The Pioneer Pinot Noir 2019

Blackberry and dark cherry aromas combine wonderfully with vanilla and smoky French oak. The palate is rich and round with great flavour concentration and fine, velvety tannins resulting in a wine that offers both power and elegance.

From our two Waihopai Valley vineyards, the soils are a mix of windblown loess, clay and silts layered over alluvial gravels. We used a mix of clones - Barnsley vineyard 115 and C15 and Lawson's Dry Hills vineyard 115 and 667. 2019 gave us wonderful weather which allowed us to pick exactly when we wanted to for optimal flavours and ripeness. The vintage was characterised by warm, dry weather resulting in berries with deep colour and intense flavour.

The Pioneer is made from blending the best wines from each clone on each site. They were individually harvested and placed into small, open-top fermenters for cold maceration before fermentation started spontaneously. The vats were hand-plunged two to three times a day during the ferment. The wines were left on the skins for between seven and twenty days post fermentation before pressing into a mixture of French oak barriques (224l) and puncheons (500l). After ten months maturation we tasted every barrel and selected our favourite which we then blended and returned to barrel for a further four months aging.