Marlborough Pinot Gris

The two vineyards were hand-picked separately at high ripeness levels and whole-bunch pressed using very low maceration press cycles. The resulting juice was coldsettled, then racked to fermentation vessels. Most of the juice went through a natural indigenous yeast fermentation in old French oak barriques and the balance was fermented in stainless steel tanks using cultured yeast. Towards the end of fermentation all the wine was transferred to stainless steel tanks, where the fermentations were stopped, retaining 9 g/l residual sugar. The blended wine was then filled into old barrels, where it remained on yeast lees for a further five months, prior to bottling in November 2020

Much of the fruit for this wine was grown near Renwick on young alluvial soils containing high proportions of New Zealand’s ubiquitous greywacke river stones and planted with the Lincoln Berry-Smith clone. A smaller parcel of the Selection Ovaille clone was grown at Wrekin Terrace Vineyard in the Brancott Valley, a valley floor site on gravelly clay-loam soils, typical of the Southern Valleys. Both vineyards are over 20 years old and trained to a two-cane VSP (vertical shoot positioning) trellis.