultural team. The addition of fruit from our Bendigo vineyard has lent a powerful, darker edge to this vintage.

The 2023 growing season in Central Otago was vastly different to the rest of the country. We came out of a mild but wet winter in 2022, straight into warm and unusually still spring which meant strong shoot growth and very successful fruit set. Post flowering, the summer heat increased, and Cromwell experienced it’s hottest January on record. Indeed, it was looking to be an early and condensed warm vintage and we started picking in the middle of March. However, a blast of cold weather from the south during the first week of April, along with some rain was.

The grapes were both machine and hand harvested, before destemming to enhance the natural fruit characters of Pinot Noir from the Cromwell Basin. The grapes stayed in the fermenter on average for a total of 25 days, with temperatures peaking at 28 - 30°C. The wine was plunged once daily both during pre-fermentation and twice during fermentation. Post-fermentation the wine was left to extract with no further punch downs. Once tannins were balance, the wine was pressed and left to settle in tank for a week before barrelling down to French oak, 15% of which was first fill, where it resided on lees for 10 months. It underwent malolactic fermentation during early spring, was racked out of barrel in early-summer with filtration, but no fining, prior to bottling.