The focus with this wine is to provide a drink that has texture and depth, rather than focussing solely on primary fruit notes. We want a wine that satisfies across the palate and employ a number of techniques to achieve this.
Our Marlborough Pinot Gris comes from one vineyard located just outside the township of Ward in the Awatere Valley. It is owned and managed by Pam and Polly Francis and has been fully certified under Bio-Gro as an organic vineyard. The fruit was hand-picked and then whole-cluster pressed so that the time on skins was minimised. A portion of this juice was barrel-fermented in older French oak to give greater weight, though ensuring that wood is not evident on the nose. The balance of the wine was fermented cool to retain the fruit characters from our vineyards.
The final blend this year was made solely from free-run juice, as we feel it gives a more elegant and subtle wine, especially with Pinot Gris, that has quite ‘grey’ coloured skins.
The rose-tinged berries of Pinot Gris have a fair amount of tannins in them so we hand-pick the bunches to minimise the amount of skin-contact. We also find that the fruit comes in with quite low acidity so we ferment the juice through to dryness, usually in barrel, to maintain the structure.
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