The Pioneer Pinot Noir 2020

This wine has a lovely deep burgundy hue. The aromatics centre around red berry fruit with a hint of black cherry and some vanilla and mocha barrel notes. The palate is elegant and refined while offering lovely power and concentration, and great length of flavour.

The grapes for this lovely wine are from our Waihopai Valley vineyard and Tilly’s hillside block on Paynters Rd and is made entirely from Clone 5 which lends itself to rich, generous wines. The vintage was characterised by warm, dry weather resulting in berries with deep colour and intense flavours which were picked at ideal ripeness levels.

On arrival at the winery, the grapes were placed into small, open-top fermenters for several days’ cold maceration. Once fermentation started, the vats were hand-plunged two to three times a day to push the caps of skins though the wine, encouraging more colour, flavour and structure. The wine was left on the skins for between for around seven days post fermentation then pressed into a mixture of French oak barriques (224l) and puncheons (500l). After ten months maturation we tasted every barrel and carefully selected our favourites which were then blended for this wine and bottled here at the winery. 1212 bottles made.